Agenda and draft minutes

The Head of Legal and Democratic Services to report any changes to the membership.

1.1       It was noted that there were no changes to the membership.

To receive declarations by Members and Officers of the existence and nature of any personal or prejudicial interests in matters on this agenda.

2.1       There were no declarations.

To sign the minutes of the meeting held on the 9 March 2015 as a correct record of proceedings.

3.1       RESOLVED: That the minutes of the meeting held on the 9 March 2015 be signed by the Chairman as a correct record of proceedings.

Report of the Head of Cabinet Secretariat.

4.1       The Chairman informed members that suggestions were sought for the work programme for the coming year. He advised that a public consultation was due to be undertaken over the summer on the Council's New Housing Strategy and that if the timetable did not fit with the committee's meeting cycle a task group would be set to provide comments.

4.2       A request was made to include a follow-up item on Housing Associations and RSL’s tenant satisfaction levels. This should include information on the number of calls made per provider to residential environmental health.

4.3       The Chairman advised that the aborted committee visit to an intermediate housing scheme in Westminster was due to be rescheduled for mid June. A review and feedback session on scrutiny over the last 12 months was due to be held for all policy and scrutiny members in the Lord Mayors parlour on Tuesday, 16 June. Invitations to both events would be circulated shortly.

4.4       RESOLVED:

1.     That reports on the new Housing strategy, review of housing management options and Finance, Annual Accounts and Forward Planning be submitted to the next meeting on 10 June.

2.     That the responses to actions and recommendations set out in the tracker be noted.

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Corporate & Customer Services will be in attendance to provide a verbal update on progress within the portfolio and receive questions from the Committee.

A written update from the Cabinet Member for Housing, Business, Regeneration and Economic Development is attached.

5.1       The Committee received a verbal update from the Cabinet Member for Finance, Corporate and Customer Services on the following aspects of the portfolio:

5.1.1    That the Finance team was working to improve on last year's achievement of accelerating the closure of the Council's annual accounts. He thanked the City Treasurer and his team for all of their work over the course of the year to achieve this objective. He informed the committee that the annual accounts would be considered by the Audit & Performance Committee on 21 May.

5.1.2    That as forecast the budget for 2014-15 came in on target. This had been achieved through considerable hard work. Notwithstanding the outcome of the general election he expected there to be continued pressure on budgets next year.

5.1.3    That he had signed off an executive report approving the establishment of a Tri-borough Legal Services team. He advised that an Appointments Sub Committee Panel would be meeting in due course to appoint a Head of Tri-borough Legal Services. A consultation on IT services had just concluded and a decision on this would be taken in the next few weeks.

5.1.4    The Managed Services Programme for HR and procurement went live a couple of weeks previously. There has been a high volume of small issues but no fundamental problems. The former included some members of staff not being paid on time or being underpaid. Some members of staff had also experienced overpayments in pension contributions. In most cases the former was resolved in 1 to 2 days while the pension related issue would be resolved next month. Extra support was being provided to schools which had only recently returned from the Easter break and were catching up on these issues.

5.2       The committee noted the written update from the Cabinet Member for Housing, Regeneration, Business and Economic Development on key aspects within the portfolio. 

5.3       Further to the written update the Executive Director for Growth, Planning & Housing informed the committee that the council had recently submitted a bid of £20-£25 million to the GLA for housing growth zone funding of in the Church Street area to speed up the delivery of housing renewal. Officers had attended an initial meeting with the GLA. The next stage would be to present a challenge bid at the GLA on 13 May.

5.4       In the absence of the Cabinet Member, the committee submitted questions to Ben Denton, Executive Director for Growth, Planning & Housing.

5.4.1    The Executive Director was asked for details about the appointment of a new chief executive for CityWest Homes. He informed members that Jonathan Cowie had been appointed. Mr Cowie was currently the chief operating officer of Sovereign Housing, one of the largest housing associations in the South and South West of England. He had previously worked at GEC so had both commerce and affordable housing sector knowledge. He was due to start on 16 June and there would be some overlap with the current Chief Executive. Mr Cowie's locus would be to maintain  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Report of the Director of Policy, Performance and Communications

6.1       The Committee received a report that provided an overview of the implementation of the contact centre and back office contract awarded to Agilisys which commenced on 3 November 2014. This included changes resulting from the new contract, and benefits to the customer experience and contract performance.

6.2       It was noted that the report was circulated separately to the main agenda and did not meet the statutory deadline. The chairman agreed to accept the paper as a late item.

6.3       The Committee considered the report and asked questions on a range of issues as follows:

6.3.1    Members asked a number of questions around contract performance including how quality is monitored; how underachievement is evaluated; whether customer feedback is requested following an interaction with an adviserand the checks and balances in place to ensure that the model of payment per transaction is not misused. The committee also wished to know about the resources required to monitor the contract.                                                                                                                                                          

Suzanne McArdle, Head of Digital, informed members that advisers have a random selection of their phone conversations with customers checked each month for quality. The contract is monitored by specific key performance indicators (KPIs) covering call answering, customer satisfaction, quality, e-mail handling and web chat responses. The payment for a phone transaction is £1.48 in hours and out of hours £4.25 and an email is £3.26. There are penalties on a sliding scale when the KPI's are not met. The KPI's are checked on a monthly basis. Feedback isn't requested following an e-mail exchange however there is a facility on the Council’s website to rate web services through a ‘rate this page’ function. Due to the payment per transaction model, it was recognised that while it was in the contractor’s interest to engage in as many contacts as possible this is closely monitored. This would include ensuring that the contractor does not reply to customers unnecessarily or deflect users towards a particular form of interaction. A close check would also be kept on the handling of out of hours calls as the payments for these are more expensive. Miss McArdle advised that the monitoring of the contract did not require lots of resources and was handled predominantly by her and a contract manager.

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Corporate & Customer Services advised in relation to the KPIs for call answering that while these are not quite being met the council had set the bar quite high and therefore the majority of customers would be happy with these response times.

6.3.2    The committee then asked a number of operational questions. This included a request for information about the new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which is used for logging contacts, capturing customer details and scripting processes to ensure consistent information and guidance is provided. Members also queried whether Agilisys receives a notification from the relevant service area when an issue they have forwarded on has been dealt with.

            Miss McArdle informed members that when the council migrated to the new system there was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

7.1       In accordance with the council's treasury management practices, the Committee received a report that set out the Council's Annual Treasury Outturn for 2014-15.

7.2       It was noted that the paper had been circulated separately to the main agenda and did not meet the statutory deadline although it had been on the committee's work programme for many months. The chairman agreed to consider the paper as a matter of urgency as it would be appropriate for the capital outturn to be considered at about the same time that the accounts as a whole are considered by the Audit Committee.

7.3       The committee noted that the weighted average interest rate of return on cash investments over the year was 0.60% which reflects the annual investment strategy’s priorities of security of principle then liquidity over yield. Only about £25 million in cash deposits had been invested in terms deposits greater than one year. Steve Mair, City Treasurer, informed members that officers are currently exploring a range of options to improve on the treasury management and related investment strategies to ensure the best use of the available resources. This would include considering options for investing in longer term deposits as well as whether it is possible to invest surplus cash in the council's pension fund which would in turn help to address it’s deficit. A report on future initiatives will be presented to committee during 2015-16.

7.4       It was noted that this would be the last meeting attended by Jonathan Hunt, Director of Corporate Finance and Treasury Management, who was leaving the council for a new job. The committee thanked Mr Hunt for his work and wished him well in his new job.

7.5       RESOLVED: That the report be noted.