Agenda item

Cllr Ron Woodley introduced the report, highlighting the progress of the LGA’s productivity work in three areas:

Cyber Security

The National Cyber Security programme, which is funded by Cabinet Office continues to progress. Members were referred to the presentation by RAND at the last meeting. Since then all councils rated as Red/Amber Red have been contacted directly. The chief executive and the leader's office were contacted to alert them to their assessment and to offer support. These councils have been proactively targeted to provide additional support/funding. As a result, 107 councils have now been offered support and funding in Phase 1 of just under £1m in total.

Procurement

Members were informed that an initial benchmarking exercise with councils was undertaken during the autumn, which has identified areas where councils wish to further improve. These included

·         contract management,

·         strategic supplier relationship management

·         measuring social value.

The productivity team will include activities to cover these priority areas in the forward plan for next year. Dame Judith Hackett will provide the keynote speech at the sixth national construction conference to be held here on 7 February.

Commercialisation

Members were advised that there is an extra commercial skills masterclass for elected members due to be held in Manchester on 19 March. Cllr Woodley also updated on the “Profit with a Purpose” conference held earlier this month, chaired by Cllr Joy Allen.

Efficient and Intelligent councils

Susan Attard, Head of Productivity, then updated members on progress with the Efficient and Intelligent councils project. Members were made aware that the first meeting of the Editorial/Advisory Board was taking place in the afternoon and feedback from them about the content of the self-assessment tool was requested at that meeting.

Further consultation and testing of the tool will take place during February and March, with a soft launch in April. Members were also made aware of the keen interest in this project from MHCLG.

Discussion

The Chairman, took the opportunity to go through the report area by area, inviting comments from the board.

·         Cyber security – the importance of ensuring that Leaders as well as CEXs were informed about the results of the cyber survey and the report for their council;

·         Commercialisation – members were encouraged to access the presentations from the “Profit with a Purpose” Conference.

·         Shared Services – Cllr Fleming advised that he has picked up some tensions/pressures from councils that their shared services arrangements were changing or no longer working. This was echoed by other members who picked up examples of arrangements needing/having changed.

Members agreed it would be helpful to look at the history of shared services over the last few years to examine what has worked well, where there have been problems, particularly where there are differing standards for services as a result of differing policies in councils. They were also interested in the risks of shared services and where tripartite arrangements have changed to dual arrangements. Members were interested in the changing landscape in this area and felt that it would be helpful to undertake some qualitative analysis to find out what has changed.

·         Behavioural Insights – it would be helpful to establish an easy repository of the Behavioural Insights learning and tools so that councils can share and use the outputs more easily. For example, where the wording for standard letters has been changed – making it available easily so councils can cut and paste.

·         Brexit – Cllr Allen advised members that her council had engaged in a recent Civil Contingency exercise. She noted that the government assumptions had not been shared with all regions and that London had not been included. Dennis Skinner advised that a check list for Leaders was due to be sent to all council Leaders from the Secretary of State.

·         Modern Slavery – Members were supportive and wanted to encourage more councils to publish transparency statements, whilst acknowledging that this is a voluntary requirement. It was suggested that this could be picked up through the Group offices.

·         OPE – Members praised the OPE programme as a great achievement and were keen to draw attention to the success of this programme more widely. Members recorded a vote of thanks to Brian Roberts, the current director of OPE who was retiring.

·         New ideas – officers were asked to consider whether to include the following issues in future programmes: overspend and severe budget pressures in top tier councils caused by education and school provision and how councils work with the Voluntary and Community sector, as councils budgets are reduced, the voluntary sector will be asked to do more and collaborative work becomes more important.

Action

Officers to follow up on the concerns and suggestions raised by the Board.