Agenda and minutes

To note that Lord S Bruce-Lockhart has replaced Mr A Chell, Mr J Fullarton has replaced Mr M Dance and Mr J Law has replaced Mr W Hayton as Members of this Committee

It was noted that Lord S Bruce-Lockhart had replaced Mr A Chell, Mr J Fullarton had replaced Mr M Dance and Mr J Law had replaced Mr W Hayton as Members of this Committee.

RESOLVED that the Minutes of the meeting held on 7 June 2007 are correctly recorded and that they be signed by the Chairman. 

(1)       Mr Hardy introduced an early draft of KCC’s Self Assessment for the CPA Corporate Assessment.  He explained that there was a small cross-party group of Members who were being consulted on this draft in addition to getting the views of the Policy Overview Committees via this meeting.  Appended to the report was the Audit Commission’s Guidelines on how to produce a self assessment which set out the structure to be used.  Mr Hardy invited Members comments on the draft self assessment.

(2)       Mr Law stated that as a Member of the cross-party group of Members he had already submitted his written comments on this draft.

(3)       A Member made a general point there being limited reference within the document to acknowledging weaknesses and expressed the view that this imbalance should be addressed.  Mr Hardy explained that in relation to the issue of how the self assessment document should address the question of weaknesses.  The current draft self assessment contained descriptions and needed now to have judgements incorporated into the document.  Some of the better versions Self Assessment Documents came from Authorities who set out areas where they thought there was a need to improve.  

(4)       In response to a question on whether the Inspectors went into communities and talked to local residents.  Mr Hardy explained that the Inspectors were due to visit in January and they were intending to visit focus groups and to talk to partners, services users and third parties.  Officers were currently putting together an outline of their two week visit to submit to the lead Inspector.

(5)       The Leader stated that the report had come to this meeting in order to get input from Members and to make sure it reflected what the Authority was about.  He acknowledged that it was not a particularly exciting read at the moment, but it was a work in progress.  The Chief Executive highlighted that this document had to be written to a certain framework which was constraining.  The Leader emphasised that there was still a large amount of work to do to reflect the strength of the authorities and challenges and he hoped to ultimately get all party endorsement for the final version.  It was important to be honest about our areas of weakness as well as our massive strengths.  It was suggested that another meeting of this Committee be held in order to discuss the final draft of the Self Assessment.

(5)       Members made a number of comments which included:-

·                    General – the report uses the word “innovative” in a lot of places.  It is not necessarily helpful, to describe something as innovative. It is up to the Inspectors to decide what actually is innovative and we should assist them by giving examples

·                    Page 5.2 paragraph 1.2.4 – there is no mention of support for other language users or having a mini com service

·                    Page 5.21 – paragraph 1.2.7 – there is no mention of the target of having 5% of the top earners as women/disabled/ethnic origin,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

(1)       The Overview and Scrutiny Manager introduced a report which updated the Committee on the current Select Committee Topic Reviews and set out priorities for the Work Programme for the period Autumn 2007 to Autumn 2008, including how the programme should be resourced.

(2)       The report set out details of current and recently completed Topic Reviews on Flood Risk, Carers in Kent and the soon to be completed report on Alcohol Misuse 

(3)       In relation to the Select Committee Topic Review on Alcohol Misuse, he explained that there were a number of external agencies involved with this subject area. If the recommendations were to add value and have impact it was essential to ensure that these organisations were signed up to them. On behalf of the Select Committee he asked this Committee to extend the timeframe for this review to enable the extra work to be done with external agencies.  If this was agreed the report would be submitted to Cabinet in the first quarter of 2008.

(4)       The Overview and Scrutiny Manager referred to the unique process which the Alcohol Misuse Select Committee had piloted which was holding a round the table discussion with a number of the stakeholder organisations, facilitated by the Director of Public Health.  

(5)       Members discussed whether the Alcohol Misuse Select Committee should be allowed to have extra time in order to engage with external agencies before finalising its report.  Although there was a recognition that it was essential that Select Committee Topic Reviews were time limited, it was also acknowledged that only a short extension of time was requested to resolve specific issues arising from the nature of this topic

(6)       Members were reminded that at their meeting on 7 June 2007, they had agreed that the following two topics should be started as soon as resources became available:-

(i)         Accessing Democracy

(ii)        Vulnerable Children

(7)       In addition, he informed the Committee that he would like to use the dedicated NHS Overview and Scrutiny Research Officer resource to carry out a piece of work on Access to Healthcare.

(8)       He informed the Committee that the Accessing Democracy Topic Review could starts its work as soon as resources were available now that the Carers in Kent topic review had been completed should the Committee agree to extend the timescale of the Alcohol Misuse Topic Review then the Vulnerable Children Select Committee would be slightly delayed until resources became available.

(9)       He also highlighted the challenges that had occurred with trying to accommodate Select Committee Topic Reviews during late July and August period which had impacted on the work of those Select Committees.

(10)     In relation to resources, he reminded Members that he had 1.5 full time equivalent research officers to cover Select Committees put forward by five Policy Overview Committees.  In relation to support from the Graduate Trainee Programme, as Democratic Services no longer funded a placement, there was no guarantee that a graduate trainee would be allocated to the Overview and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.