Agenda item

The Corporate Director for Transformation and Resources will present to the Committee the detail of the transformation programme designed to implement the priorities of the Council’s 4 year Business Plan.

The Committee had previously requested to hear about the progress with system thinking reviews and this will be referred to in the wider presentation.  Future monitoring of progress of the transformation (and investment) programme will be reported quarterly via the Business Plan Performance Scorecard Report.  The Committee is asked to note that the Liaison Board is currently considering how best to scrutinise the Programme content in the future as part of a wider review of overview and scrutiny arrangements in the Council.

The Corporate Director for Transformation and Resources was in attendance to present a report on the transformation programme which would implement the priorities of the Council’s four year Business Plan.

Appendices to the report included the programme status summary which provided details of the 11 programmes of the Business Plan (now fixed) and progress made reflected in a ‘traffic light’ update.  A further fishbone breakdown on the individual programmes, again reflected via a ‘traffic light’ progress update, was also provided.

Members were asked to note that further investigatory work continued to ensure the classifications of green (on time, to quality and budget), amber (major issue, mitigation plan in place) and red (major issue for escalation) were indeed a true reflection on progress of the individual programmes. 

The Chairman thanked the Corporate Director for his attendance and the report provided and opened up discussion to the floor where the following points were made.  The overarching top level Economy & Unemployment Programme classification of green was felt to be contradictory once broken down further within its respective fishbone where several lower level programmes were classified as amber. 

The Corporate Director reiterated that the report provided an initial overview of the current situation but that further work was being undertaken to ensure that the classifications were correct and Executive members suggested that the size of the various programmes and projects varied significantly.

In relation to the fishbone diagrams provided for the Economy & Unemployment programme details on ‘small business rate relief’ would be included within subsequent reports.  The categories for both ‘traveller site allocation’ and ‘service water management planning’ within the fishbone for the Local Development Framework Programme would also be reviewed,

It was noted that Benefits Realisation had an overall status of ‘red’ within the lower level fishbone arising from the Service Reviews and System Thinking Programme.  It is estimated that there was currently an estimated £8m shortfall in the Benefits Realisation saving figures for next year.  All departmental budgets were being reviewed to ascertain where funding can be sought over the next six months in order to achieve savings ahead of budget setting for 2012/13.

Clarification was provided that much work had been undertaken since the budget had been set and that all teams within Finance and the Adult Social Care prevention teams were working together on systems thinking to address cost pressures. 

The method of reviewing and reporting on the 11 Programmes and subsequent fishbones will be achieved through the operation of Sharepoint.  The ICT Task Group had recently received a demonstration on how the system would operate with the Chairman of the Group confirming that, once it was fully functional, Sharepoint would be a useful tool to allow continued monitoring of specific projects.

Update reports on the Transformation Programme would be presented to Cabinet on a quarterly basis although the Corporate Director would receive details on a monthly basis.  As future reports would be produced via Sharepoint, which was closely linked to the Project Manager process of Prince 2, the Corporate Director felt that members of the Committee and indeed all members of the Council, would benefit from training in relation to the Sharepoint system.  In addition a paper would be produced for members to explain the differing layers within Sharepoint and how these were translated within a report.

Resolved:

1)        To thank the Corporate Director for his presentation and explanations.

2)         That future scrutiny would focus on the 11 programmes within the Business Plan with more detailed scrutiny given to those areas highlighted as ‘red’, subject to the outcome of the current review of Overview and Scrutiny arrangements in the Council.

3)         That future reports provided for scrutiny should include appropriate weighting to individual programmes.

4)         That a written report would be provided to the Committee with details on the layers contained within Sharepoint to allow a better understanding of the System and a demonstration of the reporting and monitoring system be arranged for scrutiny and other interested councillors via the Councillor Development Group.