Agenda, decisions and draft minutes

See guidance below.

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Any county councillor may, by giving notice to the Proper Officer by 9 am two working days before the meeting, ask a question on any matter in respect of the Cabinet Member’s delegated powers.

The number of questions which may be asked by any councillor at any one meeting is limited to two (or one question with notice and a supplementary question at the meeting) and the time for questions will be limited to 30 minutes in total. As with questions at Council, any questions which remain unanswered at the end of this item will receive a written response.

Questions submitted prior to the agenda being despatched are shown below and will be the subject of a response from the appropriate Cabinet Member or such other councillor or officer as is determined by the Cabinet Member, and shall not be the subject of further debate at this meeting. Questions received after the despatch of the agenda, but before the deadline, will be shown on the Schedule of Addenda circulated at the meeting, together with any written response which is available at that time

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Members of the public who wish to speak at this meeting can attend the meeting in person or ‘virtually’ through an online connection.

Requests to speak must be submitted by no later than 9am four working days before the meeting.  Requests to speak should be sent to committeesdemocraticservices@oxfordshire.gov.uk .

If you are speaking ‘virtually’, you may submit a written statement of your presentation to ensure that if the technology fails, then your views can still be taken into account. A written copy of your statement can be provided no later than 9 am 2 working days before the meeting. Written submissions should be no longer than 1 A4 sheet.

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The minutes of the meeting held on 1 October 2024, were approved by the Chair and signed as a correct record

The Cabinet Member is RECOMMENDED to:

a)    Approve the financial allocation to progress with the joint-tender process which needs authorisation (due to cost) before the award process can be concluded and, the Contract signed in January 2025.

b)    Delegate authority to finalise the terms and condition to the Chief Fire Officer and Director of Community Safety in consultation with the Head of Legal and Deputy Monitoring Officer and Head of Procurement.

The Cabinet Member considered a report regarding the Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue, industrial action contingency arrangements. In this regard during preparations for industrial action in 2022/23, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue services worked together to maximise the effectiveness of the limited resilience arrangements available.

Whilst the risk of industrial action remained significant but stable, there was now an opportunity to explore seeking assistance from a 3rd party resilience arrangement. As a result, it was identified that all three services wished to benefit from lessons identified during previous preparations and saw this as a strong commercial opportunity for the three services to tender for a provider.

As part of the Thames Valley alignment  approach, Oxfordshire had been offered the chance to enter into an “IA contingency arrangements project” currently being run by Royal Berkshire, with Buckinghamshire already as a partner.

The tender process itself had been agreed by the OCC Commercial Board. However, as a partner Oxfordshire needed to agree to the funding for an agreed level of IA cover required which included the need to identify the financial resources to secure the services of 20 firefighters to provide a minimum fire cover level of 4 fire appliances across the county in the event of strike action or event triggers as listed in the project implementation document. In order to enter into a competitive tender process, additional funding was currently being estimated at £150,000 per year for a 4-year contract.

RESOLVED to:

a)    approve the financial allocation to progress with the joint-tender process which needs authorisation (due to cost) before the award process can be concluded and, the Contract signed in January 2025.

b)    delegate authority to finalise the terms and condition to the Chief Fire Officer and Director of Community Safety in consultation with the Head of Legal and Deputy Monitoring Officer and Head of Procurement.