 Fy roi'r fawr yn Llyfrgell Ymddangol Llyfrgell. Sut yw hefyd yn Llyfrgell Fy roi'r fawr? Mae gwirionedd Llyfrgell yn Llyfrgell Ymdangol yn gyllideb. Mae can Scott Stone yn Llyfrgell yn Llyfrgell Fy yw Yuam. Mae'n rydyn ni i ddod gair, ni'n ddull yn rydyn ni yn gweithio. Felly mae'r cwrs yn y cwm. mae'r fawr yn fawr bywyd. Fawr bywyd ar gyfer y bydd y Prifysgol yw gweithio i gweithio a gwneud yn ddau ddau cael gael fi ddau. Mae'r fawr bywyd o gweithio ar gyfer y bydd y prifysgol yn bwysig i ddau i gael i gael i'r fawr. Mae'r fawr, ond mae'r prifysgol yn dweud yn dweud. Rydw i'n cael ei ddweud y byddai sydd yn mynd i'r dden nhw'n ystod o fynd i ymddangos i'r cammerau ac yn y byddai yn gweithio, y byddai yn mynd i'r ddiwedd. Rydych chi'n rhai dda i'r rhwng, byddai'n fwy o'r mynd i'r rhwng yn eu ddweud eich ddweud. Rydw i'n rhoi o'r eu ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud o ffynol yn 16ii. ni'n mynd i ddiweddaw'r newid yn y ddau cymdeithas hynny, yna ychydig o ddweud hynny ei hwn ar y ryml sy'n spoilfa ar weithio'r syniadol. R Cyfeinfa ar hyn o! Brannog town Cymraeg yn gwneud y Cabinet ar y siarad, rwy'n credu cyfnod ar Ystod. Rwy'n credu i gyddiadau. Felly, kraddwch, rydym yn bwysig iawn. Ian. Roeddwn i'n amser y gallwn諸odol. Roeddwn i'n amser yn bwysig i'r argyflwyd. Roeddwn i'n amser yn bwysig i'r argyflwyd. Roeddwn i'n amser yn ei wneud cerddurol. Yn ymwysig i'r ysgrffwyd a'r ysgrffwyd i'r ysgrffwyd, roeddwn i'n meddwl o gefnog. OK, so we'll move on to minutes of the previous meeting pages 3 to 8. Has anybody got any alterations, comments or things they want to ask on the written meetings within your gender pack from the last meeting? Councilor Judith Griffith. Just to say that I've stay as a person. Thank you for that. Anybody else, any questions or comments. ni arweinydd. Rydw i'r blwyddyn yn gyfael gondol, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gondol, ac mae'n gweithio gweithio'r gondol yn gweithio'r gweithio'r gondol. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'r gondol, ydw i'r gynllun cymryd, ac mae'n gweithio'r plan cymryd, ychwanegwch yn yma 9-20 o'r gwaith, a rydw i'r wych i'n gwybod, ond byw sy'n gwybod i'r gwaith, oherwydd y gallu'n gwybod i'r gwaith yn ymwneud. Yr Ardfeddor, Alex Stobart? Yr Ardfeddor, dweud yn cwer o'r plan yma. Yr ystod y gallwn gwahod o'r pwysig i ddweud o'r gwaith. I've got quite a lot that I can say, but I just wanted to start off with perhaps a general comment and a general question. The general comment is that peer review is an excellent process and it's used not just in local government but elsewhere. It's a very good way of getting an external perspective and if the views are given firmly and fairly, which I believe they have done here, then it can be a very positive kind of step to take. But I think one of the things in this kind of critical friend environment is a willingness sometimes to push back and to, in a sense, partly justify your position or explain why a particular comment needs something added to it. In other words, there's a constructive dialogue. Now, here comes the question. The report is quite comprehensive and kind of speaks to that kind of an issue, but it's not brought up explicitly. But perhaps members of cabinet and officers like to comment on what was that kind of dialogue that took place that resulted in the recommendations? Was there any pushing back? What was the atmosphere? And the resulting recommendations are the result of a kind of constructive engagement as opposed to simply being told. So, there's my question. Thank you very much, Councillor Sobar. I'll come to you, Councillor Bridget Smith. Thank you. So, that's a really interesting question. And so, absolutely, I agree that this critical friend approach is good. I fear that it stays unnumbered because we have the government very much wanting to go for a far more off-steady type approach. And the LGA has already been instructed to enhance its peer reviews. One of the criticisms of the LGA approach by government very recently has been that we have been able to do some negotiation over the final report. And that's always been accepted. It was built into the whole mechanism of it that you could do that pushback if you felt that it was unfair or people hadn't understood stuff. Or they were introducing some sort of risk within the report. So, we were very mindful that we were in this period of transition from the old style into this far more top-down inspector type model that the government supports and that the local government association gets 18 million of its core funding for this work directly from government. So, they're fairly hamstrung, really, agreeing to what the government want on this. So, I think, and I might ask the chief executive to corroborate what I'm saying, I think we were mindful that we had to be cautious in our pushback. And there are one or two comments in the report which I fear came from a single interviewee which weren't fully corroborated. They hadn't been taking them back and done that sort of more 360 degree corroboration. And that was my fear there. But as I say, we are moving into a new world. And I think it's a great shame because I think the value of them are when people can welcome having corporate peer review. And they feel that they have some control over the final report which means that they can wholeheartedly embrace them and support them. If it becomes something far more like Ofsted, then actually I think people will start getting a bit twitchy about it. I don't know if the chief executive would like to say whether her experience reflects my own. And this what? Thank you. And yes, chair, I think Councillor Smith is absolutely right. The only thing that I would add is, I think I'd sort of describe two stages of the peer review. So, there was when the peers were on site. And at the end of every day they were there for three and a half days. And at the end of every day we had a feedback meeting. And that was the point where we were able to say, OK, you may want to go and talk to that person or that team if we felt that they had kind of come to a conclusion too early, for example. So we did certainly give some feedback during the period when they were on site. When we got the report we didn't provide any feedback at all other than I think there was one kind of word change because they called some organisation by the wrong name. So apart from that we didn't comment at all on what in some cases we thought was in a minority cases we thought they hadn't necessarily drawn the right conclusion. As Councillor Smith said, in occasion they'd used that they hadn't triangulated in that. Thank you for that. And Councillor Stobart. No, through you chair, thank you. That's very good clarification of the process. I think those daily reviews from my experience elsewhere are very useful because they do help or give the opportunity for clarification. So thank you for those replies. Lovely. OK. I'll come to Councillor Bradlin next. Thank you chair. Excuse me. I note that the action plan that we have which starts on page 13 of our agenda pack follows broadly the order of the recommendations that came up in the final report. But I just wondered whether officers or indeed senior leadership team had actually considered whether there was a priority order in which any of these actions needed to be done. Obviously they've got dates on them and that may reflect a decision making that some elements needed to be attacked quickly but or dealt with or approached promptly. But I just wondered is that a result of a sort of prioritisation exercise or are they all being dealt with with equal importance but these dates just happen to be how they've worked out. Councillor Bridget Smith. So could I ask Jeff memory to answer that question because he's the one who put all the prioritisation and dates together. I'd be winging it. Jeff memory. Yes, through you chair. Indeed, when we as a leadership team met to consider the recommendations actually we grouped them rather differently than this. And we grouped ones that seemed to have fit together well and we went through and talked about which ones were important to do quickly and which ones could take a little bit longer. Some of the more straightforward ones such as for example having the media review from the LGA I think we've pushed that further down the line. See as we are tackling these in an order that we feel will get the best results most quickly. Thank you. So I just clarify that but for simplicity when it comes to doing the report so that people can match up the recommendations we've done it in the order that the recommendations were listed. You've restored the order of the original report haven't you. Thank you very much. And I'm encouraged to hear that that you had the same instinctive reaction to the wealth of them that I did that you know some might be easier to deal with than others and some needed to be tackled early. But thank you. Thank you for that counselor Bradlin. We'll come to James Hobro. Thank you chair. So I have some general comments and a couple of tidying up suggestions and a question about one part of the report if that's OK. So my general comments are that having seen the peer review report and these recommendations it seems to me this was a very valuable exercise. It seems to have been very thorough. I'm really pleased that we have a counselor put in such a thorough response. And it looks to me as if this is a good way of focusing on continuous improvement. So fantastically useful exercise overall. So the couple of panickety things. So on page 15 row two column two the word veil I think should be value perhaps. I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to be. That's probably supposed to be value. And the other panickety comment I had was that there are several acronyms in there VCS TOM even KPR. We all know what some of these are but I think they probably ought to be defined the first time they used. So my question was really about one of the recommendations. So I think most of these recommendations are really good specific lists of clear action items where something is going to change. One of them I felt wasn't quite as clear as the others. So this is recommendation two. And so this is page 13 in the middle of the page. And the recommendation is about relationships with local key partners. And really what the action plan says is to continue planning workshops and to continue to build effective relationships with other partners. And what wasn't clear to me reading this is what exactly what was asked for that's different from what we're doing already. And what action we have here that's different from what we're doing already. And I wondered if perhaps I could ask for a bit of detail on that. Thank you. Thank you very much Councillor Hobro. Councillor Bridget Smith. So it's interesting you picked that up because when we read that part of the report we didn't know what they wanted either. And we went back to them and asked them and they haven't responded. Have we had some? Initially they didn't respond because we asked for clarification. Yes please. Yes please. So I threw you to that. I asked for more detail from the peer review team and unfortunately they had destroyed their notes. So they were unable to recall what was in the notes and therefore they couldn't give us more detail. So notwithstanding that the conversations that we'd had during the week led us to conclude that these were the actions that would be appropriate in the action plan. Yeah. So it was very woolly quite honestly and I think perhaps it was an acknowledgement that we are functioning in a very complex partnership environment more so than anywhere else in the country arguably. We knew that there had been some frustration when they interviewed parish councils about level of our engagement which actually we do try very hard. But the fact that people are still not satisfied indicated that we could do more there. So that seemed an obvious one. You'll be aware that relationships within the combined authority are tricky but they've just had their best value notice reaffirmed. So we're working hard within that. So I think what we're doing here is acknowledging the importance of our partnerships, the strength of our partnerships and the fact that one needs to keep on nurturing them if they are to continue to deliver for the residents of South Cambridgeshire. Thank you for that, Councillor Bridget Smith. Councillor Hobr, I'll just come in briefly there. I think some of the councillors had sort of looked at that recommendation and thought that given it talks about a reset, it seems quite a strong use of language. And then in the actions it talks about sort of continuing to build effective. There seemed a bit of a disconnect between the two without sort of detailing it is, I think, what some people have felt. So going back to Councillor Stobart's point about pushback, we do not recognise the need for a reset of our key strategic partnerships. Absolutely, we need to keep on working on them. But I think it was a strange use of a word. If scrutiny and overview have a different view and can see a need for any of our partnerships needing a reset, then we will be very pleased to hear that. Thank you for that, Councillor Smith. Councillor Hobro, do you want to come back on that at all? Yes, thank you, Chair. So that seems a very reasonable explanation. Thank you for all the detail. I also find it hard to understand what this reset is about. And I think simply keeping these areas as a focus for continuous improvement seems to be the reasonable response in this situation. My comment on parish councils is that the fact that there are officers in this council who are so ready to be available to talk to parish councils is really crucial. I found this really crucial in maintaining the relationship between parish councils and this council. I certainly hope that it will continue. I've got no reason to believe that it won't. But there are specific areas like that that I think are really valuable in terms of defining and improving the relationship between parish councils and district councils. So I was curious as to what might go in there. But ultimately it's about keeping talking to one another and covering the issues that really matter to the stakeholders. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hobro. I'll come to Councillor Paul Bear Park. Thank you, Chair. I did have a similar point, actually, to Councillor Hobro, about recommendation 2. I suppose just to add to that, obviously we work in this so-called rich governance environment in our area. It's not just within the gift of South Cams District Council to make that work effectively. It's for all the partners. So it's not just an action. It can't just be an action for South Cams, I guess. But in general, I think just in terms of the actions in Table 1, I think a good test for those actions would be to kind of determine how actionable they are. I looked at recommendation 2 specifically and thought, actually, I can't see how those actions are particularly actionable. So maybe they need to be revisited and kind of broken down into something that's a bit more manageable. The other point about that recommendation 2 was the responsible officers are the leadership team and the cabinet. That's quite a broad set of people that are responsible for that one. So maybe it needs to be an individual or a couple of individuals as well who are ultimately responsible. And just a general point about the actions, I think it would be helpful to know to what extent is the action going to be business as usual versus a modification to business as usual versus a completely new activity. So I think partly that would help with understanding how much effort each of these is because we don't really understand from the actions how much work this will entail. So breaking it down into those three categories might help with that. So just to come back there, Councillor Paul Bearpuck, the recommendation there in the first part and then sort of how we break that down, colour code it, separate the lists in terms of the two separate actions. You know, what are we already doing and where do we need to focus more on essentially? Does that? Yeah, that's exactly right. Just understanding a bit more how it's kind of expanding on what we do already versus something completely new activity. I think you can infer it, but it's not, but it would be nice to have it clarified. Yeah, and the recommendation originally was around making it measurable essentially in part two bullet point two. You're saying that this would be hard to measure? Am I right? It would be good to make the actions measurable in some way, yes. Okay. Making it possible to have a target, a measurable target related to the action I think would be helpful. Okay, yeah. Councillor Bridget Smith. Thank you. So if I may defer to Geoff Member and also to Councillor Mills briefly, thank you. Councillor Mills, sorry. Yeah, just a couple of things I'd like to add to that. James Albro mentioned the relationship with parishes and I think it is really important that we accentuate actually what we do. So both our chief executive and leader are frequent visitors across the district to our parish councils and we make great effort to include them in quarterly meetings I think we do here, which may have been missed by the peer review body. And that was certainly part of my reservation in this regard as the member sitting on the GCP with Bridget is substituting now. I mean the number of meetings and workshops, briefings, the whole lot was I don't think was visible to the review team. I don't think they saw that in action and in the same way Bridget and other of our members on the CPCA wasn't really taken into full account I feel. And then there's a whole raft of other less obvious partners. So the sub regional transport body, England's Economic Heartland and the East of England transport network and the East West Rail partnership. I mean this week alone I've spent at least five hours in meetings with other people in partnerships and I don't think that was visible. So it is clearly important that we develop those and do as much as we can but there was I think a missing element in the review in that respect. Thank you, councillor Mills. I'll come back to councillor Paul Bear Park. Did you want to follow up on that at all? councillor Mills was actually answering councillor Hobro's question. Well if Jeff Menbray could come in to respond more specifically to you about how we can, if it's possible to make this measurable. Jeff Menbray. I'm sure we can find a way to make recommendations a little bit more measurable for example to talk about the number of meetings. On your other point actually the vast majority of these recommendations are actually about doing things differently rather than doing extra things. Most of these are saying well actually if you shift your focus so you use the same resource you've got at the moment but shift your focus we think you'll get some better results. And some of the others were where we were having conversations with the team talking about things that we were planning to do and they've gone yeah that's a really good idea crack on and do them then. So there's one or two minor things like we weren't planning in this year to undertake the LGA three day communication review. So that'll be a little bit extra and depending upon what comes out of that there might be some additional work for the comms team. But the vast majority of this is about doing things differently or going on to do the things that we were planning to do anyway. I hope that's helpful. Thank you. Councillor Paul Bearpart is that okay to answer? Thank you very much for that. We've noted the recommendation as well at the beginning. So if we come on to Councillor Aidan Bunderweyre. Yes, thank you very much. I'm afraid I'm going to say something about recommendation too as well. It is undeniable that some of our key three relationships are poor. It is also undeniable that some of our parish councils are critical of us in different respects. And I think it's understandable that anyone coming in to look at this and look at us with fresh eyes because of the environment we're working in would deserve this as a serious problem and would ask how it could be improved. I agree. We do lots of really good things. We're aware of these issues and we take them seriously. We try to address them. What I take this recommendation as doing is challenging us to think about things differently. Think about whether we can do anything more in different ways. I'm not quite sure that the response here does that or what's been said so far does that. I certainly feel that we can do a bit more thinking about this point about how we can do things differently and better try something else. If someone outside is coming in and saying this is a serious problem, using serious words as Councillor Cohn said, I think we have to take it seriously and think a bit more. We're not going to immediately think here how we can do this now, but it's an ongoing thing rather than something that we can just say that they've missed some of the things that we're doing or that we are doing well. Thank you, Councillor Bando. Councillor Bridget Smith. Thank you. There are undoubtedly some parish councils who would like us to do more or do things differently. One of the reasons for the liaison forum meetings is for us to glean directly from them what it is they want us to do. We always accommodate them. Some of the engagement between the parish councils and us is poor and that's not our fault. There are also horses to water. It's been obvious recently when there's been complaints about planning training that there are some parish councils that are not taking up our offer of planning training even though we make the offer time and time again. I think we are doing our utmost to make sure that parish councillors, parish clerks know exactly what's on offer and we make it as easy as possible for them to engage with. In relation to Councillor Van der Weyer's comment about some of our partnerships being poor, I don't recognise that actually. I think our strategic partnerships, I think the relationships that our strategic partnerships are good. I've been in a meeting today of the pan regional partnership. We are the lead political partner in that. We are viewed very, very positively. I think within the greater Cambridge partnership, I think that's a very functional partnership which I think is working well. The combined authority, the problem isn't South Cambridge's relationship with the combined authority. The problem, as has been highlighted in the latest best value notice, is about the relationships within the board of it. So that's not South Cambridge's problem, that's a problem within the combined authority itself. To all the other partnerships which our councillor Millens mentioned, East West Rail, Water Resources East, we are accepted as being a good partner. We are valued and people want us on their partnerships. We get more invitations to be part of partnerships than actually we have capacity to accommodate. So, as I say, I think perhaps what we need to do is somehow corroborate what I'm saying and somehow capture feedback from our strategic partners about their views of us. I think we can probably take that away because if I'm saying our relationship is really good with the pan regional partnership, it's only fair that I'd say to them, can you do agree and how could we be a better partner? Perhaps there's something along those lines that we could build in so there is actually some evidence rather than me anecdotally just telling you that everything in the garden is rosy. Which comes back to what we were saying before with councillor Paul Bear Park about measuring things, I suppose. councillor Aidan Benderwyr. No, that's right. As you're quite right, this is completely immeasurable. Thank you. councillor Stephen Drew. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you councillor Cohn. Just going back maybe to the start and a few comments have been made since. Is it the position of the council, both the leadership side in terms of the administration and the officers, that the peer review that was carried out here was somehow fundamentally flawed? Because the criticisms that are being made seem to suggest that the people who came in and did it have missed incredibly obvious things that they should have been able to see. And there seems to be a sense that it is an unreasonable report or is an unfair report and that they have missed the work that has been done in relation to parish councils. That they have missed the good work that is done in relation to strategic partners. That they have not understood a number of things. So, I suppose my question before we go on and look other bits is, is it the view of the council that the peer review carried out at South County Judiciary Council is somehow fundamentally flawed? And that we should launch a formal challenge against it? Councillor Bridget Smith. Thank you. So, if I could start and if then if I could pass on to councillor Mills. So, the issue, so I mean, I think this is, you know, the sort of fundamental flaw in corporate peer reviews is that they happen over a very short period of time. So, I think ours was kind of three and a half days, three and a half days, three and a half days. So, you know, how do you get to understand everything within three and a half days? Now, we circulated at the outset what the brief was. So, there's a standardised brief for corporate peer reviews that they have to look at. They have to look at governance. They have to look at finance. They have to look at them cultural stuff. I can't remember what the other ones are. But, you know, there's a set brief for what they're looking at. The panel was very aware of, you know, the issue over the four day week and they said that they would not be looking at it. In fact, they did comment on it because I think they found it was slightly, it was rather unavoidable. But they definitely weren't here to give a, in any way, do a review of our four day week trial. So, I think, you know, you could argue that these things are always flawed, but they are independent and we had chosen, you know, we chose the Liberal Democrat leader. The Conservative group chose the Conservative leader. The LGA, I think, I don't know whether we had any choice over the officers or whether the LGA just assigned them. So, you know, it's independent. It's not, you know, do people come with preconceptions? I don't think you can say that. I think we just have to, we have to accept that this is the model. It's the same model for everybody. It's the same remit for everybody. And I think, you know, it would be unrealistic to think you'd love everything, you know, you'd love everything that they said. And, you know, they're not coming looking for trouble and looking for mistakes. But it's perfectly obvious from the latest local government minister that what government are after are red flags that could indicate serious failures in councils. Those certainly didn't find that with us. So, you know, yes, you know, if it had all just said we're just all totally fabulous, that would have been marvellous. But that's not, nobody would have believed it actually. I would have thought we'd bribed them. If I may hand on to Councillor Mills and I don't know if the chief executive would like to comment as well. Councillor Mills. Yeah, just to answer that. My comment over my own involvement with GCP is clearly an important component of our partnership working. And they only had three and a half days and I wasn't interviewed by them, asked by them, given any evidence to them. So it's not unreasonable that we feel that they have missed important parts of some of that partnership working. If they don't see our visits to the parish council, which they can't, that's not realistic to expect them to do to see how we engage. But, you know, Bridget and Liz both attend our parish councils on a frequent basis. And, you know, that's for me would be evidence that they may have missed. Because if they knew that and saw the frequency of that, they might be more inclined to think that we'd make a lot of effort. Liz Watts, did you want to come in? Thank you, chair. I mean, I think as officers we found the whole process very, very useful. And, you know, the role of the peer review team is to hold a mirror up to the organisation. It's not to say necessarily, you know, what you should or shouldn't be doing. It's to ask you to reflect on what you're doing and is it working, is it serving your community's best. But by in large we found all the recommendations really, really useful in that respect. I think the only one, and it's interesting that members have kind of identified it, that we were a bit unclear about was recommendation two for the reasons that, you know, have already been articulated in this meeting. But broadly, we found it an incredibly useful process and report. And, you know, we're keen to get on and implement the action plan. OK, so just to kind of finish on that one, I suppose, I suppose my kind of first principle in relation to it is, is that it's important to hear from both councillor Smith and councillor Milne's and now from the Chief Executive, that there is a clear sense of confidence in the peer review report and confidence in the process, despite some concerns, because I think that obviously residents are entitled to expect that when their councill is reviewed, that their council absolutely takes on board what is said seriously and is absolutely willing to respond to it in a really positive way. So I just wanted to kind of check on that first. I have a couple of other things that I want to go on to. Since we're still fairly early on in the recommendations, I just briefly want to comment, I suppose, on recommendation 2. I may be missing something here, but to me, recommendation 2 is absolutely crystal clear and I don't see any ambiguity in it whatsoever. Reset and define relationships at a local regional level of keen partners to support the delivery of business plan priorities. To me, in any organisation I was part of leading, if I am told to reset my relationships, it is telling me that I need to start from scratch. I need to go to each of those strategic partners and I need to talk to them and say to them, how is it going? How is our relationship going? Do you like what we are doing? Do we communicate well with you? Do you understand our vision? This is what we understand about your vision and to start from an attitude of, I'm not going to defend what I'm currently doing. I'm not going to criticise what I'm currently doing. I am literally going to reset my relationship and I must confess that to me, that seems incredibly simple and that is what I will take away from that. I have had recommendations like this in my professional capacity in terms of leading schools and other organisations where I have been told as a leader you need to reset your relationships and to me it seems really simple. That is my comment. If anyone wishes to come back, that is fine otherwise I will just move on to my final question at this stage. Councillor Bridget. I think that when I responded to the last one I think that is the direction of travel I was going on. I am telling you that it is all good but actually we need to get the feedback. I am very happy to take that as a recommendation and I am sure we can do it. We can do some work just to get that corroboration but also ask people is there anything that we should be doing differently, anything we should be doing better. It is a bit of a performance review on ourselves, isn't it? I think that would be a central recommendation coming from school to you. I hope for response would be that people come back going, we are 99% of what you do and at that point we have attempted to reset but it wasn't necessary. I think that is a helpful suggestion from school. If I can just jump into recommendation 3. I think recommendation 3A based on information from other conversations would it be fair to say that recommendation 3A is going to be exceptionally difficult based on decisions that are being made in relation to audits and accounts which are beyond our control? Would that be a fair comment, Councillor Smith? Yes, absolutely. Do you want any detail? I think Liz Watts has shared this rather frustrating information with you which means that accounts will not be properly closed and we will be starting a new financial year with something that is less than perfect. Liz Watts? This is a point of accuracy. We will close the accounts that the issue is about the audit and in terms of this action plan we have and already are accelerating the closure of the outstanding accounts so there is no problem with that as a recommendation. Just got a point of information from Councillor Henry. Thank you, Chair. I thought it might be helpful. I actually brought the audit committee minutes from yesterday just to clarify this in relation to point 3A. The recommendation was probably written before this guidance was issued by national government to an extent it's a bit redundant now because the political situation has moved beyond this but I just read these three points out because I think they're helpful to clarify why. The draft statement of accounts for the year 2021-22 were approved in January 2024 and the draft accounts for 2022-23 are currently in progress. It is expected that these will be ready by 31 March 2024. Once completed the accounts will need to be approved by the audit committee an additional meeting in May 2024. Ernst and Young, who are our current auditors will be carrying out their value for money work on both the 2021-22 accounts and the 2022-23 accounts and they will report on that in due course. They've also said that they will not be carrying out a full audit so that's the other part of the audit which takes place and they're intending to issue a disclaimer in whatever the agreed wording format is which will be something which is issued from national government it will be probably a standard phrase for both the 2021 and 2022-23 accounts. So just to be clear I think perhaps the situation has moved on beyond point 3A. Yes, so I think perhaps in terms of addressing this in this action plan it might be very helpful to actually state that and to separate that point 3A from BC, the points B and C perhaps the only validity of point A is to recognise that the accounts team has done a great deal of work recently to improve the efficiency and the quality of work that they're producing and that that would be helpful to continue going forward so that we continue to meet accounting deadlines but that's a slightly different thing to what's recommended there. Thank you for that point of information Councillor Lehman and the recommendation that's come from that. Councillor, thank you. My final one then moves on to 3B. I hope it can be expanded upon and explained. I don't see how the actions in number 3 deal with 3B. So I apologise if that's my failing to read and understand as we've just established in relation to 3A when I made slightly the wrong wording. I can't see how the recommended actions in 3 meet the requirements of recommendation 3B. So perhaps that could be clarified. Thank you, Mayor. I defer to Geoff memory for the detail. Geoff memory. Yes, thank you through you chair. I think I must be aware that we've got a budget gap coming up in the medium-term financial strategy. Our strategy for addressing that is through the transformation programme and introduction of a target operating model that means that we use the most cost effective way of working pretty much across the board for the council. So where people can access things through a shelter option we make that an attractive option that people can use and deliver that at a reduced cost. What was recommended by the peer review is that there was closer co-operation between the transformation team and the finance team to ensure that we can bring to members details of when transformation savings are going to be delivered. Keep a close eye on ensuring that we're delivering those savings against the plan that we've put together and to ensure that we're using the resource that's available for transformation and the peer review that actually complemented the council on investing in transformation to ensure that the focus over the next couple of years is a more speedy delivery of those savings. The earlier you deliver the savings the more impact they have over the medium term. The strategy we already had probably wasn't written down as an efficiency strategy but it does require the two services to work hand in glove to ensure that those things are delivered. Not only our two services but also to talk with other services across the council to ensure that people are engaging with that transformation programme and understand the importance of delivering the efficiency savings early because by delivering them early we have to make the impact will be less on those individual services. Hopefully that gives you some clarification. Thank you very much. Can Council Bridget Smith? Simplistically for me this is about the how rather than the what, isn't it? The focus was on how... Every council has to make efficiency savings for our gaffers dance like this than many people but it has not to say... just because it's a lower target saving it doesn't mean that we can't be achieving it better and this is about bringing different service areas together and if I look back to 2018 this was a very siloed organisation you wouldn't recognise it now but I think they've identified that there could be closer collaboration which as Geoff says will hopefully identify those savings earlier on which means that we're not struggling before the end of the financial year to realise them so I think if you realise this is about the how not the what. Thank you. Lovely. Councillor Ellington. I was going to... I'm a very practical person and I found recommendation 2 and I'm sorry to go back to it but when I asked to speak we were talking about recommendation 2 and it's airy-fairy. Fine. So my practical example is one of my residents who went off on one as one might say about the four day week and the fact that he actually works for a refuse and recycling company and his company is suffering seriously from lack of drivers because they are moving to a more affable environment of a four day week and clearly he was a very unhappy fella and my feeling is that some of this is around and how is that four day week affecting other districts that we work with and our partners and are they having equal sort of problems as the commercial world is and that was where I would have focused on recommendation 2 rather than parish councils. Thank you, Councillor Enton. Councillor Bridget Smith. So as I mentioned at the beginning the tea, the Cook Prepared Challenge team specifically said they were not looking at the four day week because the core stuff they needed to look at would have got lost in it so I don't think that's a piece of work for this at all. I don't think that as part of our four day week work we need to be mindful of but not within this. Is that okay, Councillor Enton? Okay, we'll move on to Councillor Helen Leaming. Thank you, Chair. So I'd like to ask about recommendations 6, please. So the recommendation was to develop a community strategy and our response was to work with our partners to develop a community statement by September 2024. Now I wanted to understand whether the community statement was a kind of forerunner to a community strategy or whether that was our answer to the recommendation to have a community strategy because I think that the idea of a community strategy could be potentially quite a big piece of work. It could be a very valuable thing that could direct our work in a broad sense and if we're only creating a statement by September I think we may be, well it depends on whether this community statement is a sort of prelude to a strategy or if it's our answer to the strategy. Councillor Bridget Smith. Okay, I'm going to make a stab at this and then if anybody else wants to come in. So you know we, I think we've been making huge progress over the last two or three years particularly in how we work with new communities, Camborn, North Stowe, Water Beach in particular. I think there's been a lot of lessons learned. So I think we are on a pathway to developing a strategy which we're developing through experience. What went wrong, what went right. We now have these community forums which we know are very well received. It's made a mammoth difference at North Stowe. So I personally think that's the right way to do this. You know we could put somebody in a dark room and say write a strategy and then write an overarching statement but actually it wouldn't be embedded in experience and I think these sorts of things that's really important that we're working it up with our communities particularly our new communities. Villages like mine have been around since Pre-Doomsday and a large degree look after themselves because they've got all that history. It's very different for the new communities. They need help and they need support. Camborn is an example of a community that has got its act together very quickly and we saw that last night with all the lovely dancers from Camborn who came and entertained us. So I think the strategy and I'm probably going to come to Jeff. It's an ongoing piece of work which will culminate in a statement once we're really sure that we've got the model as good as we can but I'm sure this is going to be a dynamic piece of work. Tell me if I'm wrong, please. Yes, three. No, you're not wrong leader. It's a case that the nature of the way communities have been evolving here. We actually already have a large number of smaller strategies, protocols and policies that relate to the community environment. So what we thought would be most helpful at this stage is not to go back and pick those and redo them into one great big strategy but put an overarching statement across the top of it. So what I think our communities are looking for most is clarity of exactly what they can expect from us the support that they can get from us and where we're going forward. The idea is this will provide that overarching view. Now certainly in the future once we've got a little bit more of a stable environment I think with our communities we could certainly look to bring those all together into one single community strategy but that would as you rightly suggest Councillor be a significant piece of work that would take a long time and a lot of investment is at the moment what we're trying to do is use our resource into delivery rather than strategy writing. I hope that's helpful. Councillor Lee, sorry. Thank you both. So perhaps I'm right in picking what you said then to say that the community statement is a first step but I'm very mindful of the wider context in which we are operating particularly things like Cambridge 2050 on the horizon and I think if we were to have something like a full community strategy which didn't unpick the smaller strategies but pulled them together into a cohesive vision for our community I think that would be extremely helpful to underpin our discussions with national government if we had a clear vision of our community strategy here in South Cambridge because I think although there are differences in our communities we also have a great deal in common. Councillor Bridget Smith. Okay, yes, thank you. So I don't think this is a first step I think we've taken a lot of steps and now we feel that we're getting to the point where we can make this statement. The statement is a promise, isn't it? It's a statement of what our communities can expect from us what they can hold us to account for and they can come and say you said in the statement that you do this and you haven't done it. So I think that gives the clarification about what our communities can expect from us. On the issue of a one-size-fits-all strategy I have a reservation about that and I don't think I can give you an answer now because I think we need to take it away and we need to give it some really careful thought because I'm very mindful about the individuality of communities and I'm very mindful of, even with the new communities the influence that the existing communities in such as Rampton or around such as Fullborn Water Beach and so on have on them and I think there's a real risk of having a strategy that provides little boxes on the hillside something that doesn't allow for that individuality and where people are getting upset about the Cambridge 2050 idea is that there will be something bland on one-size-fits-all. So I think we owe it to our communities to have things that are far more nuanced that work with the communities and take them with us and I think that's become really apparent with Norstow and I think it's very, very apparent with Water Beach that these are communities in their own right and that's just foisting a top-down strategy on them won't actually serve them well but I think we need to take that away and give it quite a lot more thought. Councillor Lehman. Thank you. I don't want us to foist a top-down strategy onto us. I think this would be an excellent way for us to engage with our partners to go back to question two. I think it would have to be a consultative and ground upwards approach rather than us pointing down saying this is our strategy for you. But I think what this is asking for, this community strategy is something bigger than anything we could create before September 24. I just think September 24 would be an amalgamation of what we are currently doing and something, a statement whereas I think a community strategy is a much, much bigger thing for us and it's an existential question for what makes South Cambridge different. So I think a lot of people had had concerns about the time scales in the report so if you would like to address that Councillor. So I think that's why the recommendation is it's for a community statement because we can do that within the time frame and we're confident we can do that within the time frame but as you quite rightly point out, strategy when we think how long local plans take, local plans are community strategies in a way, aren't they? They're strategies for how people, what places are going to be like so it could be that grows out of the local plans. So I'm kind of winging that I'm afraid but I am aware that what we're doing is setting ourselves deliverable targets because the panel will come back in six months time so I've recently been back to a council not far away to assess them on their delivery and they did really well, which was great. In fact they'd exceeded expectations so there's no point in us setting ourselves up to fail with things that we can't do but I think the member involvement in this community statement and particularly scrutiny overview I think is going to be really valuable. Thank you. So I have a second question which is to do with a comment on page 18. It's one of these final points in italics underneath. Agreed that the scrutiny officer would work with the chair and vice chair to develop our work programme to include a longer term look at specific height profile corporate risks. So I think when I read the peer review it wanted us to, it wanted scrutiny to have a more risk focused approach to our work items and at the moment the risk register which is only one part of our understanding of risk but a key one that goes to auditing and governance and I just wondered whether it was something that as a group we could consider about whether our work programme could draw from the risk register or other analysis of risk in the council to set items for the agenda which were based on risk as well. So I think, I'll just touch on that as well. We do use the risk register when deciding things that may come to scrutiny. I think probably what Councillor Lehman is referring to is that should this report have that reflected in the wording of that sentence essentially it is what we are doing I think is whether it should explicitly be in that sentence on page 18. Am I right with that Councillor Lehman? Yes, to an extent I think when I read the peer review it kept coming back to this idea of the scrutiny well there were some very good points about the scrutiny committee but it also focused on a risk based approach to our agenda and perhaps again this is something that wasn't transparent in the time that they spent with us but it could be something that we include in our discussions. Perhaps when we look at the work programme some discussion of the risk could be put on next to the items that we choose from as potential topics for the agenda. Councillor Bridget Smith. I think that's up to scrutiny. It's up to you if that's what you want and that's what you get. From my point of view I'd be happy to refer to the risk register in there so it's explicit that we are Councillor Drew myself and the leadership team are reviewing that and working with our colleagues in audit and so forth to make sure that everything on that risk register is covered essentially. There's a recommendation. Thank you. Councillor Libby. I was wondering to ask really if it was possible to have a little more detail on some of these and some of this plan. There's a lot about what the council will do in terms of the recommendations for peer review but not a great deal about how it's being done or the progress that's being made towards it. We've got quite a few things that are due in March or April this year with actually a blank column in the progress. I think it will be quite helpful bearing in mind that we are open to scrutiny from outside but anyone reading this has an idea of how we are actually progressing towards meeting some of these outcomes rather than leaving it until Princess of January is being complete. Well, how was it completed? There was training delivered. What was that training? We've got something. We've got, for instance, trying to find a good example. Escalate the 40 of... This is 3C. Escalate the 40 of any forecast shortfalls to leadership teams to allow corrective actions who can't be undertaken. June May 24. How is that actually being done? How do I, as a reviewer, perhaps coming back in a few months' time see what's being done? It's not actually signed posting me or a member of the public to it. It's a blank column at the moment. I think it will be quite helpful to those who are actually trying to meet these outcomes to articulate how they're doing it what progress is being made every three months or so, every quarter, and put something in that column, because otherwise it goes for a year. The January ones, for instance, training delivered, well, it would be nice to know what training and how useful it was and what we're actually seeing is the outcome of that training, how you actually audited it. Thank you, Councillor Earl. Councillor Bridget Smith. What you've got in front of you is what was submitted back to the LGA. That's why. It's as it was submitted. At the point at which it was submitted, things hadn't been done. The peer review team will come back in six months, and we will need to prepare for them a report on progress, and that won't just be filling in those boxes in that right-hand column. There will have to be quite a detailed bit of work identifying what has happened in relation to all of those recommendations. You may well like, as the scrutiny committee, to look at that either at the point at which it's due to come back to the corporate peer team, or you might like to look at it once they have reported on the six-month review, which might actually be a bit more interesting for you. I can tell you, for instance, recommendation one, they wanted a vision statement. We've done that. That's been done. Work is in progress. I would suggest that having this back once the peer review team have been back would be the sensible point at which you could input and make any further recommendations. I think definitely as a scrutiny team, we've looked at maybe October time to have that done. Jeff memory. Just to draw the committee's attention to the recommendation two of this report, which is exactly as you suggest, councillor, it's recommended that this committee continues to review progress against the action plan alongside the quarterly Cape Guy reporting, so as well as getting the Cape Guy report, we bring progress against the action plan. As the leader said, this is a live document and at the time it was submitted for this committee, some of the actions haven't been done. They have subsequently and I'll be updating it when it goes to Cabinet. It will continue to need to be updated and if there's any particular areas that scrutiny would like us to highlight when we bring the report back quarterly then we'd be very happy to give you more detail about how things have progressed. One of the things I was trying to be conscious of is this is a report that the public will read and it's already quite a lengthy document and I didn't want to make it overly burdensome but I'd be very happy to provide more details about how we've progressed as we go along if the committee is interested in seeing that and by the sound of it the committee is very interested in seeing it. Thank you, Jeff. Councillor Earl, did you want to come back on that tool? I absolutely agree. I think we should see this as originally and I would like to see at least a draft report that would perhaps go to the peer reviewers before it goes to them. I think it's embarrassing if we have feedback before we've seen what's actually going to them. And I think that's a fairly reasonable recommendation. I'll bring in Councillor James Hobrow next. Thank you, Jeff. My question is jumping ahead to recommendation 9. I hope that's not moving too far ahead. So this is about our key performance indicators, KPIs and I was trying to correlate it with the comments in the report but I thought it generated the recommendation and the action items there. And it seems to me that it's correlated with some comments that suggested that there were some areas where the KPIs were perhaps a little thin and needed revising to make sure we had really good coverage that reflected all areas of our business. So looking at the three action items in there that correspond to this recommendation it seems to me that the substantive one is the middle one of the three which is to actively review and revise our KPIs and to involve members in that and so I just had a couple of comments on that. The first comment was that I think this is really important so that the KPIs are the way that we understand our performance and the way that we communicate our performance to all our residents possibly not particularly directly and meaningfully I don't think there are many residents studying these graphs intently but as we as members get questions from residents then I certainly refer to these a lot in order to understand what's going on and how the council is progressing in certain areas. So I think they're a really key part of our understanding of our performance. So I really might focus my question a little. I think a workshop to revise these is a really good idea and I wondered whether or not that should be some kind of regular process so this is talking about one workshop but it does seem to me that without some kind of active focus on revising and reviewing KPIs and this middle item is the only item I see that is a really active focus on them. Without doing that periodically we do run the risk that they fall out of date so it occurred to me that the KPIs they have to provide good coverage that's one requirement of them they have to be meaningful so they shouldn't be encouraging a box-ticking approach or they shouldn't be modifying behaviour simply to meet the target we want them to encourage the right behaviour to meet the principle that they apply to and there shouldn't be too many of them so we don't want to keep adding more and more and find that some of them are duplicates so getting this right is not particularly simple it would probably require some kind of periodic exercise in revising the KPIs and I just wondered if that is what's intended here I had a follow-up question about Table 2 but I think I better stop and allow and answer. Let's take this one first and then Councillor Bridget Smith. So we've had to stick during the four day week trial we've had to stick with the KPIs that we had at the outset of it because if we didn't, we started adding in new ones or dropping them, we'd be accused of manipulating our data so that's why we've stuck with them. We have a new business plan that will be launched soon the KPIs absolutely have to relate to the business plan otherwise but obviously there's some other stuff in it as well they have to develop out of the business plan so we review the business plan every year so yes I think the KPIs need to be reviewed on an annual basis to make sure that there's synergy with the business plan. I don't think they should be changed within the year because a lot of this data is fairly longitudinal data and people don't like it if you just suddenly drop these things without any rhyme or reason because I think you're burying the bad news so I think we're going to miss the March date for the workshop by the looks of it because my diary can't fit it in before the end of this month but I agree, I think member involvement in that because I think as members we are the ones who will be most site on what it is that our residents want us to be able to evidentially talk about and I'm glad to hear you use the quarterly performance reports because we've done massive work on making them really accessible and really user friendly so it's nice to hear that other people read them but I'll say I think it needs to be an annual review and we need to make sure that it really really relates to the business plan Geoff memory might like to add a bit of detail. Yes certainly we can do an annual review it's worth mentioning as I'm sure you're very aware that this committee has regularly either introduced or changed the KPIs and that part of the role that you undertake when you review them has led to actually significant improvements I think in the quality of the KPIs produced and some of the KPIs have been refocused particularly I think in the planning area away from those things that were being reported just because government asked us to report them and into areas that are meaningful for residents so I think we've got a good balance if we do it once a year and this committee continues to make those changes as necessary. Thank you for that your second question Councillor Howie Bray. I might just respond very briefly on that I'm really pleased to hear that an annual review is something that is very much in focus there I think that's a great idea I think that's the right frequency in line with the business plan and I suppose my only comment would be that so you're acknowledging what you've said about the input from Scrutiny and I'm very grateful that you're listening to this committee in terms of tweaking KPIs I think the opportunity for an annual review is perhaps to make sure that we're looking further afield than the members of Scrutiny and bringing in a wider range of perspectives on that so my second question was about the first row in Table 2 which is clearly related to this recommendation on KPIs about delivering a real-time information management system so again I was looking back at the report and trying to work out how this relates to the comments in the report what I found in there were some comments about the time that it takes to compile data by hand for presumably for the quarterly reports and so when I read this suggestion and the actions I wondered if the key word of real-time information here is quite the right one and I wondered whether this is actually about automation in gathering data rather than about the rapid availability of the results and I say this because it seems to me that the KPIs are normally things that we look at over a scale of months and maybe a year or so perhaps I'm sure there are some that might change very rapidly and we might need a rapid response but on the whole these are medium-term changes that we're looking at whereas it seemed from the report that this was mostly about automating the gathering of data rather than it being too manual and labour intensive so I wondered whether the term real-time the focus on real-time is really the right one or whether it should perhaps be more on automation Thank you. Councillor Bridget Smith Thank you. I'm going to ask Jeff Member and possibly Councillor Mills as well to respond but we are moving as a council we are looking very seriously at AI Archive Exec runs an AI club which loads of people come to we had a really interesting presentation at the District Council Network Conference last week on AI it's just so exciting and it will just drive such efficiencies within the organisations but for the detail of this because it's above my pay grade I need to come to Jeff please first. Jeff, do you want to come first briefly and then I'll come to Councillor Mills Yes thank you through you chair I think the two things go hand in hand to a certain extent yes absolutely making it making the information automated so it's actually takes less officer time to put together something for example that those members that are on employment staff in committee will have seen the reports have changed there because they used to take up days and days of officer time but our new system meant that we were able to automate that but also we're really keen that we get this real time information so that we can respond more quickly I mean a really good example is we changed our software in the contact centre we've been struggling for a long time to hit what was a really really challenging target of 100 seconds on average once we're able to use that real time information more effectively we're now hitting that target getting well below it day after day after day often we're seeing like 20, 30 second response time because the managers are able to see in real time what's happening move resources around and ensure that you know people take the lunch break at the right time that the right queues are being covered so yes yes I'm very happy to add automated to that but I think we certainly as officers are really keen that we keep that real time information aspiration because we've got that for the contact centre we've got it for areas of planning and I think people have seen the benefits that's delivered in planning we want that for all of our services so yeah happy but I'm very happy to add automated as well Thanks very much Councillor Milnes you know we recognise the importance and the value in the data that we have and presenting it in an information way if I can use that expression so data on its own is nothing without interpretation and the way that we present this data is critical and I think we're doing really excellent work on developing that strategy of data availability and turning that into information Briefly Councillor Smith Thank you so if I could just go back to the point about KPIs some of our partners produce really interesting KPIs so for instance I was at the combined authority board yesterday the KPIs on road deaths are really really worrying there's been a massive increase in road deaths within Cambridge and that's the sort of thing our residents will be very interested in so I think there's possibly a bit of work for us to do not in generating these KPIs ourselves but signposting members and our communities to where these who is collating these KPIs and using them because the combined authority one of its targets is to reduce road deaths and it's being very unsuccessful on that so far Thank you for that Councillor Hope I'm going to move on is that Okay I just want to say thank you very much really comprehensive answers and the reason for focusing on automation simply I think it's a more fundamental part of the problem than the real time but I'm really happy to hear that they're both consideration thank you Thank you Councillor Richard Stobart please Thanks Graham so one things we haven't well Councillor Earl thank you you mentioned the workload for this committee but we haven't really reflected on the workload and what this committee will have to do to make sure that what we deliver here is a good quality feedback but it in a sense goes beyond now I was a bit surprised to find out that we have this six month time period I'm grateful for the information but I think we've been having our discussions up till that point with an undefined timescale so six months and it might explain some of the dates that we can see in the document now I think to define what we need to do we need to have this better understanding of that link between the action and the recommendation and we've been about the bushes on recommendation 2 a lot and I wondered if in fact I'll go beyond that I think it's important that we have a narrative associated with each of those recommendations which links the action with the recommendation so I think officers have been very good at filling out that detail but we are struggling a bit as we've proved we've spent a lot of airtime on recommendation 2 to actually define what it is we're doing and then that would become something that this committee can measure now we've talked about measurement but actually achieving a series of steps if we can define what those steps are then I think that's a real help but I think we need to in a sense manage and contain the workload of this committee in doing this very important job which is assuring the quality of this whole process and it goes beyond the six months I would hope that anything we're kicking off now we've been talking about annual review of KPIs and so on and we will kind of perhaps blend that into our culture maybe that's too grand a way of putting it but we will continue to be interested in some of the things that are being initiated here so if I could just mention one or two kind of details some of the things here are not just adding a little bit of detail to somebody's job, they are little projects so I'd like to be sure from the point of view of this committee that if there is a project being defined we're aware of it and the resource needs are being met and in regard to some of the things that we've been talking about for example are we doing better with our parish councils then perhaps at some stage we should be gathering evidence from some of our partners so actually going out into the field or actually calling them in and having a good discussion perhaps with a group of parish council chairs to see that that's going on but I tend to think district councillers can in this context so members hope you don't mind me saying this that we can be facilitators for some of the things that have been going on so we're not just silent witnesses if you are at parish council meetings we do engage and we can be quite creative in that engagement so I think there are some opportunities for us to do some more stuff in that regard but let me just come back to the first point I really think it's important we have the narrative that connects actions and recommendations and Mr Member you talked about a living document sorry through you chair and I think let's make this a living document they're all contributing to and let's fill that narrative out and then make it work for the feedback in six months time but also make it continue into the future sorry I've rumbled on so I think the recommendation within that touches on measuring breaking down into points some focus on the long term as well as the short term yeah I'll let Bridget Smith take that okay so I'm going to push back on that I'm afraid so you know what what you have in front of you is the action plan as required by the LGA in the format as required by the LGA and Jeff has already said it's already quite a chunky document but it's a document we actually want people to read there's a real danger that we turn it into a Tolstoy novel which would take masses of officer resource we would be second guessing some of this stuff you've got to think about why why would we be producing something at this stage that would give all the detail of how we were going to do it all because quite a lot of this is kind of exploratory stuff so we've fulfilled the requirements of the LGA by presenting this they will in six months time we will have produced a report and a lot of that evidence that I think you're wanting will be in that report that we produce for their six month review this is the this is the what and the how and the evidence will be in that six month report I don't see the value for us and I mean officers might but I don't see what the value is of us beefing this up with masses of narrative at this stage of the game because we might not know what it is and just what value will it add I think we need to be we know what we're trying to achieve I think that six month update and then there can be another for you in six months time I think it's far better to be reporting on what we've done rather than writing reports about what we are going to do that we then have to write another report about what we have done I mean quite like Jeff to tell me whether I've got that all wrong but I'm just trying to avoid unnecessary work and to make sure that we understand what the corporate peer review has asked of us and we're sticking to that Thank you Councillor Bridges Did you want to just come back in Councillor Stover I didn't regard kind of bulk as an objective here rather than clarity so I think I could write that narrative for a number of these recommendations given what I've heard now it wouldn't be very long and I think if it were like a paragraph or two I think that would be fine I think the discussion of communities to say we're actually watching the communities and taking feedback because one of our goals with communities is to facilitate each community to find its own goal so this is not going to be here's the work programme we need to inspect the work programme it's going to be more like are we in a qualitative sense going in the right direction and so by narrative leader through you chair I just wanted to say it's a connection and it might be quite brief but perhaps it's the essence if you will of the connection between the recommendation I'll just bring Jeff membrane as well to comment on that as the leader has said I think if you google peer review action plans and have a look at what other authorities have done this is already rather larger than most authorities because I think Councillor is aware that it's a public document with a public read as I've already said I think if this committee agrees to review progress against the action plans on a quarterly basis we've got the opportunity when we come back to perhaps do deep dives into particular areas of the recommendations so that we can tie these things together and show the committee more detail about how we've gone done things and what the benefits that's going to bring in the future I think that we're very happy to do that I'd be reluctant to add too much more to this document at this stage because I want it to be easily digested by actually people that work in the council my colleagues and the public that's going to read it but say very happy to bring more detail on individual things going forward Okay, Councillor Bridget Smith Thank you, so just to pick up on what Jeff said if there's anything specific in this that you want to do that deep dive in then it would we'd appreciate you kind of doing it that way because some of it's perfectly obvious perfectly clear and you don't need to load a narrative on it but if there's anything in particular that scrutiny thinks it can add value to because this isn't just about us feeding you information it's about you identifying stuff where you add value to it rather than just because we used to have the days where scrutiny just noted everything and you know this has been a really good meeting because actually we're coming out of it with lots of really helpful recommendations so you know I think that would be more productive Councillor Stobart I think that's that's an offer from cabinet and officers you know to allow us to to go into in depth and I think that's an offer we should take up I think that's reasonable it would and we could for example come back and look at and look at recommendation 2 and maybe recommendation well whichever the community is one day is six look at them together and so on so I mean it would be up to you chair to decide but I think that's a reasonable offer there's something we can get our teeth into and really really think about it Thank you for that Councillor Stobart why the leadership team and that we can dig deep into some of those those areas and so I'll move on if that's okay to Councillor Sue Ellington Thank you I was looking particularly at number page 19 where we are talking about doing a residence survey in October 24 and my first thought was what on earth are we waiting till October to do it my second thought was how will that affect any potential election or be affected by any potential election and I thought perhaps we needed to have contingency plans as it were if you're going to do that Thank you Councillor Ellington Councillor Bridget Smith We're constantly under the threat of elections aren't we at the moment so we're just about to go into the pre-election period now for the peace and crime commissioner one so yes I mean I think the reason for not doing it this side of summer is that we have elections and actually we have an awful lot on our plate at the moment so I think the reason for saying October was that we thought there would be some capacity within the organisation but as you say if there's an October general election then I think that's probably we couldn't do it I'm told okay so we'd need to go to plan B can't do it in the summer holidays can't do it in the Christmas holidays can't do it when there's elections so yep Please what Thanks and it's a really well made point thanks Councillor Ellington I think it's really hard to plan anything this year if you're thinking about pre-election issues that the reason we did put it a bit later in the year was because the county council did a quality of life survey last year and we knew that they were interested in potentially working with district councils this year and so we wanted to give ourselves enough time to understand what that would look like and would that be something that could work or did we want to do something independent and we haven't kind of done that piece of work yet I think it's a well made point and we can certainly plan for whatever survey it is we do and clearly once it's launched if it were launched and there was an election called a couple of days afterwards we may well need to pause it but if it were launched and we were sort of two and a half weeks into a four week window we would probably leave it open so just too much uncertainty to be able to be definitive but it's a well made point thank you Thank you Councillor Ellington Just to say I do find quite a lot of these surveys are very bias in their approach and I ask that members there should be a small task and finish group to help to ensure that all members feel comfortable with what we're asking Happy to agree that We'll take that as a recommendation Thank you for that Councillor Ellington Councillor Stephen Drew please If I can go to recommendation 7 What is different about a people strategy to the current HR activities that the council engages in? Councillor Bridget Smith No rush Feel better if you're having a think I was too Can I defer to Jeff Member please Jeff Member I think this is an overarching strategy which brings together some of the work that we've already done around say hybrid working looks at the impact of that and some of the other initiatives that we've put together starts ensuring that we've got a succession plan in place so that we can work with recommendations for how we use incentives going forward and the incentives that we've been using around recruitment and attention needs to evolve as the marketplace evolves so it effectively brings a lot of the work that we're already doing together in one strategy Great thank you so it struck me that in terms of peer review port yes there are challenges and such but overall it is complementary in terms of the way in which sometimes an employer works within staff so the fact that it is a pulling together makes a lot more sense Recommendation 8 Would I be correct in interpreting this idea of developing a clear narrative for transformation as being a comment in relation to the peer review and then the recommendations that says the transformation strategy the council has undergone has clearly had great positive impacts in terms of saving money in terms of reducing costs but that there needs to be a clearer presentation of it there needs to be a clear explanation of it because I didn't see anything within the peer review report which made me have any concerns about a transformation program that made me feel that there are any issues in relation to how it was organised excuse me, to how it was organised so would I be right in saying that this recommendation really is about the presentation of it rather than anything else I think you've got it there it's business as usual it's something that's going on all the time I think sometimes people don't understand what transformation means a lot of councils of course transformation equals job losses and what we're doing is driving savings and improving performance and so on here so I think it's about clarification clarification of that Can Jeff add anything for that? Yes exactly that I think what they're recognising is that those services that have gone through a service review have had regular contact with transformation understand it but although we've launched the transformation program in the past for some of our services although they've been doing some work to improve the way their processes are they've not yet had that interaction with the transformation team so getting out the reminder of what the program is looking to achieve, why we're doing it it's something that's over there and only about the transformation team it's about the whole council and how they need to contribute towards the policies, so yes it's a communication strengthening of communication Great thank you very much if I can go to if I can go to recommendation 12 I know we've discussed a little bit in relation to council leaning raised and other people raised as well I suppose really since it strikes me as an opportunity to be interested in my capacity as Vice-Chair as I'm sure my chair would be as well to know from yourself Councillor Smith or maybe from Liz Watson CEO what from your understanding in terms of the work that is recommended in this work program and in the improvement report that you would see changing about the way the screens and overview does its work because the recommendation says undertake an effectiveness review of the council's overview and scrutiny committee so I was wondering if you had any just small points you could put in our direction that you would see as changing about the way that the committee works OK, I'd be really tactful here haven't I? It's an open forum isn't it? So this has been a really good meeting and I think this sort of item demonstrates where scrutiny's time is well spent because you're coming up with recommendations that will all then come back to our cabinet and we will accept them reject them, modify them but what we won't do is ignore them and being part of that debate is really useful I think sometimes I think certainly in the past and I'm talking about quite a distance past very frustrating that people give up long periods of that evening just to hear that papers are noted, noted, noted because you just go well why has that come to scrutiny if you've got all you're going to do is note it so I think hopefully through the triangulation meetings we're getting better at identifying those things where scrutiny is useful both to cabinet but useful to the council as a whole through its contributions because you know at the end of the day we want to come out of this scrutiny meeting going okay well that was productive that's improved things, that's added value Thank you and I'll just finish building something on that Councillor Ellington said so it goes into page 19 the third row of the section that is headed other advice suggestions I'm always intrigued by this in relation to undertaking independent survey and I suppose my thoughts are what exactly will the council be doing to ensure that the survey when it's undertaken absolutely gets responses from some of our most difficult to reach groups and the two I'm going to flag up are young people since we worked on the young people task and finish group and the other one I'm going to flag up is probably middle aged people I will count myself as that middle aged people who go to work every morning and have zero interaction with the council except when their bins are collected because that represents a significant number of residents in the district who probably couldn't tell you that their district councillor was who would have no idea probably even with little party was running the council who probably couldn't even tell you that the council was based in Canborn and I would say that is a significant number of people who live in the district I have professional friends who live in other districts who I would consider to be incredibly well educated and knowledgeable and I ask them and they literally have no idea which physical party runs their council they don't even know where their council's head office is and they couldn't give you the name of their councillor yet they are paying a large amount of council tax every year and their only interaction with their district council is to collect them as far as they are concerned so how will we make sure that that group is also included in any survey we do? Thank you Am I working? I could add some other groups that I have spent today with a Gypsy Traveller family again hard to reach but actually I am very grateful for the services that we offer Is that somebody's baby crying? So actually we have a really good track record of engaging through our consultation our local plan got way more hits on it than in the past so I think we are good at this and we've done it by making making these things look attractive and welcoming people in by keeping them simple and so on so I think we've got a good track record we've got an outstanding comms team who are really experienced at this but a large part of the responsibility rests with members because we all write monthly reports for our communities and the number one item needs to be we're doing a resident survey chat here's the link to it and if you can't get online give me a knock and I'll give you a paper copy so I think a large part of that rests with members' responsibility to engage with their communities with their parish councils and with those hard to reach groups but I'll say we as a council do as much as we possibly can but actually as members we've got to take some responsibility as well Thank you Thank you councillor Drew councillor Anna Bradman please Thank you very much chair so our purpose here is not just to note things but to send them forward to cabinet so just some simple ones in addition to the comment that councillor Hobro made earlier could we just in the report that goes to cabinet would it be possible to expand on page 16 the middle column the abbreviation TOM I assume it means target operating model Google did come up with Tom Cruise I don't think it meant that so the other one is that at the bottom of page 1 just before it goes on to table 2 it refers to the triangulation meetings and I think that should be CEO not just CEO leader chair and vice chair so then the more substantive issue I wanted to raise I actually think this would have been a obviously everybody has said what a useful exercise it's been and that's great and it's important and it's good that we have outside scrutiny fresh eyes looking at what we're doing and consulting with people and finding out how we can do our job better but now comes the emperor's new clothes bit and I'm one of these people who is prepared to say things I think this whole exercise would have been a darn sight easier recommendations that we had got were clearer now I assumed when we were looking at this and I was looking at it I thought oh there'll be more detail in the final report but oh no there isn't what's actually written in our recommendations is precisely with the exception of a few words just looking at recommendation 6 which was the one that Councillor Leaming raised about community strategy and we'd gone to community statement that is almost exactly the same wording as we were given in this final report with the exception in the final report it says and in order to fully harness opportunities but what it's talking about is for I think it's talking about is developing community strategies that will enable a structured focus around enabling and supporting communities and further build on the relationships with the voluntary community sector and parishes who want to work closer with the council in order to fully harness opportunities so actually that one is one of the rather easier ones to understand but I actually wanted to congratulate the officers for having come up with sensible suggestions for what actions we might take to deliver what is a rather vague if I may say so and I will take that upon myself this is not words of the council this is me vague recommendations from the peer review group we can understand the gist of what they're getting at and I wanted to thank the officers for coming up with some realistic actions to undertake it and by golly some dates by which some things have already been done and some things will are projected to be done so I think well done to south camps district council for actually interpreting a rather difficult report into something that is a working it's got an indication of what we want to do to try and progress this so I just wanted to say congratulations on that translation do you want to just note that just say thank you very much and either the amount of debate we've had about recommendation to absolutely exemplifies what you're saying about it being woolly so I will take the compliment on behalf of the people who've actually done all the hard work council Leaming please thank you chair, this is quite a brief thing it's about recommendation 5 which is to do with membership development I just wondered whether this would be something that a member could perhaps take a lead on in addition to I think it's Andy Francis isn't it whose name is A yes so perhaps perhaps there could be a partnership between a member and the officer on this given that it is about our development and secondly I just thought that the other thing was with this there's two sort of aspects to training and understanding our roles that might be helpful there's the general stuff which we all have as district councillors but I think it would be really helpful to have an audit of the technical understanding that people on specific committees may need we underwent a process with audit and governance we did a sip for analysis process of what we were doing it was really useful so I'm just wondering whether we could have two threads to this the technical skills and the generalist things that we'd all be involved in councillor Bridget Smith thank you so member development I think comes under councillor Milne's responsibility so he will be there and I know we'll be talking to all members it's very important that we listen to members because there's no point at us putting on training that people don't want to do and sometimes participation in training other than the statutory training can be a bit patchy quite honestly so I think we put on a lot of stuff but again horses and water again obviously those statutory committees people have to have to participate in training I think whether we can actually give them a test on their level of understanding but I think by making sure that they get refreshers that they get refresher training at regular intervals hopefully people build up their expertise within areas that didn't want to particularly take on the owners of testing fellow members councillors I have no wish to be tested by you in any forum lovely we'll move on councillor Ripith please thank you I was going to say I don't think this is that normal report and I'm speaking as a normal member as well as a member of this council partly because it's really accessible because the layout is good the format so I think the format but you can hone in what you want to read like if you're just you know you're a resident for example and you think oh I'm interested in this so you go to that it's quite clear if it's embold and then you look at read across and look at what's happening so em this is kind of I'm trying not to repeat what other people have said but with the progress chart and it might be helpful as councillor Earl said about putting in a little bit more detail as to yeah completed tick well what was it like what was completed a bit more specifically maybe some colour coding because then that you can show the progress of the report so it's like a working document without sort of redoing the whole thing and if you want something a little bit longer if you're more councillor Stobart type of resident a bit more narrative there could be like an asterix to something which gives more a few more paragraphs or obviously online that would be a link so it's like kept us a sort of summary document here with a bit more layers behind it no my only comment was really yeah this is quite readable I thought and please continue with that but also make it show that things have been sort of tweaked and changed and also if there's a strategy that it's really evident what's going forward you can roll a comment yeah thank you for that and I think we've touched on the fact that it's a live document and so forth and those points that councillor Stobart also made about the narrative and councillor Earl as well I think the leader has taken those on board do we have any other speakers on this item at all? No okay so I think we will now come to the recommendation which is on page 9 so you'll see it's broken down into two parts part A and part B so if members could just familiarise themselves with part A at point 5 on page 9 I think we have thoroughly done that this evening and Ian has noted a whole host of recommendations and the leader and cabinet members have engaged in that so is everybody happy that we've done that with those recommendations agreed and then in terms of part B of that recommendation we have discussed this during the meeting but we're happy that the reports do come back to us in the timeframes that have been set out and we revisit those as we've discussed earlier in the meeting at the six month interval is that all agreed? Agreed Agreed Yeah okay so we'll now move on to the next agenda item which is the work programme pages 21 to 34 so councillor Drew and myself and members of the cabinet will continue to meet to formulate action plan going forward and bring things that members want to see at the scrutiny committee and make sure that they're on that agenda is everybody happy with that councillor Bradnham? Sorry we are on item 6 aren't we? I just wanted to check I think we thought we might be useful to even consider bringing back the peer review in the meeting on 17th October I think we said yeah I think that sounds very reasonable given the timescales that we've talked about but I'll continue to work with officers and cabinet members just to make sure that is doable so thank you for that councillor Bradnham any other questions, recommendations or anything for the work programme? No, okay so in that case I will draw the meeting to a close thank you very much for attending