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:
Councillor Rod Williams (Somerset County Council) made the following statement in relation to Item 6 – Garden Town Vision:-
I have many years of experience designing and delivering large scale change. First in the Army, and then in business and the NHS. I was educated, trained and practised in how to make strategic change succeed. For fifteen years for before I was elected as a Councillor, I earned my living planning and delivering strategic change. The thinking for the Garden Town started about two years ago. A number of us realised then that it was not enough to look at economic development or housebuilding. We had to look at every aspect of living in Taunton. We had to take an all-round view. A year ago, I formed a small working group to think through what the Garden Town title meant in practice. Since then, a small group led by Nick Bryant (Head of Function Strategy) including myself has taken that early thinking on and listened widely to produce the Vision Document. I ask you to recommend that Full Council makes this document SWT Council policy. To help you champion it to Full Council I will highlight the reasons why it is very good.
First, we are aiming at the right thing. It is ambitious. We are not aiming at making Taunton just better, but making it excellent. We want to raise the quality of every part of living in Taunton. It is strategic in the proper meaning of the term. It considers Taunton as a whole, is long-term and correctly identifies the essential components. It understands that this vision is just the first part in a process of delivery. The process doesn’t end with the Delivery Plan or even delivery itself but with the benefits we’ll get from realising the vision. It is deliverable and it is realistic if we commit to it and stick at it over some years. Last, it recognises that engagement, buy-in and partnerships will be essential. In summary, I think we need to do two things to make the Garden Town succeed. Full Council needs to endorse this vision as SWT policy. Portfolio Holders here and the Strategy team need to make a delivery plan that will realise this vision. We all need to build the public’s strong support so far into sustained commitment so that we all in partnership will make Taunton’s Garden Town a reality.
The Leader thanked Councillor Williams for his statement.
Councillor Rigby also thanked Councillor Williams for his statement of support and for his exemplary work over the past couple of years on this subject.
Mr Richard Lander made the following statement in relation to Item 8 – Structural Change – Senior Leadership Team
This feels rather like the latest episode of ‘Did no-one think about it?’ Firstly we were told the redundancy bill would be six million pounds not three million because 191 people chose to leave and take the money. You may be told that every job is new so everyone was entitled to leave, did no-one think of that? In any event I question the concept both in principle and in detail. Even if the inputs i.e. the work practices have changed, the outcomes, the services you provide to taxpayers, are exactly the same as they ever were.
We were then told that so many people left there were holes in the establishment. Did no-one think of that? Did no-one think to tell those who needed to know? I phoned the Customer Contact Centre to ask for the Chief Executive’s email address so that I could discuss the redundancy issue with him. I was given instead the email address of his assistant to whom I wrote two emails. I didn’t receive a reply to either, for the simple reason that the individual in question no longer worked for the Council. The Customer Contact Centre was obviously not told. Did no-one think of that?
You have six or seven Heads of Function. Now you want four new Directors costing £100k each with a net cost of £254k. This is yet another case of ‘Did no-one think of that?’ Is there really no-one in this building who can select a shortlist of candidates? Do you not know what you want? Must we the taxpayers pay an additional £75k just to recruit an agency which has the competence? You are adding a new layer of management – for what purpose?
The recent record in drafting job descriptions shows a carelessness about duplication. The role of your case manager is to ‘act as a single point of contact throughout the customer journey.’ The role of the customer champion is to have direct contact with customers and the locality champion is to provide much of the direct dealing with customers. If the customer champion and the locality champion have so much to do with the customer, what is the point of a case manager as a single point of contact? And if Members want to know what is happening, they don’t ask any of these, they ask someone called an Engagement Champion. It seems a nonsense, all the time and effort in creating new structures and you finish up with several people doing the same job, or did someone not think of that? And are you satisfied that this will not be repeated with the appointment of new directors?
Mr Simon Lord had submitted the following statement in relation to Item 8 – Structural Change – Senior Leadership Team which was read out by the Committee Clerk:-
As a resident of West Somerset I am very concerned about the value for money represented by this proposal.
Having recently seen the loss of West Somerset District Council (WSDC), in order to save relatively modest sums of money, it greatly concerns me that a bloated management team is seemingly being created by Somerset West and Taunton Council (SWT), which far exceeds that with which WSDC previously managed and other councils have in place.
I have two specific issues regarding the proposal:
Firstly, there is no indication within this report to explain how these salaries have been arrived at nor how they compare to those in similar authorities. The salary seems to have been plucked from the air.
The committee may be interested to know that in South Somerset; an authority of similar size and population who I understand operate the same business model to SWAT, they list within their statement of accounts for 2018/19 only 5 employees earning in excess of £50k per year (a Chief Exec on £111k, three directors on £77k each and a legal specialist on £59k). By contrast SWAT report they currently have 8 senior managers earning in excess of £50k, which will rise to 12 if the proposals within this report are approved. That makes SEVEN senior managers (or 60% more) than South Somerset, and director salaries more than 20% greater at SWAT that South Somerset. How is this value for money?
Secondly, in 2013 when WSDC started sharing managers with TDBC, the salaries of Directors and Assistant Directors were increased to reflect the added complexity of managing two councils. This was based on evidence gathered by South West Councils of salaries from other councils that were sharing management and was included within the report (available on your website).
Given, that since that time the number of councils and staffing have both reduced there seems little justification for director salaries rising a further 20%?
It is clear that the reported 25% reduction in staff is causing operational backlogs and difficulties at SWAT. With this in mind, is the answer to these capacity issues really to spend £400k per year on an additional layer of management? or could the money not be far better used increasing the number of planners, call handlers, groundsmen etc?
I would respectfully ask the committee to defer approval of this report in order to allow time for these proposals to be properly scrutinised and for an independent piece of work to be undertaken to review the numbers and salaries of the SWAT management team, drawing on comparisons across local government to ensure an informed decision can be made and value for money achieved.
The Leader thanked Mr Lander for his question. She stated that Mr Lord would receive a written response as he was unable to be in attendance.
She certainly understood, and her opinion had been widely reported
in regards to the Transformation process and the overspend. Having taken office she had been surprised at the figures having needed to be spent, despite having been previously an opposition Councillor. The priority now was to stabilise the Council. She apologised for the lack of response from the CEO’s former Assistant who had since departed.
James Hassett stated that the Job Descriptions as highlighted were relatively generic. Ultimately they relied on a certain degree of maturity in the organisation to operate in the way that the model was described. As an organisation we were going through that growth to arrive at those periods of maturity. In the interim, we are looking at how we operate in an efficient manner across various roles and functions. People had been seeking that clarity on those job descriptions but this would crystallize over time. At the moment the focus was on delivering for customers as a priority. As to how jobs would allegedly interact in the future, that will come to what we are focusing on which is that specialists such as our planners are delivering their service in a way that anybody would expect from a Local Authority.