Agenda item

a)  Steering Group and Strategic Partnerships

Michele Lawty-Jones informed the meeting that delivery had commenced on the Skills Funding Agency European Social Fund opt-in project for young people at risk of and NEET. The successful consortium consisted of Lancashire Colleges, private sector providers and a range of Lancashire based third sector organisations with Preston College acting as the Lead Accountable Body (LAB).

Joan Costello Smith from Preston's College was welcomed to the meeting as its representative and reported that as part of the capacity building fund, a former employee of the Learning and Skills Council and Blackburn with Darwen Council had been appointed as Strategic Partnerships Manager and would be deployed to the Skills and Employment Hub.

Michele also advised that the Building Better Opportunities Big Lottery opt in project was due to commence in September. The overarching steering group for both projects had met and the Board was asked to approve the draft Terms of Reference as set out in the report.

Resolved: That the Terms of Reference of the Lancashire Youth Steering Group, as set out in the report presented, is approved.

b)  Lancashire Moving On Project

Joan Costello Smith reported that the collaborative project would run until March 2018 and was aimed at positively impacting on a minimum of 2,539 young people in Lancashire who are NEET or at risk of becoming NEET.

She informed the meeting that Preston's College had subcontracted to 23 providers and that contracts were in place for them all.  All paper and electronic systems were in place and it was expected that there would be no problems with data transfer. Joan advised that one ILR had been completed already, even though there were no starts yet, and emphasised that the project was paid on deliverables and outcomes and drew attention to the breakdown set out in the report (page 14).

She added that the original profiles from partners showed an over commitment and one of the ways of dealing with that was to only contract in phases, the first being until July 2017.

In the future reports would be created by the LAB working with the Lancashire Employment and Skills Executive Partnership (LESEP) and would be presented initially to the Youth Steering Group before being reported to the Skills and Employment Board and the ESIF Committee.  Bev Robinson sought clarity around the rules regarding subcontracting and whether there were measures in place to ensure that monies remained in Lancashire and Joan confirmed that they would as the project would only support Lancashire Learners.

A query was also raised about management fees and what percentage of that would be returned by LESEP and Preston College in order to provide capacity building. 

Steve Gray asked who would be independently scrutinising and overseeing Preston College and Michele drew attention to the fact that the College had to periodically report to the Youth Steering Group and the Skills and Employment Board who would provide scrutiny.

The Chair highlighted that as the new Strategic Partnerships Manager would be seconded to the Hub and report to the Steering Group they would provide scrutiny outside of Preston's College's own management. Joan added that LESEP would perform a similar function and Michele added that the Skills Funding Agency also had a monitoring role for the project.

However, the point was made that as Preston's College would be the legal employer for the Strategic Partnerships Manager the role understandably could not be considered to be a wholly neutral or independent one. Given the concerns expressed around effective independent scrutiny of the project, and with the agreement of the Chair, it was agreedthat a diagram would be presented to a future meeting of the Board on how governance can be assured.

Steve Gray added that the Steering Group needed to put systems in place to track leavers and record where they go to, particularly if it was beyond education.  Graham Haworth also asked that any monitoring report should detail what mitigation and action was being taken where project partners fall behind.

Resolved:

1.  That the over commitment model adopted in line with an early bid for
growth be noted,

2.  That the initial reporting outline be noted,

3.  That the Capacity Building Plan outline be approved, and

4.  That a report be presented to a future meeting of the Board on how effective governance can be assured.