Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Dominic Christian, Oliver Lodge, and Alderman Lyons.

There were no declarations.

To agree the public minutes of the meeting held on 10^th July 2020.

RESOLVED - That the public minutes of the meeting held on 7^th July 2020 be agreed as an accurate record.

Report of the Town Clerk.

The Sub-Committee considered a report of the Town Clerk which set out the work plan for future meetings.

RESOLVED – That the Sub-Committee noted the Report.

Report of the Director of Communities and Children’s Services.

The Committee received a Report of the Director of Community & Children's Services concerning performance management and monitoring within the Department for Community & Children’s Services (DCCS).

The Director began his presentation by providing a brief overview of his Department. DCCS provides a wide range of front-line services to the community, including, adult social care, children’s social care, state sector education, tackling rough sleeping, public health (including the City’s response to Covid), libraries and social housing. The department strives to deliver these services in the most effective and efficient way to deliver the best outcomes for City residents while securing value for money.

The Director emphasised that the Department is on a journey to improve its performance culture, to use data and intelligence to help improve and transform its services, and to commission services in more innovative and effective ways.

There followed a set of questions from Members:

What are the essential ingredients for a high-performance culture? Does this exist in DCCS and what is the evidence?

The Director responded that a high-performance culture starts with clearly defined values that fit with the Corporate Plan.

The overarching concern was to foster a culture where people felt both empowered to play a full role in influencing and shaping outcomes, and comfortable to take on board the lessons of when things have gone right or wrong. The Department takes training and development very seriously and wants to encourage a proactive culture where leadership at all at levels is embedded. The Director added that whilst recent indicators and benchmarking are positive for the department (notably, on recent Ofsted inspections and good staff and resident survey results), driving a high-performance culture is not static, and it would be complacent to imagine that we can’t continue to improve across different areas.

Are there possible changes in

Joint Report of the City Surveyor, the Director of Information Technology and the Director of Human Resources.

The Committee received a Joint Report of the Town Clerk, the Chamberlain and the City Surveyor concerning the road map and return to the office.

Before the meeting, it was envisaged that the focus of the discussion would be on the medium – longer term. In fact, after the City Surveyor’s opening introductory remarks, the discussion quickly turned to the state of the current arrangements, with Members expressing concern about the pace of getting officers and Members back into Guildhall in greater numbers.

Whilst recognising that the greater risk for officers came from using public transport to come back and forth to the Corporation’s operational buildings, Members were concerned that we were in danger of “gold plating” arrangements for officers and Members once they had made it into the office/place of work. For instance, the rules on the number of individuals allowed in certain areas at Guildhall struck Members as particularly overly prescriptive.

Given the Report would also be going to the meeting of the Establishment Committee on 17^th September, the Chairman asked that, by the time of that meeting, officers are in a position to confirm i) the number of staff that, pre-Covid, used Guildhall as their primary workplace; ii) how many of these staff members, on average, were coming back to the office on a regular basis; and, iii) how many individual Risk Assessments (which allowed officers to return to the workplace) still needed to be completed.

Noting that similar discussions had taken place at the meeting of the Resource Allocation Sub-Committee and the Court of Common Council during the previous week, Members had concerns about the overall pace and willingness of some Chief Officers to embrace the call to encourage people to come back.

More positively, they were pleased that officers were examining

There were no questions.

There were no items of urgent business.

MOTION - That under Section 100(A) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the following items on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Part I of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act.

RESOLVED - That under Section 100(A) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the following items on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Part I of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act.

To agree the non-public minutes of the meeting held on 10^th July 2020.

RESOLVED - That the non-public minutes of the meeting held on 7^th July 2020 be agreed as an accurate record.

There were no questions.

There was no other business.