Agenda and draft minutes

Venue: The John Meikle Room - The Deane House. View directions

Contact: Amy Tregellas Email: a.tregellas@somersetwestandtaunton.gov.uk  Marcus Prouse Email: m.prouse@somersetwestandtaunton.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

1.

Election of Chair

    To elect a Chair solely for the purpose and duration of the Joint Committee.

    Minutes:

    Councillor Loretta Whetlor proposed that Councillor Gwilym Wren be appointed the Chair of the Joint Committee for the duration of the meeting. Councillor Simon Coles seconded the motion.

    There were no other nominations.

     

     

    RESOLVED that Councillor Gwilym Wren be appointed the Chair for the duration of the Joint Committee of Scrutiny and Audit, Governance and Standards Committee for the duration of the meeting.

2.

Election of Vice-Chair

    To elect a Vice-Chair solely for the purpose and duration of this Joint Committee.

     

    Minutes:

    Councillor Simon Coles proposed that Councillor Sue Buller be appointed the Vice-Chair of the Joint Committee for the duration of the meeting. Councillor Sarah Wakefield seconded the motion.

    There were no other nominations.

     

     

    RESOLVED that Councillor Sue Buller be appointed the Vice-Chair for the duration of the Joint Committee of Scrutiny and Audit, Governance and Standards Committee for the duration of the meeting.

     

3.

Apologies

    To receive any apologies for absence.

    Minutes:

    Apologies were received from Councillors Baker, Cavill, Davies, Pugsley, Venner, Stock-Williams and Wheatley.

     

    Councillor Milne substituted for Councillor Cavill.

    Councillor Whetlor substituted for Councillor Davies.

    Councillor Trollope-Bellew substituted for Councillor Pugsley.

    Councillor Habgood substituted for Councillor Stock-Williams.

    Councillor Lithgow substituted for Councillor Wheatley.

4.

Declarations of Interest

    To receive and note any declarations of disclosable pecuniary or prejudicial or personal interests in respect of any matters included on the agenda for consideration at this meeting.

     

    (The personal interests of Councillors and Clerks of Somerset County Council, Town or Parish Councils and other Local Authorities will automatically be recorded in the minutes.)

    Minutes:

    Members present at the meeting declared the following personal interests in their capacity as a Councillor or Clerk of a County, Town or Parish Council or any other Local Authority:-

     

    Name

    Minute No.

    Description of Interest

    Reason

    Action Taken

    Cllr C Booth

    All Items

    Wellington and Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke

    Cllr S Coles

    All Items

    SCC & Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr C Ellis

    All Items

    Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr J Hunt

    All Items

    SCC & Bishop’s Hull

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr R Lees

    All Items

    Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke

    Cllr L Lisgo

    All Items

    Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr M Lithgow

    All Items

    Wellington

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr J Lloyd

    All Items

    Wellington & Sampford Arundel

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr D Mansell

    All Items

    Wiveliscombe

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr A Milne

    All Items

    Porlock

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr D Perry

    All Items

    Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr H Prior-Sankey

    All Items

    SCC & Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

    Cllr M Rigby

    All Items

    SCC & Bishops Lydeard

    Personal

    Spoke

    Cllr F Smith

    All Items

    Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke

    Cllr F Smith-Roberts

    All Items

    Taunton Charter Trustee

    Personal

    Spoke

    Cllr L Whetlor

    All Items

    Watchet

    Personal

    Spoke and Voted

     

5.

Public Participation

    The Chair to advise the Committee of any items on which members of the public have requested to speak and advise those members of the public present of the details of the Council’s public participation scheme.

     

    For those members of the public who have submitted any questions or statements, please note, a three minute time limit applies to each speaker and you will be asked to speak before Councillors debate the issue.

    Minutes:

    No members of the public had requested to speak on any item on the agenda.

6.

South West Audit Partnership Transformation Audit - Lessons Learnt pdf icon PDF 1 MB

    This report is the responsibility of the Leader of the Council.

     

    The Joint Committee is recommended to note the report.

    Minutes:

    The Chair opened the item by asking all Members to be clear and succinct, to avoid repetition, deviation or any political speeches.

     

    The Chair then invited the Managing Director from South West Audit Partnership (SWAP), Mr Woodland to briefly introduce the report.

     

    Mr Woodland explained that the terms of reference were agreed at the outset when the work was commissioned. The piece of work covered a defined period of time which was post acceptance of the Business Case in July 2016. The report did not look at the projects relating to the joining together of the new councils or the refurbishment of the office space. It was clear, from the options presented in 2016, that the Transformation project was ambitious whether the Councils merged or not. Ultimately the impact of the voluntary redundancy policy undermined the ability to deliver the Transformation project successfully. From an Audit control perspective there was still work for this Authority to undertake to satisfy the control weaknesses and Members needed to bear this in mind.

     

    The Chair thanked the representative from SWAP for his introduction. Since 2010 Local Government as a sector had had significant government funding removed from it leading to the shared working agenda. He reminded Members that the Transformation project was not finished and that business processes were still outstanding at this moment.

     

    Discussion took place around:

     

    ·         Concern around the requirement to note the report and what happens next with this report.

    ·         The report being too brief and whether newly elected Councillors would be aware of the background and understand the full context.

    ·         Concern that the report highlighted that certain individuals and documentation had been unable to be located.

    ·         What the role of Members was in the Transformation project process and if that had been on the periphery instead of a central part of the process. 

    ·         Whether the elimination of the Joint Partnership Advisory Group (JPAG) partway through the process had made it difficult to find out what was going on and get a handle on a complex process.

    ·         Agreement with the conclusions in the report that too much had been attempted to be done at the same time.

    ·         Whether the governance oversight of the Transformation process by Members had been weak.

    ·         That constitutional change may be required to ensure that effective challenge by Members could be done going forward. Officer advised that a report on Constitutional Arrangements would be taken to the next Audit, Governance and Standards Committee on the 11th March and there would be a Member Working Group suggested to be set up looking at the Constitution.

    ·         The lack of clear Job Descriptions and whether this may have influenced more people to take redundancy. If another Transformation project was to take place Job Descriptions would need to be clearly set out.

    ·         In terms of procurement the organisation needed to hold accountable the contractors carrying out the work for the Council.

    ·         Members were concerned that there were defined rules and definitions on redundancy that the Council’s policy did not  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.