There were no declarations of pecuniary interest. Councillor Brenda Fraser declared a non-pecuniary interest as a governor at South Thames College.

Apologies for absence were received from co-opted members Simon Bennett, Peter Connellan and Colin Powell.

Minutes were agreed as an accurate record of the meeting. There were no matters arising.

The Chair reminded all present that the purpose of the call-in was to determine whether Cabinet’s decision on 16 February was flawed in relation to the council’s principles of decision making and, if so, to demonstrate where it fell short. He invited Councillor James Holmes to speak as a signatory to the call-in request.

Councillor James Holmes said that, whilst he welcomed Cabinet’s pledges in relation to the commissioning principles, he believed that the Cabinet’s decision had been flawed in relation to the consultation process and to consideration of the current site at Whatley Avenue. He said that the questionnaire had not given respondents an opportunity to support continuation of current provision at the current site. A large number of respondents said they wanted the service to remain at Whatley Avenue and Councillor Holmes queried the extent to which this was considered by Cabinet.

Councillor Holmes said that Joseph Hood Primary School had not been consulted as fully as it should have been and that Cabinet had not taken into account the implications for the school of potential future uses of the Whatley Avenue site.

The Chair invited the registered speakers to address the Panel:

Posey Furnish, Chair, Governing Body, Joseph Hood Primary School

Posey Furnish said that the school is in close proximity to the Whatley Avenue and that both councillors and council officers have failed to take that into account in their decision making to date, despite promises to consult the school. She said that she had heard that the Council had approached Harris Academy regarding use of Whatley Avenue rather than vice versa as she had previously been told. She said that although there had been a survey of the site during half term, she was still being told that no decision had been taken regarding the site and it was therefore difficult to know what to believe. She urged the council to protect the interests of the school, staff and pupils and to keep them informed about what is planned.

Isabelle McGrath, staffside representative

Isabelle McGrath said that staff did not feel they had been listened to and that they had concerns regarding the transparency of decision making, fragmentation of adult education provision, processes for listening to students and the safeguarding of vulnerable learners. She said that the surveying of both sites and the announcement the previous day regarding free schools had created mistrust. She said that staff were worried about job losses and the council’s capacity to handle that number of redundancies. She questioned the meaningfulness of a TUPE transfer for staff who are on zero hour contracts and their position in relation to entitlement to redundancy payments. She urged the Overview and Scrutiny Commission to refer the decision back to Cabinet.

Gay Bennett Powell, Save Merton Adult Education

Gay Bennett Powell said that the commissioning model would lead to a serious reduction in services, especially for vulnerable learners who feel secure at the Whatley Avenue site. She also asked for assurance that lifelong learning  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Simon Williams, Director of Community and Housing, briefly introduced the report and said that he and Khadiru Mahdi, Chief Executive of Merton Voluntary Service Council (MVSC) and Ellie Germaine, Acting Head of Volunteering at MVSC would be happy to respond to questions. He said that the scrutiny task group’s recommendations had been helpful, that action taken was set out in the appendix and that the volunteer strategy would be refreshed this year.

In response to a question about how realistic it was to try to increase the proportion of people who volunteer, Simon Williams and Khadiru Mahdi said that they are seeking to promote different forms of volunteering that would be suitable for busy people, such as befriending schemes and micro volunteering.

A member asked whether the actual percentage might be higher as perhaps people didn’t realise that some of the things they do, such as helping at school fetes, would count as volunteering. Ellie Germaine agreed that the percentage would probably be higher due to lots of informal volunteering that would not necessarily be counted.

In response to a question about whether enough is being done to encourage young people to volunteer, Ellie Germaine said that MVSC had a youth project for that purpose, part funded by the council. Also, there is a pilot that is developing a quality mark for organisations that has been approved by and for work with young people. She said that there were fewer volunteering opportunities for young people than previously as organisations tend not to take under 18’s due to capacity difficulties in terms of providing support.

Several members commented on volunteering awareness raising events they had attended as well as various volunteering experiences they have had and that these had been rewarding and enjoyable. They highlighted communication of opportunities as crucial and suggested the use of My Merton to help with this.

Evereth Willis, Interim Head of Policy, Strategy and Partnerships, introduced the report and highlighted some of the examples of progress made over the past year:

·         continued improvement on educational attainment of pupils from target groups

·         development of an offer (under the Children and Families Act) for families with special educational need and disabilities

·         consultation with disability groups and audits to shape transport services delivery

·         embedding of equality impact assessments in to budget savings proposals

·         council officers received training on mental health awareness

Evereth Willis said that priorities for the coming year were:

·         to ensure the equality impact assessments were robust and transparent in their impact on budget decisions

·         to strengthen the black and ethnic minority voice in the borough, working in partnership with MVSC and other local organisations

·         to re-invigorate the lesbian gay bisexual and transgender forum

·         to encourage council officers to submit equalities data

·         to provide staff briefing sessions to raise awareness of diversity issues

Evereth Willis and Yvette Stanley, Director of Children Schools and Families, answered questions on some of the detail in the action plan and undertook to provide an explanation of the tariff differences referred to in action 1.2.11 (page 285). ACTION: Interim Head of Policy, Strategy and Partnerships

In response to a comment about lack of consistency in some of the equality impact assessments and whether there was any oversight of this, Evereth Willis said that she wasn’t sent all of them but had seen a number and been able to provide challenge on them.

In response to a question about succession planning in schools, Yvette Stanley said that the action plan from last year’s scrutiny review was being implemented and that, although some progress was being made, there were still areas of under-representation of black and ethnic minority staff amongst middle and senior management in schools.

RESOLVED:

1.    To set up a series of task group reviews, starting with one focussing on shared services, with terms of reference as set out in the report. The task group should start by mapping out all the shared services that the council has and look at examples from other local authorities.

2.    To appoint Councillors Suzanne Grocott, Russell Makin and Peter Southgate to the task group. The first meeting will be in late March.

RESOLVED:

1.    to ask the Borough Commander to provide the latest crime and performance data each time he attends, using the format provided last time

2.    to ask the Borough Commander to answer the following questions in relation to the motion of Full Council on 19 November 2014:

·         whether a review of the deployment of officers has been carried out and, if so, what was its nature

·         what are the current levels of crime in the three sectors

·         what is the current deployment of officers in each of the three sectors and the rationale for this

·         The Commission understands that of the 300 officers on the borough, 200 are dedicated to specific areas and 100 are retained for flexible deployment. How are these 100 being deployed at present?

Councillor Southgate said that Chief Superintendent David Palmer would be attending to represent the Borough Commander on 25 March and that the Borough Commander would be invited to attend on 14 July to set out his vision for the year ahead.

The minutes of the meeting held on 5 November were included in the agenda pack by mistake so the minutes of the meeting held on 26 February were laid round at the meeting and have been published on the website.

Councillor Suzanne Grocott, Chair of the task group, said that it had been a very useful meeting and thanked participants.

RESOLVED: to note the minutes of the financial monitoring task group meeting of 26 February 2015.

The Commission noted the work programme.

RESOLVED: That the public are excluded from the meeting during consideration of this agenda item on the grounds that it is exempt from disclosure for the reasons stated in the report.

Sophie Ellis, Assistant Director of Business Improvement, said that Cabinet had approved the award of the contract to Organisation A as set out in the report. She drew members’ attention to the scoring and evaluation information set out in Appendix C.

Sophie Ellis tabled additional information about Organisation A (published with these minutes - exempt document) and expanded on the reasons for selecting organisation A. She said that the tender expressed ambition in relation to product development, a good fit with the council’s business needs, and enthusiasm for working with the council. Paul Dale, Assistant Director of Resources, added that both the quality and value for money aspects of the decision had been clear cut as shown in the evaluation scores.

In response to questions, Sophie Ellis said that savings that the customer contact programme would underpin and enable had already been built into the council’s medium term financial strategy but that there would be more in future as implementation was rolled out to specific service areas. She confirmed that the risk of not delivering savings sits with the council and not the contractor.

John Cremins, Customer Contact Procurement Lead, conformed that a credit ratings check had been run on organisation A at an early stage in the process and repeated two weeks ago. He said they have a parent company guarantee with a strong credit rating.

RESOLVED: The Commission will continue to receive progress updates on the implementation of the customer contact programme.