Transcript

Good morning everybody and welcome to a meeting of the People, Performance and Development Committee here at Woodhatch on Monday the 9th of September. We are not expecting a file alarm, but if there is one, then please exit in the usual way. So item 1 then, apologies for absence and substitution. So first of all just to confirm that Fiona White has now replaced Will Foster as the Liberal Democrat nomination. I'll be able to join this later or not, but otherwise we'll assume she's apologized. Are there any other apologies? No, everybody else is here. Thank you. Item 2 then, minutes of the previous meeting, which was held on the 9th of April 2024. Those minutes have been circulated. Are those agreed? Agreed. Thank you very much. Item 3 then, declarations of interest. Does any member have an interest to declare in relation to the specific items on this agenda today? No, thank you. Item 4, there are no questions or petitions received, either from members or the public. Item 5, action review. There are no open actions. Who wishes to raise anything on those? We'll just note those. Thank you. Item 6, forward work program. Did somebody want to just... Well, there are two items on the forward work program for the November meeting. For the restructure of the senior management team, I did ask whether this committee just could speak with her about her thinking and her plans. I wasn't able to get it as part of a budget item, if it could be sort of a middle range. Absolutely, that's a good suggestion. I think probably we would invite them to the November meeting. There's a lot of activity already in terms of reshaping the corporate leadership team, the senior that I imagine will come to this committee over the coming weeks. So I think it would, I would certainly hope by the 14th of November that there would be clarity on the shape of our senior team. So I think if we can. OK, thank you. In that case, that's item 6. Item 7 then is the paid policy statement. 24/25. I mean, largely this is a reflection of sort of the update on the agreed resignation scheme. Mars, as it's formerly known, which was an approved policy that we took to PPDC in January. We recommend the report to the next council meeting, which is on the 8th of October 2024. Thank you. Item 9, then update on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Surrey County Council. And this is in large part following the LGA peer review that we had. So Sarah, would you like to introduce it? We recognize the diverse needs of different groups of employees. And there were some recommendations around ensuring our employees are able to speak from the committee. Well, yes, just before we do that, though, can you just help me in terms of the EDI action plan for 24/25? What is, what is, what are the timelines for that? I mean, is that presumably an ongoing piece of work? On that, because there will be progress being made throughout each quarter. So at the end of the financial year, we could give you a look back over the year in terms of what's being. When you come back, could you do something like an executive summary or the main points, rather than we have to plow through and work our own way and find out what those are? We had to have this information. I fully understand that. But I think my point of view, the next time you come back, we've got the background. We failed to do this. You won't have those in there. We didn't do it quite quickly enough. You know what I mean? It's easier for us to actually get that, even if you wish to. But also then, I think at each of the next committee meetings, just as you describe, it's just an executive summary of kind of those milestones that you hit so that we've got a sort of oversight of how things are moving. Thanks. I was just going to comment, really. I mean, it's although there's work to be done, I think it's worth reflecting that actually the review is really positive. And I think we came out very well as an organization and definitely moving in the right direction. And a lot of this is really difficult because it needs to be embedded into society. It's changing how people look at the world that we live in, which is constantly changing. So it will take time. But I think we're moving in the right direction. It's just now getting everybody on board and just to make this second major rather than to stop. So I know there's some work to be done around the quality assessments to make them again more intuitive and more user friendly, but at the same time to become actually the time rather than it's just there tacked on to the end of the report. So I think it's it's encouraging to see the work we're doing and I look forward to seeing this come back in three or four months time. Your comments completely reflect, maybe not concerned to the comments of Baroness Grey Thompson yesterday, the closure of the Paralympics, whether that's access or whatever. So, yeah, it's a two point well made, but that we are making progress and that we must continue to do. Yeah, and that also ties in with all of the work around the towns and villages roll outs and so on, the public health team and so on. Two or three linked questions. Is this a new person? Is that their only role? And how do they link? I'll come back to this one, but, you know, basically, where they come from, whatever. And I notice you talked about the forum. The other point is if it takes too long to do, that is not about the policy. That is not about the forum. That is not about this person saying this needs to be done. That's a practical thing. And that's over there. That's a team of people who do the work. So how is this? Because you could do all this. Yes, it needs to be done. But if actually the people that do it either don't have the resources or it may be your priority, but it's not ours. Yeah. So so how is the all this going to link in to those who actually do? Mostly with the accessibility forum and the forum brings together the people who are actually doing the work. So our land and property and facilities colleagues. There was a concern by some that in some groups are overrepresented in the formal HR process. You haven't got protected characteristics, but when it comes to us, right, which is we do interviews about that is because who actually says, yes, I'll go on. But but so we can't reflect that thing. But have you picked that up that some people think every time I go, I suspect it's every time I go. Some piece of work around improving our recruitment practices to be more inclusive. So you're absolutely right. We've got the pool to pull from within the organization currently. I just think it's just your politics that is to me. I mean, I could understand if not making them make a statement, but actually is part of their Bible and saying, I swear to do all this. And I think it's not just can you just review that, please? What that what that means. I completely agree. And I think the review was using that. There's a couple of mentioned data collection and there's also on page 98, which is the document from the consultants you use. It's talking about data collection and have we got all the boxes they can tick? I suspect not. So it might be me, but I mean, I know lots of people who just say they don't have to have any disability. I'm not telling the council, I'm not telling that company to make sure that our workforce is representative of our communities. So that is just one way that we will use the data to check that. I don't want to say I don't understand. Do I assume that if in fact you everybody filled it in and you had all those percentages, you would then in your employment thing, in your employment literature, try to use the information for all the while people aren't filling it in. You don't know where the statistics you've got is correct. That's absolutely correct. I want to move the next page on because on page 98, again from the consultants that did the work, they had an interesting or stark opening. It said, and I'm in page 98, I haven't got my computer open, the percentage of people who applied against the actual percentage of people in the organisation. And the stark figure was 75% came through and they were wired. But those are just facts. And unless you interrogate one, the CVs and the letter of application and what they said or didn't say in their interview, it means nothing. In other words, the fact that only 5 or 7% of Asian heritage got through the process, were they overestimating variability, right? Was their CV not good enough? In other words, thank you for the fact, but unless you interrogate the why. Now, do you? This is the key thing, isn't it? And if you have interrogated it, is your assumption that actually... provide a bit more detail about the work that we've done in that space? The point is whether or not we've got a fair process, the statistics. But that's what's of more interest really is, are we being challenged regularly or at all on our process? He says looking at the officers sitting there, three against one. But we can only appoint what we are, what actually reaches us. And I think females are now catching up. Or maybe the quality of the female is going up. But yeah, I just think, again, statistics mean nothing unless we use them. You, we can't beat ourselves up because we are not appointing enough of those, unless we know it's because we are coming or prevents the particular quality of that coming and so on and so forth. You have a huge task with your statistics, I have to say. But it's also just worth reminding ourselves that for the more senior appointments here, that there is a technical, often independent panels or stakeholder panels. There's an independent technical review that's done by an external senior officer in another organization. So there's not just about the interview itself and so on. There is a whole process of making sure that we're looking at the broader skills. But I think what can't be right is to just go down a sort of a quota route to say, actually, we're always going to have expert. That is not, this is about the best candidate and we're giving everybody equal opportunity to apply and to be assessed and interviewed and so on. [inaudible] But I just wonder whether those external panels are equally white, then, you know, yeah, it's not that I'm saying, you know, we must pick people because of their ethnicity. But all I'm saying is that actually the stark figure, you know, these people aren't coming through. We need to. Just moving on from that a bit, if I may. I just want to highlight what I think is a real strength in this paper, actually. And with the adult social care hat on, I'm really pleased to see this with carers and the collection, the recognition, linking to the data point around the importance of collecting data on our employees who do care for family members or friends. And it's a real area of focus within adult social care and a priority area as well. So I was just wondering, will you take this further? You know, we've been working with the carers board, getting them to look at the kind of response that we do and seeing if there's any way that we can strengthen the offer to that particular cohort. Actually, we're quite interested to hear that. So we work really closely with our carers network, so we have one of our inclusive staff networks is contribution our carers make. OK, good. Thank you very much. So I think just sort of taking those points on board, the actual recommendation is to note the progress made and to respond to the recommendations from the EDRUs. Perhaps if we can just put on there something to the effect that this could and others have raised at the next meeting. OK, good. Thank you very much. That, in fact, brings us to the end of the public part of this meeting. So under Section 100A of the Local Government Act 1972, any members of the public will be excluded from the meeting for the following items of business on the grounds. They involve the likely disclosure of exempt information under the relevant paragraph of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act. so on that basis I close the meeting. Thank you very much.