Thursday, January 15, 2015

BOLD: Delivering a lean and agile Council ...

Mentioned last week that the Council's Finance and Resources Committee was to debate a pretty significant set of reports for the Local Authority today ...

... the reports (which you can read in full here) were all passed by Committee - but as I hinted last week, a Coalition Motion did accompany that approval, and I'll simply re-produce the text of that below:


Item No. 7.3

Report Title BOLD Business Cases: delivering a lean and agile Council

Committee:

1.    Acknowledges the recommendations 1.1 through to 1.9, and replaces the whole with this Coalition Motion.

2.    Notes that on 27 November 2014, Committee agreed that the business cases for the BOLD transformation projects would be reported to this Committee on 15 January 2015.

3.    Further notes that December’s Full Council Meeting approved the “Organise to deliver: next steps” report, and an additional recommendation was added, by Coalition Motion, to establish a ‘Checkpoint Group’ of key stakeholders, which would oversee the process of implementation of the proposed revised delivery model. That Group has now met once (prior to the Christmas recess) and is scheduled to meet again on Thursday 22nd January, and will meet on a monthly basis thereafter.

4.    Now receives the first four (of six) BOLD business cases and notes the rationale and requirement for transformation, and the budget gap and savings required (from 2016/17 onwards, in connection to these six BOLD business cases), as outlined in paragraph 3.3 of this report.

5.    Explicitly notes that the overall transformation programme will be undertaken against the framework of:
·         Coalition Pledge 26 to establish a policy of no compulsory redundancies
·         A presumption against outsourcing of Council services
·         A presumption in favour of the protection of front-line services

6.    Against this explicit framework, now agrees the BOLD programme overview – ‘the case for change’ outlined in appendix two of this report; and agrees the strategic direction – and broad principles – behind the four business cases for ‘channel shift’, ‘business and customer services’, ‘localities’ and ‘partnership’, with related resource and implementation plans, all as outlined in appendices three to six of this report.

7.    Notes that the remaining two business cases for ‘workforce strategy and controls’ and ‘property’ will be brought to Finance and Resources Committee in February and Spring 2015 respectively.

8.    Notes that implementation of the business cases will require a significant commitment of officer time and therefore instructs the Director of Corporate Governance to progress permanent recruitment to those head of service posts which are critical to the successful delivery of the programme.

9.    Notes that appropriate consultation with both Trades Unions and employees will take place in relation to all of these proposals. 

10. Further agrees that the delivery of each of the six BOLD business cases will now be the subject of further detailed discussion and oversight, at specific meetings of Committee and the ‘Checkpoint Group’, prior to inclusion in the 2016/17 Budget process, and that they may consider establishing specific short-life oversight arrangements for monitoring delivery of each of the business cases.

11. Specifically on the ‘localities’ business case, notes that significant work is required to ensure careful alignment, and clear accountabilities, between the existing 12 Neighbourhood Partnerships and the 4 proposed ‘Localities’. Robust oversight of the development of the most efficient local delivery model will be needed.

12. Further notes that the Coalition remains committed to publication of an overall draft Budget (for 2016/17) by the end of September 2015, which would be further publically consulted upon between October and December 2015, all prior to any final decisions on the 2016/17 Budget being taken at the scheduled Special Council Meeting in February 2016.

13. Further approves, and agrees to replace the existing BOLD governance arrangements with, the revised programme governance arrangements set out in paragraphs 3.28 to 3.31 and appendix 7 of this report.

14. And finally instructs the Director of Corporate Governance to provide:

·         progress reports on a bi-monthly basis to this Committee (the first such progress report to be received by this Committee on 19 March 2015), which will focus on the implementation of each business case, the realisation of savings, and progress on the Council’s efforts to maximise additional income through new sources of potential revenue.
·         and broader update reports on a quarterly basis to the ‘Corporate Policy and Strategy Committee’, which will focus on the wider strategic delivery of the overall BOLD programme.

 

Moved by

Councillor Rankin

Seconded by

Councillor Bill Cook




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

a plain English summary of this motion could go a long way to give ordinary people real understanding of what you are proposing .

- does it mean that people working on the front line have greater access to resources ? Ie : the phrase that should be disappearing is 'we don't have the money'




Andrew said...

Anonymous

Fair point ... I should have stressed that the Motion does need to be read "in conjunction with" the main Report, which there is a link for in the second paragraph above.

Thanks for checking out the blog.

Andrew

Anonymous said...

Bold was always a soap powder , even this report contains huge amounts of meaningless management drivel. Sound bites like something out of the TV programme 'The Office'
It's like some academic paper without a hint of reality written to make someone look good.

Andrew said...

... thanks for the feedback Anonymous(2) - all noted!