CHILTERN DISTRICT COUNCIL

MINUTES of the Meeting of the SCRUTINY COMMITTEE

held on 13 November 2001.

APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE were received from Councillors Ms J E Bramwell, J E Ford, P T Lole       and G E Sussum.

35.      MINUTES

The Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 16 October 2001, copies of which had been previously circulated, were signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

36.     DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST    

There were no declarations of interest.

37.     CUSTOMER CONTACT DRAFT TERMS OF REFERENCE

This item, which had been deferred from the Best Value Sub Committee meeting, was presented to the group by the Director of Corporate Services.

Those in attendance were informed that the Council would be carrying out a cross cutting Best Value Review. This was a response to three factors, firstly, to meet the Government’s expectations that one cross cutting review is carried out per year. Secondly, to respond to a Scrutiny Sub Committee request for a review of the Customer Services Area. Thirdly, to underpin and inform the Council’s commitment to implement Electronic Government and meet the Government requirement to have 25% of all services capable of electronic delivery available by 2002 and 100% by 2005.

Members were informed that a new inspector, Jacqueline Pratt, was in position and would be invited to be involved in the Best Value process from the early stages.

As part of the project, frontline staff had been involved in a brainstorming session to highlight problems in dealing with our customers.  

The review had the aim of identifying the varying customer types, which the Council came into contact with and the different ways in which these were dealt with. It was noted that this would result in an improvement plan. The scale and complexity of the review would require detailed project management.

The Best Value Toolkit, the Council’s agreed guidelines for conducting Best Value reviews would be a useful aid in conducting the review, but might need to be adapted because of its cross cutting nature.

It was agreed that the wording of the “Review Aims” should be slightly altered to the following –

to identify ways to significantly improve the efficiency of how we deal with our customers.

It was noted that an additional Member was needed to be a member of the review team along with Councillor P T Priestley.

Members supported the review, and the need to make best use of the information, which could be gathered from all contact with customers, not solely survey results. It was noted that this was in line with the Council’s existing Consultation Strategy.  

     RESOLVED -

1.     That the Terms of Reference be approved.

2.     That the nomination of Councillor P T Priestley to the Review Team be confirmed.

38.     CHAIRMAN'S REPORT

The Chairman reported that in accordance with Rule 14 the Scrutiny Procedure Rules he had been notified three working days before the last Executive meeting that Insurance premiums would need to be discussed. This was an unexpected item of business and was therefore not in the Forward Plan. The Notification under Rule 14 enabled the matter to be considered by the Executive without his consent being required.

It had been agreed at the last meeting of the Scrutiny Committee that a protocol be put together in order to deal with urgency requests from the Executive (Minute No.31, 16.10.2001 refers). The Head of Legal Services informed those present that a draft protocol would be presented to the next meeting of the Committee on 18 December 2001.

Members were also informed that Rules 14 and 15 were on the agenda for the Constitution Review meeting on 15 November 2001.

     RESOLVED

     That the report of the Chairman be noted.

The meeting ended at 8.22pm.