Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Councillors Chidley, E M Giles and Trumpeter.

Members to declare any interests and party whip matters in relation to the agenda.

There were no declarations of interest made.

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 1 March 2023.

Resolved that the minutes of the meeting held on 1 March 2023 be approved as a correct record.

To determine whether there are any additional items of business to be considered as a  matter of urgency.

There were no additional items of business.

To consider and comment upon the progress of the Improvement Plan up to 2 February 2023.

An update on the SEND Transport Performance was provided to the Board. It was a statutory duty of the Council to provide travel assistance for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The baseline SEND transport budget was £7.52m however, based on projections, the expected final outturn cost for the financial year of 2022-23 was £11.2m. The difference of £3.7m was highlighted as a budget pressure and was inclusive of all travel assistance provided. This scenario was not unique to Sandwell and the stated 51% increase of individuals with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) since 2019 reflected the immense pressure on the local authority. Details were also provided on the 25% increase of pupils in receipt of travel assistance since January 2021. Many authorities, including Sandwell, had confirmed that the position was unsustainable, and requests were made for a change in legislation. Further increases of children with an EHCP were expected which would inevitably impact the costs and demand for travel assistance going forward.

Discussions continued regarding the new procurement exercise which sought to address recommendations received from the Grant Thornton review that had taken place in December 2021. Recommendations from the Council’s own internal review, and the Childrens Services and Education Scrutiny Board, were also taken into account. The new framework was developed to ensure the delivery of several key components including effective communications with between parents, carers and operators.

The template produced for the SEND transport project was expected to be applied to other major projects within the Council due to the vigorous testing and scrutiny that the framework had received. Potential tweaks had been identified to continuously improve the service going forward. Members were minded that the process for the next SEND Transport plan would take place sooner to enable adequate time. This would allow needs to be aligned with other policies across the Council as well as the use of robust contract management arrangements and pre-procurement consultation to parents and key stakeholders.

In response to questions from members, it was confirmed that benchmarking with other authorities enabled officers to cherry-pick and cost the best ideas to help form Sandwell’s plan. The introduction of the Fusion software would enable key performance indicators to be tracked more efficiently with tools available to view live spend and monitoring.

To consider and comment upon the progress and further development of the Corporate Performance Management Framework and the Q3 monitoring reports.

An update on the SEND Transport Performance was provided to the Board. It was a statutory duty of the Council to provide travel assistance for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The baseline SEND transport budget was £7.52m however, based on projections, the expected final outturn cost for the financial year of 2022-23 was £11.2m. The difference of £3.7m was highlighted as a budget pressure and was inclusive of all travel assistance provided. This scenario was not unique to Sandwell and the stated 51% increase of individuals with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) since 2019 reflected the immense pressure on the local authority. Details were also provided on the 25% increase of pupils in receipt of travel assistance since January 2021. Many authorities, including Sandwell, had confirmed that the position was unsustainable, and requests were made for a change in legislation. Further increases of children with an EHCP were expected which would inevitably impact the costs and demand for travel assistance going forward.

Discussions continued regarding the new procurement exercise which sought to address recommendations received from the Grant Thornton review that had taken place in December 2021. Recommendations from the Council’s own internal review, and the Childrens Services and Education Scrutiny Board, were also taken into account. The new framework was developed to ensure the delivery of several key components including effective communications with between parents, carers and operators.

The template produced for the SEND transport project was expected to be applied to other major projects within the Council due to the vigorous testing and scrutiny that the framework had received. Potential tweaks had been identified to continuously improve the service going forward. Members were minded that the process for the next SEND Transport plan would take place sooner to enable adequate time. This would allow needs to be aligned with other policies across the Council as well as the use of robust contract management arrangements and pre-procurement consultation to parents and key stakeholders.

In response to questions from members, it was confirmed that benchmarking with other authorities enabled officers to cherry-pick and cost the best ideas to help form Sandwell’s plan. The introduction of the Fusion software would enable key performance indicators to be tracked more efficiently with tools available to view live spend and monitoring.

To consider and comment upon the SEND Transport Performance Update.

An update was provided on the Performance Management Framework for Quarter 3. In total, the amount of “Actions on Track” had increased from 258 to 273. Medium issues now totalled 101, up from 90 in the Quarter 2. The amount of significant risks had decreased from 9 to 3 and the amount of risks with no available update reduced to 33 from 53.

Details in relation to the three red risks were highlighted to the Board:-

·               “Bringing together governance arrangements and budgets to ensure voluntary community sector (VCS) grants were aligned to corporate objectives”.  The team was operating at less than full capacity due to sickness.

·               “Development of a corporate strategy” – Resources continued to be dedicated to deliver the improvement plan; the Corporate Performance Manager would lead development when in post.

·               “Review of Council’s payment process” – This would be part of the business process review.

Key contracts were also discussed with points being made as follows:-

·      Improvement in performance against the KPIs by the Childrens Trust with 13 out of 15 KPIs now green. A reduction in the total number of children in care had also taken place.

·      Serco had attended all governance and contract meetings during quarter 3. The Street cleaning improvement plan was live and service resilience had improved following the summer disruptions

·      SLT memberships had reduced in the quarter which, although an increase on December 2021 levels, was still below those seen pre-pandemic. Going forward, benchmarking against other comparators would take place to monitor post-covid trading levels. The transition to LATC would also be supported.

·      Places Leisure had a total of 90,752 visits in Q3.

Organisational Health

Sickness absence had increased during Q3 with a total of 8.28 working days per employee being lost; this was in comparison to the target of 6.21. 1/3 of the sickness was short term with the largest cause of sickness being stress, depression and mental health followed by infection and muscular-skeletal problems. A detailed review was underway to analyse trends and to review sickness absence management processes.

Customer Experience

The Council’s contact centres were improving and closer to target although turnover and sickness had caused a slight increase in wait times. Impact of the recruitment drives would be seen in Q4’s performance. Information requests were still below target although significant improvement had been made in complying with requests through FOI request routes.

Members sought clarification on why recycling provisions for high-rise blocks was taking so long to proceed with, members also expressed concerns raised by residents regarding the standard and cleanliness of some SLT sites. Answers would be provided to members once investigated further.

Officers confirmed that there had been no issues regarding the availability of contacting tax specialists within the Council although further queries would be made to ensure that this was the case. The Revenues and Benefits contact centre had experienced difficulties with call volume due to energy rebate calls. Call waiting times had significantly reduced since due to the drop in demand for energy rebates. Despite  ...  view the full minutes text for item 32/23

To receive and comment on the progress on recommendations referred since the Board’s last meeting.

Members requested that all actions be included in the tracking and monitoring document at its next meeting.