The Scrutiny Coordinating Committee meeting on 21 January 2025 was scheduled to involve a review of the Council's Corporate Impact Framework, as well as the Action Plan resulting from the Local Government Association's (LGA) peer challenge. The Committee was also scheduled to receive a report on its own scrutiny work.

Corporate Impact Framework

The Corporate Impact Framework (CIF) report was scheduled to provide the Committee with an update on corporate performance, highlighting key trends and areas of strategic importance. The report included data up to November 2024.

Agency Staff

The report for discussion noted that the Council was making progress on reducing its reliance on agency staff, particularly within Children’s Social Care, with the proportion of agency workers in children’s social care falling to 26.5% from 40.7% in August 2023. However, the report also acknowledged the importance of providing support to service areas undergoing restructuring and loss of agency staff to ensure continued service quality.

It is important to continue to reflect on the support structures in place for services historically dependent on agency staff, to ensure they are still able to provide the best service for our residents.

The report went on to say that in the long term, transformation work would help to support these service areas by rebalancing the service offer.

Customer Experience

The report was also scheduled to highlight that while progress had been made in reducing recurring contact from residents on the same issue ('failure demand'), customer satisfaction from the Council's call centre had fallen to 70.5%. This average figure, however, masked significant disparities, with satisfaction as low as 44% for Blue Badge and Social Care queries. The report suggested that this was partly driven by difficulties in resolving issues at the first point of contact.

Missed Bins

The report noted a recent increase in missed bin collections. This was attributed to the introduction of separate weekly food waste collections and was expected to decrease as staff became familiar with new collection routes.

Role of Scrutiny in the Corporate Impact Framework

The report noted that the Committee was scheduled to be asked to offer feedback on how the CIF could be used by Scrutiny Committees and Members more generally. The report noted that beyond this, the team was looking to roll out the CIF to all Members in Spring 2025. This would give all Members access to the dashboard.

Corporate Peer Challenge Action Plan

This report was scheduled to update the Committee on the Local Government Association's peer challenge which took place in June 2024.

The LGA peer challenge is designed to provide councils with an external perspective on their performance and to identify areas for improvement. The report pack notes that in Waltham Forest, the peer team focused on inequality, transformation, and partnerships.

The report also notes that an action plan had been developed in response to the peer challenge findings, and that delegated authority has been given to the Council Leader to approve future updates to the action plan.

The Scrutiny Report

The final report scheduled for discussion was a report by the Scrutiny Officer, Emily Wood.

Task and Finish Review

This report proposed a time-limited task and finish review to investigate Adult Social Care (ASC) transformation in the context of rising demand. The review was scheduled to be conducted as a one-off 'hackathon' style session and would include members from both the Budget Scrutiny and Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committees.

A hackathon will ensure collaboration across both committees, allowing members to ‘deep dive’ outside of a formal meeting setting on a specific issue, collate relevant information and feedback to each committee on their findings.

The scope of the review was to focus on adult social care transformation, demand, and spending.

Scrutiny Forward Plan

The report also included the Scrutiny Coordinating Committee's forward plan for the remainder of the 2024/25 cycle. The report highlighted the key items scheduled for discussion in the remaining meetings. It also invited members to suggest additional topics for inclusion in the work programme.