Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from County Councillor G Driver.

Members are asked to consider any Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

County Councillors J Mein and T Martin declared a non-pecuniary interest in agenda item 4 (BT Lancashire Services Limited Service Governance and Performance Monitoring Report) as they were members of the BT pension scheme.

Resolved:  That the Minutes of the meeting held on 7 March 2016 be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

The Committee considered a report on the Service Governance and Performance Monitoring of the County Council's strategic partnership with BT covering the period October 2015 to February 2016.

Further information providing a more comprehensive measurement of service delivery was presented at Appendix 'A', including the key performance indicators against which BTLS were monitored.

The achievement of key performance measures were reported as follows:

·  ICT Services: all contractual performance had been met through the period October 2015 until February 2016 and performance against the contractural targets remained strong.

·  Payroll and Recruitment Services: all contractual and non-contractual performance targets had been met during the same period.

The Committee's attention was particularly drawn to the following:

·  The PAs telephony system needed to be upgraded;

·  A pilot scheme that would enable citizens to access high speed wi-fi from local libraries had been launched.  Early feedback was favourable and a formal assessment of the feedback would help shape and influence the facilities in public centres in the future.

·  A range of activities were currently underway to support the integration with other public services and in particular health;

·  The review of the financial management arrangements and particularly the non-affordability spend with BTLS continued.  Better scrutiny of requests for new equipment coupled with better management of desktop refresh had resulted in a much lower spend on PCs and laptops in 2015/16 compared with 2014/15.  The non-affordability spend in 2015/16 had reduced by more than £500,000 as at the end of January 2016 compared with the total spend in 2014/15. A saving of £1m had also been delivered on the affordability budget in 2015/16 through the Schedule 11 budget which covered both ICT infrastructure and desktop refresh.  This would be an on-going saving;

·  A new mobile phone contract would be signed shortly.  This would allow better management of the mobile phone estate and result in a reduction in charges;

·  The identification of a future solution for the Council's data centre was a key priority and options including the possibility of moving to a cloud storage strategy would be presented to Management Team in April.  It was suggested that consideration be given to locating the data centre within the County Archives building;

·  The asset management programme had moved into its implementation stage;

·  The implementation of the customer access system was expected to go live in July/August;

·  Work had commenced to upgrade Talis Alto.  The contract would be novated to BTLS with an upgrade completion date of September 2016;

·  BTLS had identified that many Startwell Services were poorly supported by the existing Impulse system which needed to be upgraded and implemented by August 2017 to meet the statutory deadlines of school admissions; and

·  Customer satisfaction with the services provided by BTLS and in particular ICT had improved.

The Committee welcomed the performance of BTLS against the agreed performance indicators, and the approach being adopted to ensure that ICT and payroll services supported and contributed to the strategic priorities and objectives of the County Council.

Resolved:  That the report be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

The Committee considered a report on the performance of the Procurement Service, including progress made to date in implementing the Procurement Service improvement plan and the current performance of the service against the key performance indicators aligned to the Procurement Strategy.

The attention of the Committee was particularly drawn to the following:

·  The Social Value Policy and Framework had been implemented in February 2016.  This would support the overarching Procurement Strategy;

·  Revised 'Procurement Rules' would be presented to Full Council in May 2016;

·  Good progress was being made to cleanse and update the supplier database to enable procurement activity to be reported against organisational classifications i.e. small medium sized enterprises, and the voluntary, community and faith sector;

·  The work that was being undertaken to reduce the number of short term contract extensions in the future.  It was acknowledged that there would always be an occasional need for a contract to be extended due to unforeseen circumstances;

·  The activities which had taken place to strengthen internal control arrangements;

·  The on-going review and monitoring of the contracts register to help highlight more effectively the lead in times for procurement exercises to be completed on time;

·  Significant progress had been made to retender the public health contracts which were transferred to the County Council in April 2013;

·  A total of 141 contracts with an annual value of £158m had been awarded successfully in 2015/16 up to and including February 2016.The contracts had engaged 189 contractors within Lancashire with a contract value of approximately £65m and a further 96 contractors within the North West had been engaged with a contract value of approximately £22m.

·  The Procurement Service in liaison with Legal Services had successfully responded to all informal challenges around procurement activity without any of them escalating into a formal challenge; and

·  Work was on-going to provide assistance to suppliers.  A very successful suppliers information day had taken place to give potential contractors a better understanding of the procurement process.

A comment was made about the need to ensure the prompt payment of invoices submitted by care providers.  Officers agreed to include details of payment response times in the next procurement update report.

Resolved: 

(i)  That the report be noted.

(ii)  That the continuing progress to implement the Procurement Service improvement plan and the current performance of the Service against the key performance indicators aligned to the Procurement Strategy be welcomed.

The Committee considered a report on the County Council's response to the Ofsted inspection of Lancashire Adult Learning and the outcome of Ofsted's recent re-inspection.

It was reported that following the Ofsted 'inadequate' assessment in November 2015, the County Council had put in place a series of measures to ensure that the Lancashire Adult Learning was able to respond positively to Ofsted's planned re–inspection.

It was extremely pleasing that the hard work particularly by the Director Development and Corporate Services, and the staff from Nelson and Colne College had resulted in Ofsted's recent re-inspection giving Lancashire Adult Learning an overall effectiveness assessment of 'good'. 

It was noted that Ofsted had highlighted three areas for improvement and that action was already being taken to address these areas.  It was hoped that the actions would result in Lancashire Adult Leaning being assessed as 'outstanding' in the future.

Resolved:  That the report and the news that Ofsted's re-inspection has assessed the overall effectiveness of Lancashire Adult Learning as 'good' be welcomed.

An item of Urgent Business may only be considered under this heading where, by reason of special circumstances to be recorded in the minutes, the Chairman of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.  Wherever possible, the Chief Executive should be given advance warning of any Members' intention to raise a matter under this heading.

None.

The next meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement will be held on Monday 6^th June 2016 at 2pm in Cabinet Room 'B', the Diamond Jubilee Room, County Hall, Preston.

It was noted that the next meeting of the Committee would be held on Monday, 6 June 2016 at 2.00 p.m. in Cabinet Room 'B', County Hall, Preston.