Issue - meetings

Cabinet Member: Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Finance

Forward Plan Ref: 2020/089

Contact: Louise Tustian, Head of Insight & Corporate Programmes Tel: 07741 607452/Hannah Doney, Head of Corporate Finance Tel: 07584 174654

Report by Corporate Director Customers & Organisational Development and Director of Finance (CA7).

The report sets out Oxfordshire County Council’s (OCC’s) progress towards Corporate Plan priorities for 2020/21 August 2020.

Cabinet is RECOMMENDED to:

note this month’s business management and monitoring report; and

agree virements set out in Annex 2b.

Recommendations agreed.

Councillor Constance undertook to respond to questions from Councillor Phillips relating to the statutory restrictions on the use of the surplus from the on-street parking charges and measures to facilitate the Park and Charge project.

Also agreed that Councillor Phillips receive a response to her question in relation to Indicator 14 as to whether health visitors deployed to the NHS during the pandemic are now back with their normal duties.

Cabinet had before them a report setting out Oxfordshire County Council’s (OCC’s) progress towards Corporate Plan priorities for 2020/21 at August 2020.

Councillor Glynis Phillips, Shadow Cabinet Member for Finance commented that inevitably her role was to query areas of under performance but noted that the majority of business areas were still performing well. Councillor Phillips singled out the Public Health team who were still, for example, meeting their drug and alcohol abuse support targets while clearly having a pivotal and time-consuming role in combatting Covid-19.

Councillor Phillips referred to Public Health performance on Page 84 – Indicator 14 where on the prevalence of healthy children there is no data on a number of indicators because some of the workforce was deployed to the NHS response to Wave 1. Councillor Phillips queried whether these health visitors were back with the Council because their work e.g. reviewing children at 12months and the 2-2 and a half years was crucial to identifying any issues of neglect.

Councillor Phillips asked whether the  Cabinet Member was able to provide more detail on Page 62 indicator 11 Reduced carbon impact of our transport networks? The narrative stated that the success of the charging installation was not under the control of the Council but the Council could facilitate the project. She sought more information on how we were going to increase the number of charging spaces in the county which will be key to us meeting our carbon reduction target.

Councillor Phillips supported the recommendation that £112k grant from the Department of Education be allocated to better equip education settings to support pupils and students’ wellbeing and psychosocial recovery.  Also, the KS2 moderation and KS1 phonics grant of £22k be allocated to Education and Learning to carry out this role.

Cabinet Members responded to a number of other queries relating to the recruitment of a new programme manager as set out at Indicator 12, the review of unfunded posts and the income generation scheme.

Councillor Constance, Cabinet Member for Environment, undertook to respond to the question from Councillor Phillips relating to measures to facilitate the Park and Charge project and also to respond to a question on the statutory restrictions on the use of the surplus from the on-street parking charges and measures.

It was also agreed that Councillor Phillips receive a response to her question in relation to Indicator 14 as to whether health visitors deployed to the NHS during the pandemic are now back with their normal duties.

Councillor Heathcoat, Deputy Leader of the Council introduced the performance and risk elements of the report.

Councillor David Bartholomew, Cabinet Member for Finance introduced the finance element of the report.

During discussion Cabinet highlighted the performance of the Fire & Rescue Service and the Customer Service Centre. The CSC had achieved a 95% satisfaction rating which was a huge achievement.

RESOLVED:             to note this month’s business management and monitoring report; and agree virements set out in Annex 2b.