Decision Maker: Leader and Cabinet Member for Health Reform
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Is Key decision?: Yes
Is subject to call in?: Yes
Purpose:
To seek approval to appoint a transformation
and efficiency partner to manage the adult social care
transformation programme.
Decision:
To agree the appointment of a transformation
and efficiency partner to manage the adult social care
transformation programme.
Publication date: 04/04/2013
Date of decision: 04/04/2013
Effective from: 12/04/2013
This decision has been called in by:
-
Leslie Christie who writes Mr Christie Called in the decision for the following reasons:
1. Lack of Consultation with Non-Executive Members
The decision has not been subject to a sufficient or proper consultation with members.
The decision was not brought before the Cabinet Committee until the preferred bidder had been identified and the contract was ready to award. No updates to the Cabinet Committee over the previous year, by officers or Members, suggested that work was underway to appoint an Efficiency Partner.
The decision has been taken by the Leader and not the Cabinet Member. At least the Cabinet Member was present at the meeting to hear the Cabinet Committee’s views. The Leader was not present and could not see it on Webcast because much of the issue was not webcast. Surely this is not how Cabinet Committees are supposed to work.
2. Insufficient clarity and consideration
This issue involves fees to consultants of around £5.4 million on a complicated alleged “payment by results” system which was not adequately explained; in particular it was not clear what would happen if the Consultant’s savings, once identified were politically unacceptable? Would this count towards their “payment by results”?
The Leader was not informed within the report on which he based his decision that the consultants mentioned at para. 1(5) who were involved in deciding whether a Transformation and Efficiency Partner was necessary/workable were the very same consultancy to whom it is proposed the contract be awarded – i.e. Newton Europe. I believe this relationship requires in depth scrutiny. In addition the Cabinet Committee was not given this information
There was some confusion between the information contained within the open paper and that contained within the exempt paper, particularly around financial savings expected. No clarity was provided as to the actual level of savings being sought / considered by the efficiency partner.
It was partly because of this lack of clarity and therefore inability on the part of the Cabine"