Transcript

Good afternoon, today is the 10th of June and it's 2pm and we are starting the comment over you and scooting panel. My name is Tony Miller, I'm the chairman of the panel and we will first introduce ourselves who is here today. We'll start, I'll start on it. Yeah, so I'm Councillor Eleanor Marshall and I am a Councillor for Arrow Valley West in Redwich. Councillor Natalie Macbeth, County Councillor for the north and trinity division. Tony Miller, chairman. Samantha Morris, secretary of the democratic services. Good afternoon everyone, I'm Karen May, the cabinet member of the community and I represent the Kent Hills division. I am an apparent and this is part of the community. I'm Ms. Bedford, I'm from Strengthener community and we have a press officer at the side of the room. Thank you. Welcome everybody. Members of interest, are there any? No. Public participation, we have no members of the public here today so we will continue to item number four, confirm the minutes of previous meeting and that would have been the 24th of March, I believe. 26th of March. 26th of March, thank you very much. Would you like me to give you apologies? Yes please. We've got apologies from Councillor Richard Dudaal and cabinet member Mark Hart. Thank you very much. Welcome Karen. Good afternoon chairman. We are going to slightly change the agenda so we will be looking at the volunteers for the stopping agenda. Thank you very much. Would you like me to kick off? Please. Yes, thank you very much and thank you for your invitation to come along to corporate the communities earlier this afternoon. The paper before you is about Bush to your volunteers. Volunteering is really really important because the data in the paper sticks out. We built it one day here to help in the post Covid-19 world and I really want to start off by saying a massive thank you to all the volunteers that go out there and volunteer their services to enable our residents of Worcestershire to have better outcomes in their lives. Volunteering not only has a positive impact in the services we deliver across the whole of the public sector but it also has a positive impact on the health of the individual from a health and wellbeing perspective. We know it breaks down the barriers and prevention of social isolation. People learn whole new skill sets and they interact. Most importantly at the end of the day they go home with that feel good feeling from what they've done. I'm running on over now to Hannah Perrett as the assistant director for this area to take through the paper in in depth detail but happy to take any questions. Although I'm clearly appointed I have laid a bed and read this paper which is a really good paper and I want to thank the ladies from my left for all the work they've put into it. Thanks Karen. So very brief in terms of the details but just to go on and say thanks to all the volunteers particularly those that work within the community service and within libraries, museums etc. You couldn't function without them so I think it's important particularly because it was volunteer week last week to put on that call thanks to all of the participation that we see within the county clinical services. But there is more of a story to tell so thank you for inviting us to come back. We came previously particularly within the pitch help phase of the development. We've moved on since then. It's a positive story to tell and I'm going to hand over to Lisa to just summarize the paper. So as you can see there as Hannah said the previous discovery gets health focused and we're seeing in the 15/16 months since we last came it has changed significantly. So obviously the first part of the paper is the transition away from here to help. That was the COVID response. We neutralized that particularly around clinics. That was the huge contribution of those volunteers named but we didn't take the decision that we needed to leave away from that as we did not have. But the need for that level of volunteer within the here to help service. So you'll see that in the board we have just over a thousand people on the database but they haven't been active for kind of very quite a while actually. And so we offered them lots of opportunities to get involved in case volunteering with other volunteer centres and also be passed on to the NHS National Response Scheme. So you can see there the numbers. We did have 60 people that came back to go to different internal teams in the case of 59 who passed their details on to go to the volunteer centres. We weren't able to track the NHS responders because we decided to go to that service but that means there are volunteers in Worcestershire that volunteer actually for the NHS response service so we do know that but we don't have the volume and everything that we would like but we are working with them on the app. But obviously we've been inclined moving forward into new areas of work around volunteering. You can see there we still very, very got a really strong base of kind of volunteers in there. So direct delivery work again, well over a thousand volunteers working out in communities in the green space team, much the way it seems that as we know practically doing supporting their communities day in day out, libraries, health walks, all of those areas where we know that they're contributing lots of things throughout case number. We've also developed some new areas. So Coroners is quite a new one because obviously that service came in quite recently so they asked to develop a piece of volunteers with that service and engagement. So we are now growing that co-production engagement with residents so we now have volunteers that are involved in that area. So we also have a huge number that are involved in less direct so not kind of practical support but the viewport panel of this again, well over 4,000 people and there's about 50% response rates every time service go out so then we get about a 50% response rate. We don't know which 50% because they're all organized but we get a good return on those service that are going out. And the public health champions, again 1,500 of those that are in their communities promoting those public health messages. So sticking in there can be over, I think I checked, it's close to 7,000 and 6,000 that much. So a large contribution to obviously our personal activity and we just put in there under 0.10 just some examples of the financial contributions that we were paying the people. I'd like to do some of the activities so the archaeology service, it's around 45,000, 11,500 for the archaeology service, 25,000 for museum and rooms over the last financial year so we will change and facilitate their roles. We want to do more of that to be able to demonstrate the new value value that the role it is bringing and we are looking at ways in which we can do that with our colleagues in the case that managed volunteers. We also have a huge amount of voluntary work that happens outside of the council directly but through our commission services. I put an example in there just what I know from the report that sticks in my mind. So it's a nice oyster, over half a million pounds worth of value of volunteer activity and that's just one citizen's advice that we have for all. So you start to add up the actual financial contribution, the work that these volunteers are doing that's bringing to our community. We have also got a, I think this is in the previous report as well but we did that in this group, the internal group of staff that are managing volunteers in the council. It's important for them to come together, support each other with many challenges, help each other with recruitment. We're going to the Worcester volunteer fair on Friday, we've got the waste volunteer lead coming and a member of my team and we promote everybody's volunteer activities so we are all doing our bit to support each area that needs to recruit volunteers. Externally we've also been doing quite a bit of work since I last came so we've established a volunteer leads meeting which is kind of leads from statutory sector and voluntary sector and volunteering. So we've got NHS fairs, we've got the acute and the healthcare trust, the RCP, we've got the police, fire, ambulance and we've got our voluntary sector, We Can which are the network of local volunteer centres. We come together quarterly, we talk collaboratively about shared priorities, again any challenges. Really interesting discussion at the last meeting between, from the NHS saying how can we recruit a volunteer that has no proof of being able to work in the UK but they want to volunteer. So volunteer centres and we chatted that through so some really practical, pragmatic support to each other as well. I also meet quarterly with that voluntary sector network, We Can as well, from a council point of view to make sure that we all remember what each other is doing and we can work on shared priorities. And the kind of final bit really is about projects that we've been working on. So we have been working through the VCSD Alliance and undertaking some mapping of the voluntary sector so we've undertaken a mapping exercise which is using the next basis of voluntary sector organisation results in charity commission, company size, those kinds of things. And that is showing that there's just under 3,000 organisations normally part of the VCSD. That number is much higher because as yet we haven't identified any of those that are unregistered but we are working on that. We're about to launch a survey of the voluntary sector as well to understand their needs and challenges and that will include volunteering and volunteer recruitment and retention will absolutely be one part of that. The other project that we've just started working on is the accelerated reform fund. We've been given grants of £30,000 from the department of health and social care to develop a county-wide volunteer portal and that is for everybody across the health and care system. It's not a council portal, it will be for everybody. So we have a shared approach and one place to go and we wanted to really link that back as well with businesses and helping them, facilitating their corporate and kind of social responsibility and getting them volunteering more in their local communities rather than taking any of us somewhere else out of the area. So we've got that in there as well. And that's how they'll change their volunteers. So just a quick kind of overview of where we're at really. I'll just add to that that there is a real importance in a strong, well-coordinated voluntary sector within Worcestershire, particularly with the pressures that we're seeing with the analysis of children's social care and the prevention agenda and supporting people to live and age well and the voluntary sector playing a massive part in that. So it is in our interest as the county council and the place leader to really support our voluntary sector to thrive and be sustainable. So all of the work that we're doing with the BTSC Alliance, just across the chair and chair of that, will go some way to strengthen that sector to make sure that it is a really key partner in the ICB's integrated care for the system because the voluntary sector has got a huge hard play in supporting individuals to be independent, say at home, doing well in sector, all the things that we know are close to our hearts in terms of our corporate plan. So the work that Lisa does and other parts of my area just goes some ways. There's always more that we can do but we have to make sure that we're there to support. Thank you Hannah. I believe we've got a couple of questions. Emma? I do understand from reading that it involves why here to help was disbanded. However, I did feel a bit of a regress that there wasn't the opportunity for us to scrutinise that decision and play a part in the change over to what we had. So was that something that had gotten through the cabinet or is it a delegate's responsibility to make that decision? So you've got to steer from believing in the chief care. So it wasn't a decision as such, a kind of formal public decision, but we have a SID to do that. The pragmatic element was here to help was wedded to the kind of moving response and we've just moved past that and the relationships and conversations that we were having, particularly with the weekend networks, the group of volunteers and volunteer centres, was how can we do it with them rather than doing it ourselves, et cetera. So that was the front-back of the panel. So that, well not public decisions as such, but is there a specific point? Yeah, the demand for that service, the drop-top sequence. Yeah, so back in the day of COVID, which just seems ages away, doesn't it, but not as well, the majority of volunteers were helping with the COVID vaccination and they absolutely had to punch in terms of that relation to the value that they had. And then at the kind of very early stages in terms of partnering volunteers up with individuals to do shopping and things like that. But we moved on from that and there wasn't the need to run, they just let it wander on the path, we wanted to do something proactive and promote volunteering opportunities within the council and beyond in order to keep that network as a possible. There was also a number of volunteers that were able to volunteer because they already worked and weren't working at the time, but because people went back to work, that meant those members were moving as well. So we kind of went with the times, in terms of what happened to them. And I think throughout all of that, and certainly in the area that I'm aware of, I'm involved in the household, it's a big network, I can bring it alongside all that anyway, so that you could kind of unpose people to what they could make a network, so you'd be that big friend in that shop in fact. I think from my perspective, Karen, you talked about the benefits to wellbeing and being involved in volunteering and those of us that volunteer would absolutely agree with that because there's nothing better than giving the five of them a community or an individual. And I'm sure if we kind of made that clear enough when we were talking about recruiting volunteers, I know it's good for skills, we had this conversation earlier, it's good for UCB, it's good for skills, it's good for the university, et cetera, et cetera. But really, it's got to be your own wellbeing, it's brilliant, and it's good to see the numbers of people you've got volunteering, but have you got any stories about how it's impacted on them, you know, that more personal kind of feedback from people that we could be sharing to say this is good for you. We have, and there will be in other areas, because we did do that as part of the peer to help, so we did have volunteers, we got to do them as a case study as part of the press release that we did, so we did do that as part of the peer to help. I will have to go away, I'm not sure that other teams will absolutely do this, I just don't have that. If I can, Chairman, I know some of you in the house team may have experiences around the health and wellbeing agenda and how successful that's been, but we could do that. It's a really good idea to roll it out to how it benefits you, benefits society, and that would be a good factor. I think it's a good idea. If you bring anything to life, it's the right thing to do, rather than just hang paper. There are some really good examples, I've seen an individual that works within our museum, so he volunteered at the beginning, it's actually just the kind of social element, he's now with everybody, and actually that kind of isolation and being able to come into a workshop and do what he loves doing, he had a lot of other people, and it's a really important part in keeping him working. We've got some, we know, cracking. I'd love everyone else to know it, we've got some cracking. The coroner service. So the particular volunteering element of my coroner's point of view is when we're running court sessions, doing the meeting green, the support in terms of the cabinets that are coming in, just being on hand to navigate people around the court. So it's an average value rather than kind of a particular service, which are run by paid officers. So it's just kind of adding that additionality to the system, like cleaning the rooms, get them green, and I can definitely work the court to be a good person. I know the LECS team are very active, and very active in the shopping centres around the county, and they do a very good job in all that they do. So do you find you get enough support in letting everybody know what's going on? Media-wise, do you get it? I'll remember when there's an election. Yes, I think there is an element, and again, back to Councillor Fais, there's always more that you can do. Our FES team are really good at promoting opportunities, et cetera. Then there's a piece of work that we wanted to do internally to look at how we support our own staff to volunteer in their own time, but actually support the opportunities for our own staff, so we find the well-being aspect that we've got. And also to keep in mind that it's the crisis, because when Lisa first came into place to look at this, you would have libraries, museums, country parks right-of-way, all doing things slightly different, but we're all one organisation. And so there's, we're working on a corporate response to our volunteers. Actually, that's something that we traditionally will achieve up to three to do. So there's some work there that you need to stream on. And also enable volunteers to move around services as well, where the volunteers, all the pieces, and being successful in getting some funding will help out actually on a much broader scale in terms of opportunity. Many shapes. Do you? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, not necessarily directly, but I think there are things in our particular services that are in the community services directory, so there's a number that are registered through that, and that's the organisation that we would absolutely be able to be engaging with from a peer portal and then for volunteers to help and run their activities. There are a growing group, you know, 10 years ago they didn't exist, and now they're there. There's a lot of them, and there are really great. So yes, we would actually want to work with nationally as a network to get our portal to them so that they can use it and be able to tell their stories as well as part of that portal at that training point. We want to have case studies on them and good news stories to tell people. There is somebody that, you know, lives in your community that has done this to keep reinforcing that list, to find the benefits to volunteering, think of you as an individual and to your team. I think where it's helpful actually as well is the point around being able to see, you've got a similar idea, so I know for example Men in Sheds in my division, a new group is trying to set up a Men in Sheds group and then connect with another Men in Sheds group outside of my division. I think being able to see that, see their experiences and engage with that is really useful because it means a lot of people, when they have these ideas for engaging their community or starting a new voluntary organisation, they're very rarely going to be the first person to ever do it in Worcestershire. So by being able to connect all these people together, you're sharing information, you're sharing knowledge, you're sharing learning and that just speeds up the process and allows them to self-propagate rather than everyone starting from scratch. Yeah, thank you. One of my questions was going to be on comms and we've kind of answered my thoughts. One of my things was, last week was the credit action for sending those for comms out on volunteering, but it didn't. Was that then? Because GDE has paid for everything and if not, can we have the next year off? Obviously, I think the problems you are looking at, I think it's about, but then also I wanted to ask is when you volunteer for the other hours, is there the ability for them to say, pay back any expenses that they might incur to make it available for people who might otherwise be financially unable to volunteer? So there are, and we're trying to work on, again, as part of the policy that we're trying to kind of make it a more broad approach, but some teams do things slightly differently, so we're just in the process of trying to understand what everybody's process is, which we've got that now, but there are some slight differences, so we just need to work through trying to make it equal so that whichever team you're volunteering in, your expenses processed and the kind of eligibility is the same. It's not a straight call, as you might think, unfortunately, but it's absolutely on your agenda to be able to work that through. Just something that might come up, because it usually does when you're talking about volunteering and redundancy and kind of a conversation with an expert in a way. There would be people that say, will the volunteers be paid for the people that have just been paid? So like cons, we can talk about cons often, quite a sticky issue. I mean, I know in my experience working for the county council, it doesn't happen, but there's still a way that I feel that it will, so I'm guessing we're prepared to still explain the differences. I absolutely agree with you, Councillor Mcveigh. I think it's a question for Mr Taylor that's sat outside. You make a role redundant. You don't make that individual. In terms of volunteering, this is the add-on. This is what we've just had an administration around Coroners Court. It's that person, sadly, with a box of tissues on the shoulder there just to support. I agree. I know that in libraries that we manage about doing people volunteering to support the civil media challenge every year, because the number of children are coming through the doors. So it is absolutely funny, I know, but I've just known that from the end of all that. So the actual financial benefit to Worcestershire has got to be well over probably approaching a billion and a half? Yes, considerably. Way more than that? Yes. We've just got to work, being able to start with understanding the council and then work that up. So we are looking at various online tools to capture that return on investment. So over the next year, we are going to explore how we can better do that so we can give you more. Yes, but we know it's going to be in the millions after the evening. We're counting up to what you put in here, and that was over 600,000. Yes, and that's just a snapshot. One of the other things that we have been doing, bearing in mind that we procure and contract with a number of large organisations, the social value of that contract, is how do we strengthen that social value element and link it into our Robinshire community. So whatever we're agreeing contract-wise, whether that's through a runway or being a large of organisations, then really do that's at the heart of what we need it to be. That's connected. We've got some work to do on that. To not say we've got some work to do, but that is the goal and to really make sure that we continue convulsing with the Robinshire community. Thank you. One more. Is it across open children's and families, but whilst we're here, do you go into schools, specifically colleges and sixth ones, where people might be thinking about getting advice on careers, about the benefits of their CPGs, or going through a one-year-old furnace? Is that something we are doing? I know we had this on our own, but I guess the beauty of the breadth of the community service, the skills and investments team sits with me, and then you've got the volunteering element, and there is the connectivity in that. You've got a lot of what you've had to choose from. A lot of that happens in the schools. In the settings, actually, there is that link there. Part of the learning offer is to support young people that are coming through, which progression for volunteering is accepting to do that. That's absolutely there. There's always more that we can do, but yes, that is happening, and particularly in areas of disadvantage. Kevin, would you like to maybe look 12 months ahead, and invite you all back to say how the things have progressed, and the actual quality value of the overall monetary value to Worcestershire would be very nice. Absolutely happy to do that. I don't think it's just the monetary outcome. I think it's the outcomes in the entirety of what we keep ice as well. When Katia Mosher spoke about schools in the Duke of Edinburgh, that's a really good programme of work that enables people to do their voluntary contribution, and at the end of it, achieve a level skill set. They can take more into their future careers. There's lots of opportunities out there, but I'd be delighted to come back if I can't really jump into elections. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. We're still recording. We're still on the recording. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm coming, everyone seems to be leaving. We are recording at the moment. Thank you, Richard Taylor. Thank you, Richard Taylor, for coming to report on the bifurcation of the redundancy scheme. Richard, thank you for allowing Karen to come first. Thank you very much. So, over to you. So, I think, as usual, I've done a report, so I didn't intend going for every point, so I'm probably just going to cover a few key areas, really, and then food-check, I'll say Karen, and just invite questions and then points of clarification. So, we previously talked about this at other panels, so I guess this is a fairly short pause, because you've been on a bit of that journey, and then really bringing it to a point of, now the scheme is closed, what's been the, I suppose the outcome of that in relation to our budget commitments and how that all plays out. So, that's the overview of what I was going to try and do. I mean, as a little bit of background, Council and Worcestershire Children's First, which is a Council owned company, in November 23, employed around 2,743 full-time equivalents. So, the headcount will be a lot higher, but that's the EFT, which is what we tend to use as a measure. We faced a significant financial overspend, which you'll be aware of through the setting of the budget and through the number of actions that have subsequently followed. I guess at the time, in the backdrop, when we launched the scheme, we had a projected net overspend forecast of around 22 million, just over 22 million. So, therefore, I think it's fair to say that we faced a significant challenge, and so one of the things we considered really is how we could look at some workforce initiatives to essentially meet some of those financial challenges. So, one of the things that we discussed and therefore agreed to launch was the voluntary redundancy scheme. It wasn't a scheme without any provisions. The scheme was quite clear that there were a number of provisions to be met, and I'll probably touch on just a couple of those so that you've got assurance as to how it wasn't, you know, probably the wrong set to launch a free-for-all approach with people just going forward and essentially exiting the organisation. It definitely wasn't. From the onset, I would say that both in leading up to launching the scheme, in launching the scheme, throughout the scheme and on closure of the scheme, we engaged with our recognised trade unions, because this is something that all of us, you know, share the view which is impacting the workforce. So, every single opportunity, I led conversations with our recognised trade unions, which is GMB and Unison, and they both helped design scheme provisions and kept up data throughout so that they no need for the impact. So, I think that's something that we always wanted to do. So, we agreed to set up a panel approach so that we could consider the impact of all of those that would apply across the whole council, rather than necessarily a previous scheme or another organisation that would run it through each of their functional areas or directorates. We chose not to do that. And essentially, the scheme was quite clear. Everyone had the right to apply, but not to be granted redundancy. And so, right from the onset, we did exempt some post because one of the experiences not being, you know, in this, in HR, dealing with certain centres of workforce for a number of years is never underestimate the impact of someone taking a very key decision to want to potentially look at what exiting an organisation. And then being told, well, you can't. There's suddenly motivation drops as a field of if they're declined. So, what we felt at the start of the scheme was be open that we, for example, could not afford to delete social workers from our establishments. So, right at the beginning, it was on the basis that they would be exempt from applying for the scheme. So, and that's just one example I've set out there. There were a number of others where we made that position clear. So, that was all put in. We had particular eligibility criteria, including cost. So, this was a scheme that wasn't, you know, a sense of, you know, the approved cost factor as well, which we applied. And of course, what I would say is, as a council, we have a capped redundancy scheme anyway. So, we actually capped our redundancy payments of £50,000 as a maximum. That's something that lots of authorities don't do, but we've always had that in place here. So, overall, we've had 192 applications across the council and company, WCF. Of those 192, at the cessation of the scheme, and that's what this report sets out, 86 were approved. Those are set out within paragraph 20. The areas that those were essentially deleted from. The majority, you'll see, are from support services. And I always set out to be referred to as the naming service, but they're well-recognised as being support services, essentially being chief executive units and commercial and change in those areas. And that's testament to the thing, really, at the start of the scheme, we were clear that if you're fulfilling the front line role, it's very unlikely we're going to be able to delete those due to demand increasing the majority of those areas, which is probably where we face some of these financial challenges. So, that was set through. Overall, the scheme, I put some costs. So, the annual saving of the scheme, if you will, it will be in around £2.8 million. So, it's just over £2.8 million that essentially were posted through the panel were approved and through the relevant directors was agreed with, essentially be offered as a saving towards our overall savings target. Couple of extra things not written here. We did make clear throughout that because the financial challenges were fell £23.24, we wanted to realise the full year effect. And so, in all cases, we indicated that we would want the exit to be by 31st of March. Now, that did create some operational difficulty because in a number of examples, we ended up essentially approving issuing contractual notice and the first exiting. So, you know, it was quite a quick turnaround, but important in terms of realising those savings. So, that's probably the summary I was going to give. I can expand on any point or if you think there's something missing, please let me know and I'll expand on that as well. I'll stop there and check. [inaudible] No. So, really good question. I'll try and explain what I was going to say. So, the 2.8 million, I'll just say, is the reduction in the revenue budget moving forward. So, we get that year on, year out, because essentially if the posters are deleted, that becomes an ongoing saving for the effects moving forward. The one-off costs of that will have been paid for in '23/'24, which set out in the budget when we finalised the budget for '23/'24. And that's why we decided we wanted everyone to have left by 31st of March, because we were able to pay it off as a one-off cost in '23/'24. Realised full recurring saving moving forward from '23/'24 onwards. So, the 2.8 million is future savings, not the one-off cost. Thank you. I just wanted to drill down a little bit into where people were named. Oh, yes. And, of course, in all ages, I know that people are going to be concerned when they leave the conclusion support services. So, I wanted to, kind of, have some reassurance for people who might see this and be concerned that how is this going to actually best for frontline services of those three, including the support services. And there might be other ones in here which are similar. So, you've got child protection and proof of care for people, early health children in need, function of the law, aid people. So, it's those people, and it's down to the place that they're quite frontline, and you've said they're not frontline. If you could expand a bit more. Yeah, I mean, it will, the way I approach it right now, it will be from my services you've picked up. So, it's, you know, if you look at child protection through care or inclusion, it will be within a frontline provision. The role would not be fulfilling the frontline role. So, as an example, it may be that there was an administration role, where when they looked it out, said we could lose the number of people. So, it would be, you know, it's correct, it would have been in the service house we've indicated, but the assessments, which would, and if I just run through the rigour we went through on that, the relevancy of strategic directors will have spoken to their team managers or assistant directors to those service areas. They will have looked at their request to say, can they improve that? That then went to strategic directors and then went to a panel with recommendations as well. And then the panel also then considered, are we able to delete those posts? Any doubt over impacts on frontline provision, that decision once being made, we would have set those away to be further explored. And that's what did happen in a number of cases. So, a number of panels were held and in these sorts of examples, we were sent back to say, is there any impact, ultimately, to frontline provision? So, I think really important, you know, I was one of those panel members and I can absolutely assure you that's the reason we went through. If we were in doubt, we went away and we cleared it. It was never approved until we, you know, recognised, can the post absolutely be deleted and did it have any form of impact? If so, how is that impact going to be left? So, I'd be confident seeing the frontline provision, it isn't one of those frontline roles. So, just picking up on that then, no impact in terms of increased caseloads for the people that are left in those teams to come and pick up? There may be, I wouldn't mislead, there may be a short load impact around caseload, but whilst they, you know, what we looked at is how do you mitigate that? So, how has it become manageable moving forward? That could be a change of process, it could be a change of service in terms of, you know, you may, this probably isn't a live example, but you could open 20 minutes later that essentially see you're able to still provide the service. So, those are the sort of scenarios we went through, but it wouldn't in any scenario mean that that frontline role would have been impacted long term. So, I'm assuming that this will be limited and evaluated three months, six months down the line, check on things like sickness levels within teams? Yeah, I mean, we monitor that AD level, which is where this primarily, it's a quarterly basis, but we have a monthly report that then goes with if we see a significant increase, for example. So, we would look at that as a ongoing, but separate to just the basis of this being a VR exercise. And that's where the other work that you've done with the staff on their mental health and resilience within the workforce, personally, that's how all that comes in. Because it was looked at before, Jen, and like, well, you know, welcome to the role, by the way, I should have said that earlier. But that, we wanted very much to save that funding for that, those works that you do, because they are so important on morale. And I just wanted to say again, I'm really pleased with that, and I have been saying that those who remain with us, again, are really still kind of, they're probably of a choice, because I think that service is as important as it gets. Absolutely, and I know you've supported me in the past, and it's really grateful for that, because we know the impact. I mean, our sickness absence at Q4 at the end of this year is 7.3 days per employee. That's, you know, beats best practice elsewhere, has improved down, you know, absence levels by about 1.2 days a year, and that's through that investment. It makes a huge difference about resilience and physical absence and attendance. So it does all culminate, even though they're separate schemes. [inaudible] So if your redundancy, essentially for the vast majority, you know, the pension is a separate fund, so it's Worcestershire, you know, it's a pension fund administered by Casper versus a separate fund. And so anyone who applied for, you know, redundancy would receive that pension in full without induction. That's one of the reasons a lot of people apply. There was, what I would say though, and it's a small number, it was a capital scheme. So one of the things that we allowed under the scheme is if, for example, you know, scheme provisions where the cost could not exceed 24 month salary. So if you think about it on that basis, when they've got a capped redundancy scheme of 50K, but a number of people applying with long service that would have quite excessive pension costs. Now, if that exceeded the 24 months cost, we did have a conversation with them about forgoing some of the redundancy so that they could then still access the scheme. And it was still affordable for the council. That's one of the things that we've done, which may have impacted overall some of those that came forward, their financial package at the end of that. It was taken up by a number of people, so I think it's fair to say, you know, the vast majority of us always looked at pension. And so, as I say, conversations then took place about whether they wanted to forgo our redundancy costs and our table cuts. So to a degree, the pensions can allow full access without reduction. I'm just quick to go on to that other end of the spectrum, I suppose. I'm assuming you've got a breakdown with the age of people, whether there are lots of younger people at the start of their careers that have gone, or older people at the end of their careers, and whether they'll be gaining their knowledge from within teams and things like that to some extent. So, yeah, how does that work? Yeah, I mean, so to get to the work, you know, we know as a demographic of our workforce, we buy a different demographic. So we have a long length of service. I mean, great things for the council. You know, our average length of service is about nine years. Most organisations, that's four or five. So we've got a significant, you know, degree of loyalty to the organisation. The workforce age is, the average workforce age is quite significant, some areas, you know, in terms of older workforce. And because I guess what you get is older workforce, longer service, the costs are higher. Because that's of course where you get to move forward. The redundancy and pension is often based on length of service and, you know, the amounts of time you've been paying in your pension scheme. So there was, you know, been a number of cases of concern around certain people that may have applied then leaving in terms of deleting that post for their knowledge loops. And that was a consideration. So now I said at the beginning, really, everyone had the right to apply, but the council also had the right to not grant that and refuse the application. And on some cases, that was what happened. You know, it was felt that we could not afford to delete that post for that person in it. Particularly during the relatively short timescales of everyone having to go at the end of the financial year. That's it, that's it, you lose the knowledge. The scheme did allow, and I should say that the scheme did allow slight extension where there were exceptional circumstances. So that was with the permission of the chief executive and that allowed an individual stay till the end of June at the very latest. We did have a couple that were accepted. One of those examples, because I know it was in my team so I'll be very open about that, they were undertaking a piece of work that was absolutely essential. So whilst we could grant redundancy, they, by exemption, were approved to stay till the end of June. Really good to have that flexibility. It is. It means we can meet really critical areas of work. A few months on from this, I know obviously we have a couple who are still going to be with us while we're going in this month. But by now, you may have been able to see how it's affected the mood of the organisation morale. And within that, when are we going to be undertaking another survey to see those effects? Do you have an anecdotal one for people to get a really good view on how this has affected morale and the attitude amongst staff? Is that going to be undertaken soon or is it going to be the next one? Perfect question. We're actually in the middle of it. So we just launched, well, say that we're due to close in a week. So we've launched our annual survey that literally closes the end of, towards the end of this week. So around 16th. And that's why we'll be testing all of that. So it's a standard survey. We use Utrecht, so we test their motivation, energy on the job. And then we ask all of our questions around, well, you know, morale, do you enjoy work, etc, etc. So all of that is something we'll have at the end of this month. So that's the first one. The way I'll describe the other part of the question is demand hasn't decreased. So, you know, when people leave, you feel it. I mean, that's the reality. There's very little resource that isn't being utilised. So I think whether it be in a team that loses one or loses 15, they have felt the impact of losing those key members. So to say demand hasn't dropped. What we've been doing, I think as a leadership team, as assistant directors and directors, is really working with those teams to say, how can we do things slightly differently? That means we can cope with that same level of, well, increase that demand with that small amount of resource. And in most cases, I think we've been very successful. I can't say we've got there yet. And we're still looking at what's that impact, as you say, three months after. But generally, we seem to have moved forward. But survey, absolutely key to see if we've got it right. And for us when we're doing our work present length, when will that be ready for us to bring in so we can make sure we've got it in the work? Yeah, absolutely. So we tend to. So I think it's a say at the end of this week, we close this. We then usually have around a month whereby the organisation analyses those results. We take that to SLT, our chief officer groups who look at what our organisational outcomes or actions are going to be around that. So I would say usually around all this September time is when we start to have full analysis in Power BI, an organisational action plan saying what are our key findings and what we're going to do about it. And then we start a programme with our workforce to essentially say, here's what we're thinking, here's the things we think are prominent and here's what we intend to do. Within that survey, can you identify other people, what those personnel have had their attitudes from 37 to 35? Because some of them are all there and it's a little bit kinked really. We still haven't concluded on 35 to 37, the working hours consultation yet. So first of all, we haven't concluded that. It's around, it's less than six per cent of the workforce. Why we say is in terms of it is an anonymous survey and it's so important to have an anonymous annual survey. So people feel safe in terms of giving us that feedback, good, positive or indifferent. We know where the impact, the way I describe it, we know where the impact of the working hours consultation is. We know where the responses of the Your Voice survey comes back by direction. So we can almost get a feel for, well, if we know this group mostly represents a PEA, what the survey will show. But it very much is anonymous. We can't identify by individual. We do look by direction and functional areas. So we sort of know where, we know where everyone is, but we will never identify by individual. Because I've seen the stats surveys come through. So if I filled that survey out, then you wouldn't have looked at me? No, I've done lots of them. I worked with them well beyond the average. I came up with the cancer thing. That's so good. Yeah, I think that's it, yeah. I mean, there are things happening, aren't there, at the moment, that are affecting the building, maybe not having a regular working plan. So be interested to see whether you pick up some trends. I would be amazed, I'd be worried if it doesn't pick up on staff are anxious around the budget, anxious around working on the locations, anxious around some of the things that we're seeing nationally around local authority funding, for example. I think all of that would be really surprising if that doesn't show in the two year survey. Yeah, I've noticed in IT, when you speak to a guy in IT, that there's a definite care of, we're not going to be financed. Difficult. Challenging times as well, I think. Yeah, in light of increased costs elsewhere, yeah. So really, I think this survey issue is probably going around most of the board, so certainly since I've been here. More questions? Thank you for that Bridget, and I think I look forward to speaking with you. Yeah, survey results. Yeah, thank you, thanks everyone. We're five minutes late, probably ten minutes late actually, to work for our work programme now. What we have picked up on the work programme is we've asked the volunteers to come back. That's the programme there, and Richard will be updating us in the future as well. We've mentioned about the media, and fitting that into the work programme in the future. Is there anything else? I think it's going to be okay, realistically, before we can get the staff survey in. That looked like quite a full day, but I'm sure in your meetings, we'll be able to look into it. There's a lot on our forward list, so I don't think I'm going to be adding anything more at the moment. That gives us some flexibility, something really important comes up that we want to call in.