Agenda item

10:10

Report by the Corporate Director for Customers and Organisational Development and Director of Finance

The report and appendix set out Oxfordshire County Council’s progress towards Corporate Plan priorities during January2021.  The report will be considered at Cabinet’s 16  March meeting.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to

a)              note the report and consider any matters for future attention by theCommittee;

b)              report the issues raised to the Cabinet discussion of the papers on 16 March 2021.

The Committee had before it a report on the Council’s progress towards Corporate Plan priorities during January 2021.  The Committee was requested to consider any matters for future attention by the Committee and to report issues raised to the Cabinet meeting on 16 March 2021.

Louise Tustian, Head of Insight and Corporate Programmes, introduced the report.  Of the 27 indices, 52% were rated Green and 44% were Amber.  One additional Leadership Risk had been added: LR21 County Elections May 2021.  The latest information was that all polling stations had been secured and work was continuing on preparations to make them COVID compliant.  There were no score changes in the other risks.

Louise Tustian provided responses to questions from Members of the Committee that had been raised earlier:

·         The Council was in procurement for new contract arrangements to deliver streetlighting maintenance and improvements, and returns were being evaluated.

·         Improvements to FixMyStreet with better messaging were expected to be delivered the following week.  There were regular meetings with the developers of the software to feedback issues and further improvements had been agreed including better hand-off of issues to district partners.

·         The Agency Educational Psychologists contract and the Annual Review team were both short-term agreements.  For the Annual Review contract, it was based on 6 months or clearing the backlog if this happens sooner.  The initial agreement for the EP team was to clear the backlog of 90 assessments.  It was a fix to deal with the existing backlog of cases but recruitment of EPs is an issue nationally.

Lorna Baxter, Director for Finance, noted that the details of the COVID-19 government grants were outlined on Agenda Pages 115 and 116.  The government had extended some of the grants to the first financial quarter of 2021/22 (April to June).  It was estimated that around £10m of the costs to the Council of COVID-19 originally expected to fall in the 2020/21 financial year would how fall in 2021/22 and provision was being made for that.

Councillor Jenny Hannaby asked how bad debts were monitored as some of them were very large amounts.  Councillor Glynis Phillips responded that the Audit and Governance Committee, of which she was a member, regularly examined the repayment situation.

The following suggestions were made by Members:

·         There was a request to simplify the information in the commentary for “Listening to residents” under “Number of pothole enquiries ..” which currently contained too many layers of percentages.  There was also a request to see the average times to do repairs.

·         It was noted that there were a lot of drainage issues reported under Fix My Street but that many did not meet the criteria.  Members asked if the criteria needed to be reviewed as drainage was a big issue in many areas.

·         With regard to the backlog in assessments for Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and the shortage of education psychologists, Members asked if there was a problem with the terms and conditions being offered since agencies had staff available.  It was also suggested that the Council develop its own EPs through apprenticeships.

·         Members would also like more information on the quality of service delivered by CAMHS and their staffing levels. 

·         Members stated that they believed that the plans for installation of LED lighting were not ambitious enough.  There was also a request for Members to be able to scrutinise the new contract since this had been such an ongoing problem.

Officers agreed to provide responses to the following questions raised by Members:

·         Given that the highways resurfacing work was budgeted for, the Committee would like to know why there was a problem with funding.

·         Members asked why the previous contract for LED lighting was being replaced with a new contract.

·         There was a disagreement in the figures on Agenda Page 18 between the first and fourth bullet points.  Officers were asked to confirm which were correct.

·         On the Skanska contract Members asked whether workforce issues were responsible for delays in work and if Skanska still signed off on their own work.  If so, was that is something that might be changed in the next contract?

·         Members asked if the corporate assessment body, formed to deal with the infrastructure programme running behind schedule, was a temporary body and if so, for how long it was expected to be in place.

Louise Tustian noted that the Outcomes Framework was due to be reviewed at the next meeting in June and officers were working to make the information in the reports clearer.

It was agreed to recommend that the new Committee after the elections prioritise examining the Skanska contract and EHCPs / CAMHS.

RESOLVED: to

a)            note the report and consider any matters for future attention by the Committee;

b)           report the issues raised to the Cabinet discussion of the papers on 16 March 2021.