Transcript

Good evening. I'm Ives Williams. I'm your chair this evening. Welcome to the organization and community's scrutiny panel. Please be advised that this meeting will be recorded and posted on the Council's YouTube channel. Can all those speaking ensure you switch on your microphones before addressing the meeting and remember to switch it off when you have finished speaking. Members may have noticed in the new scrutiny report template, which makes it clear that we as a scrutiny panel can make recommendations to the Executive on any of the items being considered today. Please also note that any recommendation will be published as an appendix to the report and that the response from the Director and the cabinet member will be brought back to the next meeting of the panel. Item number one, apologies for absence. I've received apologies from Councillor Hartley who replaces Councillor Pat Greenwell. I've received apologies from Councillor Laksin Laksilden. Are there any other apologies? I see none. Item number two, urgent business. There are no urgent business. Item number three, declaration of interest. Does any member have any personal or financial interest that they wish to declare? I see none. Thank you. Item number four, the minutes of the last meeting. Are members happy to agree the minutes of the meeting held on the 18th of July? Agreed. Item number five, we will have the legal services updates. As I've said before that members can make recommendations and these recommendations will be, the response recommendation will be carried back on to the next meeting. So may I invite Azuka Unruh, the Interim Director for the Legal and Democratic Services and Emma Newby, the Head of Democratic Services and Legal Practice Manager. That's a mouthful. Thank you. Please present your report. Drawing out the main points, specifically any updates in the last, I think the report was held back in May. So any updates since then will be helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. You're quite right, we last came before this panel in May and then we did a verbal update in July. So this focus is really very much on the period since April to bring things up to date. If I can just refer you to paragraph 4.13 of the report and there's a reference there to we were working on providing more up to date and current information and hopefully that's been made available to you either by email but also I think there are hard copies available for you to refer to. That breaks down performance and service needs issues by reference to the individual teams within legal services. But I'll get to that. Emma Newby is apart from Democratic Services, she's also the Practice Manager for Legal Services and was instrumental in putting together our Operational Partnership Agreement. So if you think it's appropriate, I'd also ask her to just take you through some of the highlights of that agreement because I think it does answer some of the questions around KPIs and performance and demand, et cetera. So if I can just start off then. So paragraph 4.2 just basically sets out the background and sets out the narrative that legal services comprises 49 established posts and that's a mix between fee earners, so lawyers, assistant lawyers, et cetera and the admin support to the lawyers in this team. And it lists the various teams in the bullet points that you can see there at 4.2. 4.3 reflects the fact that we operate a mixed economy and whilst our aspiration is that work is carried out in-house, there is a recognition and a general acceptance that sometimes work can't be carried out in-house either because of capacity or because of knowledge and skills and therefore we do outsource some work to external providers, external firms of solicitors or barristers. We also do supplement our workforce by the use of locum solicitors and we'll touch on that later on when we're talking about some of the pressures in terms of recruitment. So 4.3 basically elaborates on that as does 4.4. 4.5 then talks about continuing general overall demand across legal services and I think I can summarise that by saying that when we came before this panel in May we reflected on the fact that demand in certain areas continued to increase and in some specific areas the increase was unexpected. So for example in terms of disrepair, there's been a substantial increase over the last two years. We're not alone in that. We're in exactly the same position as other local authorities in that respect. In addition, we have had challenges in terms of recruitment, particularly for planning and for contract lawyers and interestingly enough I think possibly because of the spike in disrepair across the board also for planning, sorry, for housing lawyers which is not something we've experienced before. So panel 4.6 onwards then deals with the issues that were set out in the commissioned brief and it talks about overall performance including our key performance indicators and spend. So the target for legal work is approximately 40,000 hours across the board and that's consistent with the industry established average. Each fee earner has a daily average in terms of a chargeable target and we monitor that through our case management system. In addition, simply because of demand, we do have additional temporary posts that we established in the service in 2022/23 and ongoing to cover staffing gaps. However, even with those temporary posts, there's still an overachievement. In fact, the service is recording much more than 40,000 hours per annum. It's about 15% over that 40,000. More so in some areas and I've mentioned in disrepair and also to a certain extent in contracts as well. Obviously, legal is there to provide support to the council's procurement activities and as you'd expect, it's a very challenging area for local government at the moment. So in 2022/23, we opened 2,700 new matters. That's across the board across all of the teams. To date, for 2024/25, we're already at 2,031. So in the first six months, we've opened 2,031 new matters compared to 2,700 the year before. Those are individual cases. In addition, there's the ongoing advice and support to directorates and which is not always accurately recorded just because of the nature of ad hoc advice and support that's provided. But one area where we maintain very, very accurate records are in relation to the number of committee reports that we provide legal comments and legal support for. You can see that for 23/24, we processed 653 reports and since the 1st of April this year, to date, we're at 401. So significant increase is obvious. I mean, the providing support to reports is a crucial part of our work. It's a crucial part of the council's decision making process because it's our role to ensure that the decisions that are made are legally robust and legally sound. And that's part and parcel of what we do. It's part of our business as usual. And it's one example of an area where we can't control the demand because the demand is driven by what's going on in the services across the council in terms of the decisions that they're requiring to make in order to deliver the services that they need to deliver. One of the questions we were asked in the summer was about our KPIs. And I mentioned at the time that we were referring to it as a service level agreement at the time. But it developed into an operational partnership agreement, which is really important because it reflects the partnership arrangements and the partnership approach that we take to working with other directors. So we've concluded that and we launched it on the 1st of October. And that's at appendix B of the report. And Emma, as I said, is on hand to take you through that. But what it does do is it sets out the services that are provided by legal services, the standards of performance that can be expected, the cost of delivering those services. And because it is a collaborative partnership agreement, the other side of it is it sets out what can be expected from the directorates in return in terms of the quality of instructions and general ways of working. Because it was only launched on the 1st of October, we're at a very early stage. But we are expecting, and maybe when we report back next time, but we're expecting it to drive down demand in certain area because there are certain things that we're now requiring clients, departments to do. Also in terms of demand, the more up to date and up to speed the client departments are, that reduces the kind of routine kind of queries that we're encountering. So that's all hand in hand as part of the operational framework agreement. The KPIs will, of course, be kept under review and we'll report back to you on that in due course. Running alongside that is also our annual survey of directorates which we had launched earlier on in the year. It's an annual survey. So when we last came, it was ongoing. We had hoped that we'd have concluded it by now, but unfortunately we didn't get as good a response as we had hoped. So we relaunched it and we're pushing it back out to the departments and hoping to be able to report to you on that in due course. But just from looking at the previous survey, we can say that 94 per cent of respondents rated our services satisfactory or above, with over two-thirds giving us a rating of good or excellent. Of course, outside of the annual survey, we do monitor performance. We regularly engage with our client departments and I'm pleased to say that those liaison meetings haven't highlighted any major areas of concern in terms of our performance and delivery of services. I'm happy to stop here if you'd like, Emma, to take you through just the highlights of the Operational Partnership Agreement, before I go on to the MTS savings, if you'd like that, Chair. Thank you. In terms of the Operational Partnership Agreement, it's appended as Zuka said at B. It's set out into sections including the objectives, the collaborative principles and the key contacts for the lead partners with the legal services, service commitments are set out in Schedule 1 and there's some specific targets around performance and response times. User commitments are set out in Schedule 2 and there are some specific asks of how instructions come to legal services to streamline and ensure that we are efficient across all of the directorates. Schedule 3 sets out the KPIs and I'll just highlight those in a little bit more detail in a moment and they're a vision of our KPIs. Section 4 sets out the work areas, so what's undertaken by legal services and that is supplemented by a legal menu for transparency to the directorates of what we're able to provide. There's also a Schedule 5 in terms of how the charges are structured for legal services and Schedule 6 sets out any procedures for complaints and issues. So in terms of the KPIs that are set out in Section 3, the highlights are that we measure the recorded billable hours as against targets for lawyers. We measure the completion of matters within 12 months and the target for that is 60%. We monitor the number of cases opened and closed and those were highlighted as part of the report that Zuka has introduced. We seek to provide advice within 10 working days or by other agreement. Decision reports, comments will be received within five working days of receipt of the complete report and the 90% client satisfaction or above in the annual legal survey. Then also as part of that section, some more specific delivery targets set out. The agreement was operational from the 1st of October and this is available for all directorates to see along with the appendices. Can I just check with members, are members happy to pause there or do you want Zuka to carry on to the end and then come in with questions. Thank you Chair. So continuing then, Power 4.11 identifies areas of efficiency and savings and we focused on legal services, MTFS proposals of which there are three. The first one is the redesign of the service level agreement between legal services and the schools to ensure that as an organisation we are providing services on a cost recovery basis. That will generate approximately £50,000 per annum from schools for 24, 25. Most of, well 90% of the schools have signed up to the SLA. It's not compulsory that they all sign up but I think it's a reflection of how the schools view our service that 90% of them have signed up. The second MTFS proposal was to reduce spend on council in relation to safeguarding children proceedings. So we tend to use council across legal services to take matters to court. Not your routine day to day kind of matters that go to court but slightly more complex or contentious issues or matters that are going before the High Court where we don't all have rights of audience. But in terms of safeguarding children, just the nature of the work has tended to mean that there's a higher need to have advocacy hearings and appearances before the court during the process of usually child protection and care proceedings. So the proposal is that rather than using barrister's chambers routinely for those cases, we have reduced the reliance on council's chambers so that we do the advocacy at initial hearings in the House and that's projected to result in a £37,500 a year efficiency saving. And then the third one relates to our recharge rates for work done in terms of the regeneration work that the council is doing and that's where we do legal work and the developer is contractually obliged to pay the council for the legal aspect of the work. And originally the rate was £105 per hour and that's now been increased to £220. I apologise, there's a typo in the report, it says £230 but it's actually £220 and that's for £2324. And this is on the basis of a full cost recovery and it's very much in line with arrangements for planning agreements and we've done some benchmarking and we can confirm that that's consistent with how other boroughs approach it and charge and that's projected to result in about £120,000 per annum. But we do need to bear in mind that demand for regeneration work does fluctuate. In terms of all three of the proposals, we are on target, there are slight dips and peaks and dips as you would expect but we're confident that we will reach those targets or be very, very close to those targets. Paragraph 4.12 looks at skills and competencies in legal services and we were asked to reflect on the use of skills and competency matrix in legal services to identify gaps and opportunities like T levels. We don't use those matrix within legal services because it's not appropriate given the nature of the work that we do do but I'm hoping it's clear that we do have a clear and consistent approach to development of our in-house staff and that's also set out in our workforce strategy which we talked about when I was last here. We have five apprenticeship opportunities currently, five opportunities currently underway and seven honoraria opportunities. We very much believe in growing our own. That way we keep the skills and the knowledge in-house for the benefit of the council and the approach that we're adopting is very much starting to bear fruit. Lastly, paragraph 4.3 is just reflecting on service demand and how we're responding to challenges. We've set that out in the paper that's been sent to you separately. Taking the opportunity just to highlight some of the achievements across the various teams within legal services and I'll leave you to read those if you wish. I just want to focus on paragraph 7 onwards. I've already mentioned the pressures in terms of demand and the challenges we have in terms of recruitment. Highlighted there that the spikes in demand are across legal services but most acute in safeguarding adults, safeguarding children and safeguarding housing disrepair. We have our workforce strategy which is consistent with the corporate strategy. We have had some successes with recruitment but the market in these areas is very, very challenging. We're not alone. We've done a great deal of work. We've looked at local retention and recruitment issues. We've benchmarked salaries. As I said, we've aligned our strategy to the corporate strategy. The steps that we've taken in year have resulted in a reduction of our spend on agency staff by 40 per cent. So we've managed using our corporate strategy combined with our own approach has resulted in us being able to convert a number of long-term locums onto fixed-term contracts from the council, thereby reducing the spend. The spend on locums is significantly higher than our salary costs. That's something that we're going to be continuing. We're looking to recruit -- well, this is the second third round of attempted recruitment for both the planning and contract side of the service. But where we've applied certain incentives, we're hoping that that will improve our chances of recruiting to those posts which are key to the work that the council is doing, particularly given its planning and procurement. So I think I'll stop there. I'm happy to take any questions that you have. >> Thank you very much, Azuka and Emma. I think it's with the information we've received, it's actually quite good to see the -- to get an update. So I just want to thank you. Before I open up for questions, I've got one question on the OPAs. I know you mentioned that it's collaborative working, but I just wanted to find out from you, Emma, in terms of the feed-in from the Directorate. Because I'm assuming being a partnership agreement is a two-way thing, so I just want to understand from you the buy-in and were you able -- did you have to do some negotiation in between departments to reach some reliable response time? Because I know there's demand on your time. >> So the work's been undertaken since March and very much collaboratively with other Directorates, particularly in designing the legal menu that's appended to it, setting out the works. We carefully consulted each Directorate at DMTs, and there was some significant input from DMT into the feedback that shaped the final version. Hope that answers your question, Chair. >> Thank you. I just want to make sure it wasn't a one-way thing. So that's good to know. Azuka, you wanted to add?

Just to add that going forward, built into the OPA is client liaison, departmental liaison. So that will build on that initial collaborative approach to its development, but its success is going to be very much dependent on us maintaining that contact. So there is embedded the client departmental liaison meetings, and that's an opportunity to do some horizon scanning and firefight and deal with specific issues. So it's not that it's something that's imposed. Certainly we don't want it to be that way, and so we're open to seeing how it develops. Just want to open the floor for questions. Members, do you have any question on any part of the report? >> I don't. Thank you. It was a really, really good -- I read it earlier, and I was desperately trying to think of some questions, but I couldn't, to be honest, because it's all covered. Just quickly, what percentage of your staff are now agency staff? I know you've had a really good result in getting people on board, but how many do you think you've got remaining? >> I think there's been an abduction to approximately 24% of staff of agency. >> Thank you. Sorry. I'm going to push a little bit. I didn't want to -- some of these are in the pack, but I just wanted to challenge you on the establishment roles, because I do, from reading the report, I can see that the demand is quite high. The business focus has changed. We've got the transport strategy, which require quite a lot of resources. So I just wanted to ask you, in terms of your team and reviewing of -- Steph is here, she'll correct me -- of the establishment list. Do you think 49 is reasonable? Because you've got 49, that's 40,000 hours to get from that 49 establishment role. You had to draw on some other resources, temporary staff, agencies, etc. Do you think 49 is reasonable? Does that need to be reviewed? Is that something you're looking at in terms of -- I don't know if the term rethinking legal services is appropriate. So just want to understand from your -- honestly, Steph is here, hopefully she'll listen and take away -- is 49 reasonable as an establishment post within the department? That 49 is both fee earners and admin support staff, and the admin team is approximately nine. But in terms of the -- is 49 enough? With the current demand, we're overachieving by 15 per cent, and it's probably more at the moment. But it is something that we're keeping under constant review, and we'll keep under review as part of our workforce strategy, because the model that best serves the organisation is an in-house service that's well resourced and with the appropriate skills spread across. There will be areas -- inevitably there will be areas where we might need to outsource for specialist technical support, but the model would be in-house. So the short answer is currently not, because we're overachieving and it's something that we're going to be keeping under constant review. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for this report. It's really clear and there's lots of information out. I'm really impressed. Thank you. I've got one small, quite specific question. Shall I do that? Let me do that one first. And that was in the OPA. And I just want to make a suggestion. I think it was page 54. It's talking about increasing the use of technology. And I would just like to put in a suggestion that that says the efficient, effective, and appropriate use of technology is one of my things that technology in itself doesn't always do what you want it to do. So there's no need for it if it don't work. And there is a need if it does. And I'd really love to see that whenever we talk about that kind of thing. The other stuff, I'm just sort of trying to read behind some of the words here. And it's a little bit to do with some of the questions that the chairs just asked. And I'm looking at the OPA and the stuff about the mutual respect. I'm looking at the annual survey and the low response so far. I'm thinking about the huge demands on the service and the fact that these aren't always going to be -- there's no control over them. I mean, for instance, the repair stuff. I'm on the board of a housing association. And they're suffering exactly the same stuff. There's a load of solicitors out there who are frankly ambulance chasing on this. So this stuff is going to happen. Demand can't be controlled, I suppose is what I'm trying to say. And I can see that you're working on everything you can to control as well as possible. And I'm asking, I guess, what the morale is like with the staff, having to deal with these difficulties, overachieving by that 15%. I did some sums about how many build hours that was when I thought it was 49. Now it's 40. Of course, that's gone up. And that's going to be at least four solid days of their week, let alone any training or staff meetings or whatever else they're doing. And, you know, I've got staff stuff in my mind because we'll be talking about that later. So also I'm also aware that sometimes legal advice, you're telling people things they don't want to hear. And I think that needs to be -- that needs to be up front. People need to know that. And that must be difficult, too, for the staff. So tell me a little bit about the human side of what it's like in there. And if there's anything we can recommend that could help. Thank you. I'll start with the last one. I think that legal advice is there to support the organisation and to, you know, try and achieve what the organisation is set out to achieve. And because of the nature of the organisation there is a recognition that sometimes you do have to say no on legal grounds. And there is a general understanding that that advice is coming from a good place, which is a place of protecting us as an organisation. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't scope for challenge. You know, you might give some advice and somebody says, well, have you thought of this? And, you know, it's good to be challenged at times. But the basic principle is that the advice, whether it's positive or negative, is there to protect the organisation. And that's the basis on which it's received. And I think a lot of that is to do with the kind of the collaborative mutual respect relationship across the board. In terms of morale, I think that morale is good. It's certainly improving because the fruits of some of the work that we've been doing and the work that Emma's been doing in terms of bringing on locums onto fixed term contract to stop that constant turnover of locum staff, I think we're starting to see the fruits of those strategies. We are getting support from, so just as an example, I talked about disrepair. Asset management colleagues recognise that in order for us to be able to keep on top of that work, they need to provide us with assistance, so they've facilitated us being able to recruit two lawyers on fixed term contracts and a legal assistant to help support. So I think that also supports morale as well. So it's not, you know, we're not alone in this. You know, clients are recognising what's going on there and they're doing what they can do to help. I think I mentioned previously our vision and values when we last met, and I think it's kind of embedded in there that, you know, nobody should not quite suffer in silence, but, you know, let's be open because that's the only way we're going to find a solution. It might not be a perfect solution or the one that you're looking for, but there will be a solution to take pressures off from staff. And I think part of that is also having client departments on board and recognising the demands and absolutely there is a recognition across the organisation that, you know, it's like a funnel, we're at the end of a funnel and therefore that's bound to have an impact. And that makes discussions about what we can do in terms of demand easier to have. So as an example, if we can train social workers in the adults team, just as an example, to do certain functions, that alleviates some of the pressures on legal services. So there's real buy-in into that kind of approach. You're right, we can't control demand in the sense of turn on and turn off the tap, but there are things that we can do to try and kind of mitigate the demands and the impact. But I do think the main thing that's affecting staff morale is that they're seeing now the results of some of the initiatives that we perhaps have talked about for a long time and these things do take time to filter through, but I think we're starting to see the results of what we've been doing for the last year, two years. Is there anything, I think Emma, if you'd like to add anything else. Yeah, just to add an important point really, is that there was a concentration of the legal services staff as well in terms of the operation partnership agreement and it was something that staff really welcomed to have that level of transparency and I think there's been absolute buy-in to the principles set out in the partnership agreement and I think that this has led to probably an increase in staff morale. Thank you very much. If I just go back to the survey, just to clarify something, so the last, the current survey is still out, it's been reopened because the response rate is low. The previous survey did say that we've got 94% positive response or 94% of the response were favourable. How many were that compared, because 94 is not a comparative figure to the nine, so I just want to know how many responses were received in the prior year, why nine would be deemed as a lower response. I don't know how that filters through but I'm happy to come back to you and let you know what that figure represents. Any other question? Any other question now? One final one, which I think is a crossover, so maybe Stephanie will be able to address it when she gets here. It's regarding the, in terms of the legal team, you did mention in there the tribunal cases, employment matters, so I just want to know how you're working with the HR colleagues to effectively address these and also to try to reduce these, maybe some lessons learned, what support you're giving to the team. I think this is an example of a really good collaborative approach to dealing with these cases. Legal services and HR work very closely together generally in terms of HR advice and more specifically in relation to any proceedings that are going towards a tribunal. In terms of any tribunal cases, we have an established procedure which sets out clearly roles and responsibilities and timelines and timescales and who does what, why and when. But generally speaking, HR colleagues and legal colleagues will all, it's interesting if you recall perhaps two years ago that we were all part of the same director, well, with the same director, so that helped to develop that kind of close working. That's no longer the case, but I don't think that that has affected the closeness of the working relationships. Lessons learned, we regularly sit down as colleagues and debrief and look at outcomes from tribunals and the lessons that we've learned and how we can apply those to future cases. We're instrumental in providing support to policy, HR policies and developments because quite often that's the starting point to do so many things. I think in a nutshell we work very well together. Thank you, Councillor Esli. Following on from that, do you use the same sort of principle for tribunals and judicial cases where SEN is concerned? Because you're currently, and I noticed that you outsource the cases to outside legal teams, and given the fact that demand is so high for SEN and it's growing year by year, and I'm one of the, in history, I'm one of the parents who's gone down that route with RBG a long time ago, and the success rate when it goes to tribunals, parents often win the cases, not the local authorities. That's quite high. Is it cost effective? Is it worth taking some of those cases to court? It's difficult to generalise because each case will turn on its individual merits, but in terms of the outsourcing, it's a situation we're in because we just simply can't get the level of expertise in house, but the firms that we outsource the work to are on the framework, so they've been procured through the LBLA, and so we're guaranteed that they represent value for money, knowledge and skills, and all of those things, and as an organisation, the fact that the work is outsourced doesn't mean that they get any less of a hands-on service, because although the work is outsourced, central to how that matter progresses is still the in-house team monitoring the performance, monitoring the work, liaising with the client department and the external solicitors, and basically making sure that there is a joined-up approach, because I think one of the things you can't replicate with the external solicitors is the understanding of the internal culture of the organisation that an in-house lawyer brings, so the fact that we're outsourcing, we work very hard to make sure that that input isn't lost as a result. In terms of should we be defending some of those cases, I mean, it's obviously for each individual whether or not they want to bring proceedings, but before we make a decision on whether or not to defend something, we do thoroughly review the evidence, review the information and take a balanced view on the merits of proceeding, but as with any contested litigation, there's always a risk, there's a risk that you may lose, and sometimes it's – in order to take it forward, we're satisfied that it's a risk that's worth taking for the organisation. Thank you. Any other question? I don't see any other question, so we're going to wrap up this one there. Just want to say put on record or appreciation for the collaborative work in not just with HR but across directorate as well. One thing I'd like to ask for to be presented at the next meeting, I think the previous panel had requested it, I know it was back in May, and the survey is still out for – has been reopened, so a breakdown of the survey response, if possible, that would be really good, and I think Jo, you had recommended a change to the wording, if you could just clarify. Yeah, that was very specific on page 54, where it was about increasing the use of technology and just making sure it was the effective and appropriate use of technology. I think I had another word, but they're all the same, that kind of thing. Are you happy to make that change? Is that – Yeah, yes, Jo. Okay. Yeah. So, those are the two bits. I just want to say thank you again for your time. Thank you, Chair. Always a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening. We're just going into item number 6, which is the HR human resources update, and it will be presented by Stephanie Mills, head of HR, Ian Tasker, assistant chief exec, and I believe – were we expecting a third person? Well, that's it. That's it. I think it's just the two of us tonight, Chair. Okay. If members are happy, I'll just go straight to us, Stephanie, and to present the report, and then we will go into questions like we've done for the first item. Yeah? Thank you. Over to you. Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you for having us this evening. So, this report provides the committee with the HR update for the period 23/24. It's probably worth mentioning that this report follows a new and revised format compared to previous updates reports that have been brought to this panel. The intention is to better align the HR reporting activity to the ambitions of the council's workforce strategy and how the investment in our workforce will support the delivery of our Greenwich plan. So, just going into the introduction for the report, our Greenwich plan obviously details the council's ambitions over the next four years. People plan is clearly central to the delivery of the innovation of services to residents, so the emerging workforce strategy will provide the framework for how we develop our workforce to meet those ambitions with very specific focus on the delivery of the Greenwich plan and the medium-term financial strategy. So, this report will provide the annual overview of the key workforce metrics comparing previous years. It's probably worth noting that throughout the report and the appendices, where possible, the benchmarking figures that are available for the other 33 London boroughs are provided essentially as a kind of reference point. So, just kind of going through some headlines before I open up generally to questions, during the period 23/24 and into this current year as well, HR have undertaken consultation with senior management and wider stakeholder groups to develop the workforce strategy. I think it's probably worth mentioning that it's still technically in its draft form, but essentially is going through its final consultative cycle. So, I think just in reference back to the last update that was provided, the principles of that strategy, given the extent of the engagement, are already being embedded in terms of the work programmes and the alignments with directorates. So, HR are working very closely with all of the directorates on the development of their own workforce strategies, bearing in mind the very difficult climates that we're working in across the piece. And again, some of those referenced in this report and some we've heard reflected back from legal services colleagues. I think without sort of going into too much of the detail around that, I think it's probably something that the panel will want to go into the details with the questions on. The strategy will underpin the key HR activity, including the future of work, something else that's been referenced previously at this panel, EDI more generally in its wider sense and also the MTFS. So, I think just in introducing the sort of framework of the report, essentially it's been presented under each of the five pillars of the draft workforce strategy. Now, we've done that looking at a theme of five to align the strategy to the staff values whilst also reflecting the key areas of action that as an organisation we know we really need to focus on in the workforce space more generally over the next four years. So, the headings that the report is presented under are attracting and recruiting talented people, strengthening our diverse and inclusive workforce, supporting and developing our people, promoting wellbeing for everyone and leading and delivering change. I think that's probably, hopefully, a helpful sort of overview in terms of introducing the report. I can go through some of the headlines under each of those headings in the report but working on the assumption that the committee will have reviewed the report and I'm sure we'll have questions. I'm happy to pause there and open up the floor. Thank you, Stephanie. Have members got any questions? Not yet, so whilst they're thinking, oh, you and Joe, okay, I'll come back in. So, Joe. Thank you very much for this. It's a really helpful report. There are a couple of issues you talk about culture, which obviously is always the most difficult thing to work on and, you know, we're doing good and I'm looking at some of the examples, for instance, about rewarding and encouraging the workforce and I'm just very slightly concerned that most of it seems very top down. Now, the council is a very bureaucratic organisation and I'm not surprised but I don't see, at the moment here, and I'm sure it is actually happening, sort of reference to sort of like really bringing out ideas from staff at every level and implementing them in the workplace. I think you've heard me say this one before, Stephanie, but I just think it's such a cultural marker if you can do that and it can be seen to be. I'm sure it is happening but I'd love to see it sort of spelt out as being something that we're working towards to help with that. Another one on the culture and I don't think that you alone can do this but I just want to put on record, somewhere there needs to be a culture of working across departments and not stopping because the question you've been asked, the task you've been given can't be done in, again, this isn't about, this is about developing staff to think in those ways and to sort of talk to people in other departments and directorates if an issue that they're trying to deal with goes to that. And I'd just love to see that somewhere as being one of the aims, one of the targets you're trying to bring out because I do think that the council as a whole will work better if that was the norm and the expectation and I think we've all had examples of where things have stopped dead because it's not, and that is about workforce development and that leads into staff engagement et cetera because all those things, I think staff feel empowered by that approach. I think I had one other general point but I'll shut up for a bit. Thank you. Shall I choose Ian? Right. I was going to pick up the middle one about working across the council because that's, as you quite rightly said, that's not something that HR can just do on its own and in my sort of wider role I probably can help and answer that one a little bit more. I think if you look at the, how the council's organised, it is organised in quite a silo base which in itself can lead to that and one of the ways that as a council we're looking to try and address that, if you actually look at, when you look at our Greenwich, our Greenwich is not based in that silo way, it's actually based in a much more cross-cutting way. It's a deliberate approach that actually helps to break down silo working because it means that departments have to look at things in a slightly wider way. So that is a structured intention but it has to be more than that because you can structure an intention but that, how do you actually change the culture is something far greater. So again there is one of the other teams, change and improvement is very much part of almost what I would call an energy driver to help work across and that but also at GMT which I sit on, it is trying to almost like get a much more collaborative approach and you can look at also the contribution of the digital team in terms of how they work. So if we take something like recently the temporary accommodation, that was a really good example of how the council has approached to that, it's a really good example of how bringing together DRES and the properties with the housing staff, with the digital staff, looking at working together in that way and looking at it as a council problem of solving temporary accommodation, not a housing problem and it's actually recognising and realising that. I could probably, I've known to talk quite a bit, I could probably talk a lot more about those examples but it is something that's really embedded within what we are trying to achieve. I'll pass back to Steph from maybe the more HR perspective of that Jo. Thank you Ian, yeah and I guess just coming back to your first point around the reward, the recognition element of the report, I think it's probably really important to say that this is also really fundamental focus of the staff engagement survey that was completed earlier this year as well. The results of that actually were really good and really encouraging in some areas but actually identified three key areas where we know we do need to improve and interestingly, improving that culture of voice and psychological safety and the cohesion and then sort of moving into the development piece are three key areas that we know we need to focus in on. So in terms of looking at the priorities for the HR portfolio and the alignment with the Workforce Strategy, we're really clear that it has to bring in the feedback from the staff survey and work has already started essentially to develop a draft action plan which will look at how we start to plug some of the gaps attached to the areas of underperformance shall we say with some support from expertise within the LGA. For example, we know that this is something we need to do, we need to be able to do it as quickly as we reasonably can but drawing on the right expertise and that's also about brainstorming suggestions and ideas, how do we bring the workforce on that journey because it can be some really simple things I think a lot of the time, you know, the sort of recognition and the rewards I think sometimes there's a perception that there has to be a financial value attached to that whereas actually it can be something as, you know, sort of straightforward as an acknowledgement of thanks from your senior colleagues and peers but goes a really long way in terms of looking at the morale more generally and when we sort of think about engagement and how that feeds into things like recruitment and retention and other really difficult areas, you can start to see how the alignment of all of these things fits together so it's very much a piece of work that is already in train. We have had some really positive workshops with directorates already to look at staff survey results from their particular areas which has started to inform local plans about things that can be done again quite quickly to address some of those areas with staff again with a much wider focus on the corporate piece so still a lot of work to do and a long way to go but yes very much in train so I hope that does answer that element of the question as well. Thank you. Steph I'm going to push a bit politely on the workforce strategy because that's taken far too long. So I don't know you said it's a, you know, individual directorate they have their own bit to deliver, where is the bottleneck, what's the holdup, when is the deadline because I think the last time when you came here it was in its draft form, it's been a while in its draft form, things will change by the time you have the final version you'll need to do, you know, revise that strategy so when is the deadline, what's the holdup, what are you doing to get this in place? Yes thank you chair it's a really really fair pushback so there have been lots of factors which have fed into the bottlenecking in terms of the timeframes for presenting a final version of that document. There have been some local internal issues, I think probably most notable has been the hand over of the HR service from directorates which has bought with it its own sort of time drags and delays whilst the service has had to embed into other service areas that can't be helped. I think with the MTFS and the expedition of some of the really difficult financial challenges it's ultimately moved a lot of the goal posts as well so when we look back over the last 18 months in terms of when we started to develop the strategy and what the areas for priority were at that time, the goal posts have moved quite significantly so we undertook quite an extensive period of consultation on an original draft towards the end of last year, really really helpful in terms of the feedback but it did inevitably take a pause whilst the council responded at pace to some of the financial difficulties that it was presented with. Now that did result in a time delay but it also meant that we had to refresh the document. I think the positive news is that that refresh has happened, I think we are much more comfortable now that the corporate draft better reflects the accuracy of the challenges of the council aligned with its corporate plan that has initially had a run through with GMT who are happy in principle with the direction of travel that that has taken. It is very much in its final stages in terms of moving through its decision and approval making cycle so I would certainly expect chair that there would be no reason why that document wouldn't be live by the end of this year. Thank you, we will have that conversation again in December. Cappy. Thanks, I just wanted to ask you about the agency worker spend which is obviously quite high although the number hasn't gone up. Can you just tell us if there is any particular areas within council work that tend to need more agency staff than other areas? Yes, so I didn't bring the breakdowns by directorate with me but they are, there are some very clear front runners in terms of where some of that supply is most demanded. Unsurprisingly, very high proportions in adult social care and children services. Also I think again because of some of the challenges that were reflected in the last update, Dres is another area where we have a very challenging labour market essentially in terms of being able to recruit and retain skilled professionals to undertake roles that we just can't secure within the market which are drivers for increased agency spend in those areas. Now obviously agency spend continues to be a challenge for the organisation. There are lots of planned initiatives as well as initiatives underway to start to look at how we can deal with some of those issues. Azuka and Emma in the last briefing spoke to some of the intervention that is already working with some success in legal services, that's very much reflective of the type of approach that's being taken with HR support in other directorates where spend is high. So one of our immediate areas of focus is to look at strategic resourcing capacity to work with directorates where spend is particularly high, to look at things like creative recruitment strategy but also what are the drivers of skills shortage and how can we look to do things like grow our own talent, what things are available within our gifts to look at how we better compete with the market. But yeah I think it's fair to say that children's and adult services continues to be our front runners. Thank you Kathy. Appendix 4E there's a table but I'll bring you back in, you've got a follow-up question. It's a completely separate question, is that all right? Just a tail off on the agency then, so appendix 4E it has the breakdown of agency, what stand out for me is the agency's over 24 months agency staff, 24 months that's a long time to have agency staff, I think this was probably asked at previous meeting in terms of what are we doing so I just want to ask again what's our action plan to reduce or whether they need to be permanent staff, what's our plan for those staff on agency for over two years? Thank you chair, I may bring Ian in on some of this as well but I think it's probably worth saying that there is certainly much tighter scrutiny and control including oversight of all resourcing kind of decisions at the moment, agency spend is not immune to that scrutiny so there is much greater oversight at a very senior level of some of the ongoing requests that are coming in from directorates particularly where these thresholds have been met, part of the dedicated review and support that will come with the strategic resourcing is to look at what are the drivers for extensive agency supply engagement, I mean I think we probably discussed openly before that there will always be a need for some contingent workforce and if it's well controlled actually it serves a very specific purpose but there are absolutely reasonable questions to be answered in terms of why an assignment would be ongoing for such a long period of time, now again some of that is driven by difficulties attracting recruiting, retaining the level of skill needed into particular roles which might be a driver for extended engagement on an interim basis but there will be others where perhaps there needs to be some discussion or consideration about other intervention that directorates and hiring managers should be considering and certainly those conversations are happening with the relevant people within the HR service but our hope is that the tightened controls in terms of the recruitment oversight will start to shine a light on some of these areas with the right questions being asked in the right places to support the intervention that's needed to bring those numbers down. So I think I'll just end Chair by saying I think we keep this under very close review, this is an area that we know is going to intensify in terms of the work program for HR over the next 12 months, very much kind of supported by the work that's happening more corporately around this as well. I don't know if there's anything more you wanted to add on that. I think Steph's touched upon some bits but I think one of the underlying problems can often be the actual marketplace and there is how local authority jobs get evaluated can be a challenge that they can sometimes be actually quite differential from the real marketplace. There are a number of ways you can actually look at that. A couple of the ongoing examples is the procurement service historically has had some of the longest serving agency staff, there's been a complete review, there has been a relook and a different approach to how we have structured the procurement service and they're trying to go through now the actual recruitment. If that is not successful in terms of within the new structure and the grades, then we will look at the market supplement approach which has been quite successfully used in the IT digital area in terms of moving that forward. The same approach is being proactively looked at in DRES which is another really high area and difficulty to recruit. There is a restructure that is just about to go out to consultation in terms of DRES and looking to address that and there will be further ones there. The first part of the plan is a more proactive look at the structure itself and to see whether you can do something with the structure, but then also looking at how whether there is an inherent market difference from the local government scheme that we use to evaluate pay and how we use market supplements will be a key part of that. Yes, there is and Azuka was touching upon, there is another clear area which is the procurement lawyers and planning lawyers, but it's getting even wider than that. So again, we are proactively working with Azuka at the present time to how we structure that and how we can look to address that. So there are some short-term fixes we are trying to look at in that area, but we will have to potentially look at that market supplement approach as well. Thank you. You found what you are looking for, that's good. Just before I bring Jo in because Jo has got her hand up, you just touched on it and one thing that stood out for me is that we have been talking about agency for a long time. I think when I was on the finance scrutiny panel, it seemed to be a recurring conversation. We have got rethinking services that we are working with, we have got the budget realignment and the savings target. What stood out for me is that we have got all these proposals, yet there seemed to be a spike in the staff numbers year after year. So maybe Steph, I don't know if that's something as well we need to keep under review. So the staff, the workforce is growing and at the same time we are, and it could be rightly so because we need to have the resources to deliver the service, but there seemed to be a ask to make savings here and then we are recruiting, so where is the balance. So maybe that's something, you can comment on it, but maybe that's something that we need to look at in terms of as an overarching picture of the organisation itself, where is there excess resource and where there is a need for additional resources, there is a balance. Yes thank you chair, and I think your observations are right in terms of the areas where there is growth. We know certainly there are areas where there is a particular need to fill skills gaps essentially which aren't there in order to respond to some of the priority work of the organisation attached to the MTFS, so essentially where there is a save or income generation or saving attached to that, there is certainly some investment. We've seen an increase in the number of use of things like fixed term contracts for very similar reasons, so they are above establishment but with a very specific purpose. I think it's absolutely an area to watch and I think looking at the figures under appendix 4, so if we were looking at the comparisons for the last year, we're slightly down in terms of agency worker headcount not withstanding the fact that spend has increased which I think suggests that we've got fewer agency workers but at a much higher cost which again seems to correlate with the trend that it tends to be more expensive resource but needed for very specific skills purposes because of the difficulties in the labour market. But not withstanding that's obviously a very, very important point bearing in mind the financial climate and the fact that the organisation is tasked with making quite considerable cost savings. My initial reflections would be where we are seeing increase in the headcount, it's to deal with immediate demand on pressures and services in some areas, so we know that there has been a spike in health and adult services for example over the last 12 months but with some of that additional capacity being funded by very specific short term finance streams from elsewhere to meet a particular demand and need. So it's an area that we will continue to focus on and develop but hopefully that does answer that question chair. Thank you. Joel. Thank you. It's my other substantive question on all of this is, and again it is to do with the recruitment, it is about answering these sort of questions and it's about flexible working as you know is one of the things that I again that I feel very strongly about and you've said the CIPD highlight that more flexibility in how and where staff work is, you know, it's one of the drivers why people want jobs. So if we're after recruiting, we've got our principles and how is that working? Are we able to be really quite flexible in offering both and/or hours and/or where people work, that level of flexibility, are there any barriers either through any rules we've set up about limiting that which may be working against getting all the recruitment we need of the best people or any barriers amongst managers who are perhaps not, maybe not feel confident in their ability to manage remote staff for instance or staff that aren't working full time? Because those are challenges for managers, I get that, and there are ways of doing it and things that they can learn. So how is that going? That is a very big question, so I'm going to try my best to sort of disaggregate that a little bit, but it's absolutely an area I think I'll start by saying that the organisation recognises the benefits of and really wants to be able to tap into for all of the reasons that you've just outlined, Jo, so it is probably worth saying to start, we've just completed a review of the flexible working policy, the sort of principle of that essentially being to start to better enable some of those conversations at the local level, but bringing in the principles of the future of work. I think one of the barriers if we were being really honest in terms of managers understanding what they're able to do and how that flexibility works is perhaps not necessarily understanding how those principles can be integrated into the working patterns of what are an enormous amount of discrete services, we're a very, very diverse and complex organisation. So that's been launched and has been implemented literally only in the last couple of months, but with help from digital colleagues to look at where we can at how we better capture some of that data in a more digitalised sort of means so that we start to get better workforce data, quality data that we can actually look at for things like trend analysis and how we can start to signpost interventions into areas where we know we need to develop that a little bit further. One of the ambitions and this is something I'm expecting that we will start to put in as we do the review of the recruitment and selection procedure is also to look at how we bring to life the four worker types attached to the future of work principles as well. I think there is still a little bit of nervousness and uncertainty about how some of those rules correspond with the pillars that we've kind of set ourselves under that framework, which perhaps also has some kind of impact in terms of how well we're utilising or promoting those opportunities to the labour market, so we certainly know that there are things that we can do to better communicate that to prospective or would-be recruits in terms of being able to really promote that. And I suppose the other thing I'll say is, and I think it's just touching on what you were saying earlier, Ian, about our ability to compete financially in the market. We know we can't do that as a public sector organisation. There are lots of reasons why and there are lots of things that we can do, not all of them are financial, flexibility is a key one that we do have within our gift and I think if we can start to tap into that better, that will certainly be a non-financial benefit that hopefully will help us in some of those endeavours. So it's very much on the work plan. I very much expect to be able to speak to that in a lot more detail when we come back with the next update report. It's certainly again something that we have scripted in terms of management development, so there is a hybrid working training and development programme essentially for managers that we have workforce development reserves essentially put aside to be able to commission. But it's really important that we do that at the right time. Clearly there is work happening at the moment to look at the office space and I think all of us would agree that these things are all directly linked. We want to be able to ensure that one properly complements the other, so that's something we've already commissioned a provider to do. I expect that to be something that we start to mobilise again during the course of the next financial year. Thank you. Any other question? I've got a question in the, so just looking through the appendices, there's what stood out for me was I think I was looking at the EDI data and the demographic breakdown. If I start with appendix six, that's on the sickness and I think the first point talked about sickness, the reason for the highest level of sickness being stress, depression, mental health and then it goes further into the percentage. I did wonder about our DSE service in terms of how do we assess, I think one mentioned back pain, so it was quite detailed which is good, but I did wonder in terms of how much support are we giving with the Future of Works programme, are we assessing our staff at home, whether they've got the right equipment to reduce the number of sickness absence. Not that it will work but just making sure we've got the right measures in place and then in terms of stress and depression, what's the main contributor? Is it to do with people not being happy in their job or is it just the workload? Thank you, Chair. Starting with the DSE service, so health and safety sits under a separate portfolio area to HR, but we do have very close partnership working links. The health and safety team manager along with the head of service I am aware had undertaken a complete review of the DSE assessment and have also commissioned back into the service the rollout and the management of the mandatory DSE training that all desk-based staff essentially need to fill out and complete. So I'm assured, I suppose from a third party perspective, that that is properly managed and there is a very close eye being kept on that. That does also incorporate some of the home working elements, now I think it's probably important to say that there is some very specific and robust guidance that sits alongside that for anybody that is working remotely. It's not specific to home working which is something very different, so of course there would be requirement for that assessment to have been undertaken where somebody is contractually obliged to work from home, where it's a remote working arrangement, of course the same principles would apply but there's no separate rule that governs that. So again, the DSE assessment template certainly takes account of the requirements, it's very much for individuals with the online training to be able to ensure that they have their work station set up accordingly wherever they are undertaking their duties from. Coming into the point about sickness absence, what we don't have unfortunately at the moment is some of the more granular data that starts to tell us about what the very specific reasons underpinnings of workplace absence for stress and mental health related conditions are. So it's very kind of high level in terms of numbers. I think it's probably worth mentioning however that some of the other data sources are obviously very, very important in helping to derive that picture for us to the outcome of the staff surveys is clearly one of those things. Notwithstanding we've got a very specific focus on health staff, health and wellbeing, so there is a separate draft strategy which has been developed that starts to look at those things, I think it's really important essentially that we've got a focus and an eye on staff wellbeing and development that hopefully will start to address all of those things where of course there are concerns that some of those impacts are to do with work related issues frankly. So I think again, we are consistent in terms of the numbers of absence related to stress and mental health related conditions when we look at Pan London, but I think importantly we need to look at the sorts of interventions and things that we can put in place which we know have an impact on staff's mental health and therefore by default contribute to some of the absence levels that we are seeing. But I don't have that more granular detail, very happy to take that away as a query and see if we can put some more meat on those bones if that would be helpful, Chair. Sorry, I'm coming back again for granular detail. So on the disciplinary and grievance cases, if I put my previous hats on where I sit on previous scrutiny, the report was actually quite detailed in terms of the ethnicity of those who have been of the individual case, of the cases, so number of cases and the ethnicity. Do we have that level of detail still, do we collect that information, is that something that can be, just in the table format, is that something that can be, that we can request to be maybe presented at the next meeting as an appendix? Absolutely, Chair, is the answer to that. So we now have a rather succinct set of EDI dashboards which absolutely break down some of the key workforce metrics by ethnicity breakdown, including employee relations casework. It's not included in this report, it is publicly available, available in the sense that it's available on the intranet site. I'm certainly happy to provide that and ensure that that is brought to this panel in future with this report. Anyone else? I'll just keep talking. And then yes there was the obvious scrutiny where the equalities and equity action plan was presented. I was actually surprised, because I thought, or to me it made sense that that piece of work would sit with HR, so I could be wrong, so is that a service that sits with you? If it's not, does it fit better into your directorate and how you work in terms of how much have you contributed to this plan? Because one of the things which I think you need to keep a close eye on is the make-up of our workforce and I think the higher tier need to be better reflected in terms of diversity and inclusion. So I just want to know if you're included in that piece and what are you doing to improve the workforce? Sorry chair, I'll take that one, because one of my roles is to look at where there are restructures that go across departments. In terms of Mindful This is a public forum, I'm currently, one of the areas I'm looking at covers how some of that relationship actually happens, so there is a look at it. So yes, there is a number of touch points in the council, HR is a very important one. Public health has quite a contact and involvement in that as well, as does, there's a team in central communities environment and central and we have a GMT member who has an overarching responsibility. So as part of what I'm doing we are looking at that sort of current arrangements and trying to find, keeping in mind the question that you are asking there. So it is a current live question which I can't go into too much more detail at the moment for reasons of confidentiality. Completely understand and thank you actually for, it's good to know that there's work going on behind the scene. I will say no more on that matter. And then my last question if members have no other question is on the employment tribunals, what to paragraph for me was not enough in this report, I felt we could have said a bit more. It's going to be one of my requests, I don't know if this is possible so let me know if this is possible. So we've had the cases seem to be run about the same number of cases, we had 12 in previously prior year and then we've got 11 cases but a breakdown of the case in terms of like similar information you might have on the dashboard. And a little bit further on the 11 cases, the type of claims and maybe some lessons learned and importantly cost implication. And the reason I bring this up I think Councillor Astley mentioned earlier when I put a similar question to Azuka in terms of some cases do we think we should go ahead or is it better to have in some more robust discussion to avoid it being a tribunal case. It's also the cost and the number of years those tribunals can actually go on for which is quite costly. I'll pick up on that very briefly Chair, so to answer the first point of your question absolutely I think it's fine for us to look at what information we can bring back to this panel in future that provides that level of detail, thinking through some of the key points that you've just asked there in question I think they're really, really helpful. I mean it's a really complex area isn't it I think for lots of different reasons and sometimes the headlines don't necessarily give you all of the detail and the context of exactly what sits behind that. There is absolutely a value for money argument I think that sits behind some of the principles of the claims that come forward as well. As a principles element sometimes I think and Azuka is absolutely right I think I would just second that we have a very, very close partnership working arrangement with legal services so I meet personally with the assistant heads for legal services which look after employment law. We go through the cases that are currently going through the tribunal system which affects the council directly whilst we don't essentially assess the merits because that's what we would be expecting our legal council to do. What we will do is consider that advice and whether there is a value for money argument or whether actually on a principle element this is something we should go forward. So nine times out of ten I think that sort of common sense approach is very much helping us to achieve the outcome that is in the council's best interests in those circumstances. But I think there is a wider issue here as well which is whilst the number of employment tribunal cases are generally consistent I think there is still a feeling of needing to look at and understand the reasons why people feel the needs to bring an employment tribunal claim in the first place. It's something that's brought out in the appendices which is essentially around the numbers of employee relations cases that the team are dealing with at the moment it's always consistently high. But again I think taking into account things like staff survey results and trying to understand what the level of morale, engagement more generally across the organisation is it really helps us to start to inform how much of that is playing into what we then see as being industrial unrest and if there's a disengagement or distrust of the organisation how much of that then contributes to individuals feeling the need to take their claims to an employment tribunal. There's a big piece of work that's sort of sitting around this more generally at the moment as well as looking internally at how we can help to mitigate some of that risk to the council. We were talking in the report about the establishment of the investigating officer report for example which is very much about helping to streamline ER outcomes, getting a good result which in my view is the starting point for managing fundamental risk to the council timely but also simultaneously upskilling managers to be able to better manage employee relations issues with their workforce across the organisation more generally. But that's again just a bit of context around some of the work that's happening at the moment or is planned but absolutely chair we can bring back a more thorough overview of employment tribunal claims in this report in future. Thank you I see no other questions so just to recap on some of the requests that were because as a panel as you know we now have we can now make recommendations so there were quite a few requests myself and Billy I believe Cathy on keeping an eye on the agency spend keeping that on the review Ian has already said that he's doing a piece of work you know looking across the whole organisation so that's fine so if we could have just an update on the agency that would be good and then some further details that maybe can be pulled from the EDI dashboard on maybe on the specifically around disciplinary grievance and a more thorough breakdown of the tribunal cases so that we can look at the lessons learned. And Jo has got something else to add well I just wonder whether some of the things I said about making more explicit the ways that the culture change is going to happen and about the explicitness of the encouraging the flexibility as part of the recruitment strategy I'm wondering whether those could be quite specific recommendations. That's a durable Stephanie yes yeah absolutely we can certainly look at how we bring those through more clearly yeah that's really helpful. Fantastic that's it no more questions no more comments thank you very much have a good evening thank you. Item number seven the commission of future reports and this is to note the work which are the reports will be coming to our January meeting so if I just bear with me specifically sorry trying to find the list of items coming to the January meeting. Thank you so at the next meeting we've got the finance operations report we'll be receiving an update on the financial operations and performance the revenue and corporate debt management performance advice and the benefits performance including the impact on of universal credit is there anything else that members would like to add to that list bearing in mind that the overview and scrutiny already received like a tracker for this the budget spend so we will have another cabinet member update I wonder because last time we had a cabinet member update from Councillor Highland I'm wondering if we could get an update from the leader on the community engagement yeah is that okay and the last bit of making sure it's the last one oh no we've got the freedom of information monitor and report that will be coming as well yeah I think that's it anything else anything members want to have any specific ideas that you want to be included in the report no that's it thank you I think that concludes our meeting thank you very much for your time. 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