Agenda and draft minutes

An Apology for Absence had been received from Councillor English.

Members and Officers are invited to make any declaration of pecuniary, personal and/or prejudicial interests that they may have in relation to items on this agenda, and are reminded that they should re-declare their interest before consideration of the items or as soon as the interest becomes apparent.

Members and Officers should make their declaration by stating:

a)             the item they have the interest in

b)             whether it is a pecuniary/personal interest and/or prejudicial interest

c)             the nature of the interest

There were no Declarations of Interest made.

The Committee will be asked to approve as a correct record the minutes of the Corporate Support Committee held on 12 October 2023.

The minutes of the previous Corporate Support Committee meeting held on 12 October 2023 were approved by the Committee as a correct record and would be signed by the Chair upon the conclusion of the meeting.

The Chair confirmed that there were no urgent items for this meeting.

To receive questions from the public (for a period of up to 15 minutes)

The Chair confirmed that no public questions had been submitted for this meeting.

Microsoft licences are purchased on a three-year cycle and the current licence expires at the end of June 2024. We are seeking approval to enter into a new contract at the pre-award stage.

The Head of Technology and Digital presented his report which he explained was seeking the Committee’s authority to renew the Microsoft contract for a period three years.

          It was explained that the Microsoft licences included the Council’s operating systems; end user software; telephony; data bases; cyber security; admin tools; and the  cloud environment and so covered just about everything that the Council did. The Microsoft licences were purchased through a subscription model that provided the Council with the right to use them and from this it received support; updates; and security patches. The current licence was due to expire in in June 2024.

Having had the recommendation proposed by Councillor O’Neill and seconded by Councillor Jones, the Committee

                     RESOLVED

That the Council purchases a three-year Microsoft licence agreement through a Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) compliant framework.

This reports set out the performance of the Key Performance indicators at Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 covering the periods 1 April to 31 December 2023.

The Group Head of Organisational Excellence presented to the Committee two key performance indicator reports for 2022- 2026. The first covered the Quarter 2 period from 1 April to 30 September 2023 with the second covering the Quarter 3 period from 1 April to 31 December 2023.

          The Committee was invited to either discuss the two reports separately or it could note the first report and focus its attention onto the most up to date performance figures and commentaries provided in the Quarter 3 report.

The Committee noted the Quarter 2 report and then turned its attention to the Quarter 3 report. 

Various questions were asked which have been summarised below:

·       CP1 – [% of Stage 2 responses responded to in time] – in terms of complaints in Housing Services, it was felt that a lack of inspections might be fuelling complaints and so a request was made for inspections to be put into place to assess work undertaken following the completion of  housing repairs and maintenance work. This would help to reduce the number of complaints received.

·       CP4 and CP5 [Sickness Absence] and [Staff Turnover] – as stress was a large contributor to long-term absence, could this also be fuelling staff turnover as well? It was confirmed that when dealing with stress it was sometimes very difficult to distinguish between work and home related stress as  both could be factors. Absence was not currently analysed in that way and although stress could be a contributing factor to turnover, the point was well understood.  Continuing with the debate, it was disappointing to see that leavers were reluctant to complete a survey when they left the authority as this would provide information that could assist the Council in understanding why people were leaving. It was explained that the system had been changed from staff being asked to attend an in person exit interview to completing a digital survey to encourage and increase survey responses, however, this change may have had the opposite effect with leavers not wishing to vocalise their reasons for leaving. This was making identifying trends for why staff were choosing to leave the authority very difficult capture.

 Another Committee member also contributed to this item stating that it would be useful to receive a breakdown of how sickness absence information was accumulated. This was because there were some reasons for absence that everyone understood but there were other reasons that were more difficult to control. It was felt that there needed to be more understanding as to why some people might be too stressed to come into work. A suggestion made was that the Policy & Finance Committee be asked to change the measure for indicator CP4 to record how much sickness absence was because of stress. This would be useful to track as part of organisational culture work.

The Committee then noted the Quarter 3 performance report.

The purpose of the report is for this Committee to consider and recommend its revenue budget for inclusion in the Council’s overall 2024/25 revenue budget. These recommendations will be submitted to the Policy and Finance Committee on 8 February 2024 when it considers the overall revenue and capital budgets for 2024/25 so recommendations can be made to a Special Meeting of the Council on 21 February 2024 regarding the budgets to be set and level of Council Tax for the District for 2024/25.

The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer presented his report which was asking the Committee to consider and recommend its revenue budget for inclusion in the Council’s overall 2024/25 revenue budget.  The recommendations would firstly be submitted to the Policy & Finance Committee on 8 February 2024 which would consider the overall revenue and capital budgets for 2024/25 so that recommendations could be made to a Special Meeting of the Council on 21 February 2024 regarding the budgets to be set and level of Council Tax for the district for 2024/25.

The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer stated that forecasting remained problematic particularly due to ongoing inflationary pressures and the volatility around other external factors affecting the economy and therefore budgets had been compiled using the best information available. It was confirmed that the current levels of service provision would remain unchanged and that there was no growth in the revenue budget for 2024/25.  The net changes in the revenue budget between 2023/24 and 2024/25 were outlined in Paragraph 4.4 of the report, the main highlights being  salary inflation; IT costs; an increase in the external audit fee; and a reduction in election services costs.

The savings totalling £249k identified in the Financial Strategy had been listed in Paragraph 4.5 of the report with the largest saving being a reduction in the number of digital based projects. There would be no new planned capital programme for the committee for 2024/25.

The Chair invited questions. A wide range of questions were asked. Firstly, these focused on the table of savings where an explanation was sought regarding some of the items listed. There was concern expressed over reducing the GIS contract and the deletion of the part-time web administrator post.  Clarification was also sought with regard to the last saving of £6k in the table.

The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer explained that the last entry in the table at Paragraph 4.5 should read “Reduce Legal Services subscriptions costs through West Sussex-wide group purchasing. Recharge Payroll service costs to third parties”.  Members of the Committee had been notified by email of this change and had been provided with an updated report on 26 January 2024. In terms of reducing GIS [Geographic Information System] the Head of Technology and Digital explained that some of the functionality had now been written in-house meaning that the Council was not losing this functionality, it was just not having to pay for it. On the deletion of the web administrator post, the work that had needed to be undertaken to make the Council’s web site accessibility compliant had now been undertaken, so that post was no longer needed.

An explanation was sought as to what the Croner [professional] subscription was and what its deletion would mean for the HR service.  The Human Resources Manager explained that this was a digital information service that the section used to procure  advice on areas such as employment law and tribunals. Losing this  ...  view the full minutes text for item 590.

The purpose of this report is to appraise the Corporate Support Committee of its forecast outturn against the 2023/24 budgets, which were approved by Full Council at its meeting of the 9 March 2023.

The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer presented the Committee’s Budget Monitoring Report setting out its forecast outturn against the 2023/24 budget, approved by Full Council in March 2023 covering the period up to 31 December 2023.

The report anticipated an overspend of £221k and showed no movement overall against what had been reported at Quarter 2 to the Committee in October 2023.

The Committee noted this report.

The Localism Act 2011, section 38 (1) requires that local authorities prepare an annual Pay Policy Statement.  This paper introduces the draft Pay Policy Statement for 2024/2025 (attached) and asks members to approve it.

The Group Head of Organisational Excellence presented her report and confirmed that it was a statutory requirement for Councils to prepare and publish their Pay Policy Statement by 1 April each year.

The Pay Policy Statement outlined current pay policies covering a range of issues concerning the pay of the Council’s work force.

Following brief discussion and having had the recommendations proposed by Councillor Tandy and seconded by Councillor O’Neil,

          The Committee

                     RESOLVED

That the contents of the Pay Policy Statement 2024/25 as set out in the report at Appendix 1 be noted.

          The Committee also

RECOMMENDS TO FULL COUNCIL – That

(1)  It approves the Pay Policy Statement 2024/2025 for publication on the Arun website by 1 April 2024; and

(2)  Delegated authority be given to the Group Head for Organisational Excellence to make changes to the Pay Policy Statement should the need arise because of new legislation being introduced or changes to the pay structure resulting from national pay negotiations during the forthcoming year.

The Committee is asked to consider an initial report and recommendations in relation to an Electoral Review of the Arun District.

Before inviting the Group Head of Law & Governance and Monitoring Officer to present his report, the Chair confirmed to the Committee that the purpose of the report, at this embryonic stage of the review, was to discuss and debate the two recommendations in the report addressing the draft timetable for the review and the need to seek approval for Officers to carry out an assessment of the costs of conducting an electoral review so that a report could be prepared to submit to the Policy & Finance Committee on 7 March 2024 and before the next meeting of this Committee on 30 April 2024, which was in accordance with the Paragraph 1 of the 9 November 2022 Full Council motion.  The Chair made it clear that he did not wish to enter discussion or debate on the review itself nor would it be appropriate for the Committee to discuss not moving forward with the agreed actions, that would be a matter for Full Council to consider.

          The Chair asked Members to note that it was highly likely that the Local Government Boundary Commission for England [LGBCE] would soon by identifying the Council for a periodic electoral review in any event and he reminded Members that the aim of this report was to commence a process that would put the Council into a position of beginning that conversation with the LGBCE at an early stage in the 2023-2027 cycle.

          The Group Head of Law & Governance and Monitoring Officer then presented his report.  He confirmed that the last electoral review had been undertaken in 2014 and in setting the context to this he reminded the Committee of the Motion that had been approved by Full Council in November 2022, which had been detailed at Paragraph 4.2 of the report and set out the steps that the Council wanted Officers to take in terms of starting the review process. The report focused on the pre-work that was necessary in undertaking the review which fell under the remit of the Corporate Support Committee.

The report, as well as setting out the process for Members, outlined and set out an indicative timetable for discussion and approval. The Motion approved by Full Council asked Officers to undertake an assessment of the costs of undertaking a review and it was explained that this would be the next step in the review process with a report being compiled for consideration by the Policy & Finance Committee at its meeting to be held on 7 March 2024.

Various sources of information had been provided to the Committee at Appendices 2 and 3 and thanks was extended to the Electoral Services Manager for her work in pulling this information together for Members. The Committee’s attention was then drawn towards the draft timetable and Members were invited to make comment on it so that a final timetable could be brought to the Committee’s next meeting on 30 April 2024. The key elements of the timetable were then explained to the Committee by the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 593.

The Chair confirmed that there were feedback reports to be reported to this meeting.

The committee work programme is attached for members to note.

The Committee received and noted its Work Programme for the remaining Municipal Year.