Transcript

Test this evening, so if the alarm is sounded, please evacuate the building. I'm not going to go through introductions, but when officers are presenting, if you could all introduce yourselves, that would be appreciated. Formalities. Firstly, apologies for absence. I've had formal apologies from Councillor Ibrahim and Councillor Kondoker. I don't think I've had any other. Yeah, and apologies for lateness for Councillor Ozdemir. There are no substitute members. Any declarations of interest? No declarations of interest. Can we agree the minutes of the previous meeting? Agreed. On to the Chair's report. And you will all have in your papers what's called the Action Sheet, which is at page 101 of the committee papers. I said last time that when this committee asks for material, it expects to get it. And what we're going to do is to spend a few minutes going through a few of the outstanding items to see where we are with them. First off is the social value contracts. Just to say the meeting didn't take place on the 5th of February. There will be a meeting. I will look at the material first and then that will be circulated. Because we are looking towards the final meeting in terms of evidence gathering on the 14th and a meeting either on the 14th or the 15th informally to see where we as a committee are at with the scrutiny review. I will make sure that I will make sure that I will make sure that I will make sure that that takes place before the 14th and the material gets circulated before the 14th. So that's on me. Annual workforce report and data. You can see on the 5th of November that there were a series of requests. My note in terms of the additional requests is this. The committee had requested additional information on workforce data at the November meeting. Following from that additional information, further requests were made. How many senior staff were interim? Whether there were fewer senior interim staff than previously? An explanation as to why there were more senior staff in adult social care, despite changes to telephone lines, and how bringing portfolios together impacted the officers' salaries. I've not, unless I've missed the email, received anything on that. Our next meeting is the 1st of May. Is there any reason why we can't have an email circulated to the committee? I'm conscious that Easter is coming up, but it's two weeks before Good Friday. So could we have that by the 17th of April? Just an update on those points. And I'll ask the committee if there are any other points on that to get them to me by closer play tomorrow, because we've got to give the officers a fair chance to get the information together. Then, arising out of the December meeting, summary of complaints statistics. The committee requested to see average compensation amounts and trends from the Housing and Local Government Ombudsman and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman over the last five years. I think, as we can see, there's a blank next to that. Again, if I've missed the response, apologies, but if not, same principle, 14 days. Unless anybody objects. Sorry, I'm sounding like a judge, but I can't help it. It kind of goes with the territory. Then, finally, spending on legal advice. Again, I've not received a response. It was chaste. I was very properly informed that there is some complexity. Suggestions as to how it could be presented in a digestible way that didn't place undue burdens on officers. Again, not received a response on that. So, again, by the 17th. I just want to check in with the committee. Are there any matters that you raised in committee that you were expecting answers on that you haven't had? Always good to hear, Silas. It's a really helpful document, the scrutiny sheet, action sheet, because it helps us keep a track on what we are doing. Just in terms of our scrutiny review, the final evidence session is an online session on the 14th of April. What I'd like to do is a similar session to that which Councillor Williamson conducted last time around getting input from the members of the committee around what our recommendation should be in an informal setting with, and I know Jonathan Clark did last time, with Democratic Services' input. But it is not a meeting of the committee. It is simply an informal session where we can bounce ideas before we get down to writing the final report. I'll come back to this at the end of the meeting, but have a think about whether we do it on the 14th, so straight after the session, or really the only other day is the 15th that works for people so we can get it done before Easter. So just have a think about that, and I'll come back to that at the end of the meeting. We don't have any members of the public that I can see in the room. There are no items for calling, and we don't have any external attendees, so we can move on to the performance update. And I don't know who's going to be presenting on this. We don't need a lengthy presentation on it, because we've all seen the data, and there will be some questions on it. But is anybody formally presenting on the report? I was just going to give a very, very brief summary of what the report was and the strengths and the errors of improvements. But that will be helpful. And firstly, to welcome Paul in his new role as Acting Corporate Director for Resources. And, Paul, you're very familiar with what we like. About five minutes. Yeah, I don't think I will stretch it out even to five minutes. So just as a reminder, this report was brought for the Deep Dive, specifically around the Communities Strategy and Change area of the Corporate Performance Report. The rest of the Corporate Performance Report is included for information, but officers are well prepared on the CSC section of it. There is on page 11 of the pack, just the summary of the strengths and areas for improvement, and I suspect most of the value in time tonight that will be spent deeper diving into some of those areas. So, again, hence the brevity in the introduction. So just strengths around the percentage of calls answered and then the areas for improvement being around for resident satisfaction, the resolution of first points of contact and complaints that the escalations of complaints and the response of complaints above the quality and the timeliness. There is within here as well, a summary of delivery against the delivery plan. On page 12, it talks about the Empowering People section and there is an amber rating around the dentist, etc., which is another item that I just want to draw attention to. But otherwise, I will pause and hand back. OK, I'm going to bring the committee in shortly, but I'm going to say something about complaints to begin with. It's been a concern of this committee, certainly for the time that I have been chair, that we get the complaints process right. It starts from the moment that a resident raises an issue, be it through the contact centre, be it through going to one of our access hubs, albeit through contacting a councillor. And it's about having a process that is efficient, that is fair, and that at its heart remembers that central to everything that we do as councillors on the majority group is that we are here to serve our residents. The performance data, and in particular the one metric in relation to escalations from stage one to stage two, is not encouraging. I know that a huge amount of work has been done by council award in particular in stressing the political importance to the majority group of getting the complaints process right. I know that considerable officer time has been spent on trying to address some of the issues around the volume of complaints. and there have been some important changes that I imagine will come up tonight, particularly with Melanie Rose now taking responsibility for the system side of the process that I think we all hope will improve the outcomes that we have. But I have come to the conclusion that complaints is something we have to have a tighter grip on in this committee. And what I will be asking for, and I circulated some documents earlier tonight to Paul Clarke and to Councillor Ward that other councils have adopted, is I think it's time for there to be an annual overarching report on complaints coming to this committee. And I'd like to have that report coming to the June meeting in part because I think it's a good time to take stock of where we are almost before Melanie and her team have got to grips with things. And so we see the extent of the concerns and what we're doing well, what we're not doing so well at an early stage, but also because we have a fairly light agenda traditionally in June. So it's a good time to have that report come to committee and I'm very happy to sit down and indicate what I think we as a committee would want to see in that report. But to really, I think, kick things off, I want to ask about CSC7, the stage 1 to stage 2 escalation. It shows a 23% escalation rate from stage 1 to stage 2 in quarter 3. The target where we wanted to get to by Q4 was 8%. It's worth noting that Camden's escalation rate is identical at 23%. But Hackney, it's 9.7%. And the 8% target was no doubt selected because we thought we could deliver. There's no point in having targets that are completely aspirational. They have to be grounded in reality. So what I want to understand is what's going on. Why are we so far out from our target in getting stage 1 complaints resolved satisfactorily at stage 1? So I think the first thing that I would say is the escalation rate is the cumulative symptom of the whole process from service delivery at the start through to how is a contact, how is a complaint handled. So the answer to that question is going to be, I suppose, long and winding. I'm very happy to talk about each of the elements, but just to set it in context as well, whilst the target is 8%, all boroughs globally, not globally, all boroughs, particularly all of the London boroughs that we've looked at have experienced a huge kind of spike in that escalation ratio. It doesn't mean that there aren't things going on that we can make drastic improvements to and it doesn't mean that the 8% is unachievable. But out there in the wider world, there is a changing dynamic around escalations within local authorities. So the wider context around that, there's looking through the root cause of the complaints helps to pinpoint actually where can we take learning from how we've either dealt with the complaint or how we are delivering the service or how we are delivering the service, which can then reduce both the initial complaint, but then we can understand better about how we are handling those complaints to reduce the escalation. So I suppose that's just a broad statement to say there isn't a single reason why there is an escalation route. Actually, it is the consequence of everything else that is happening. Yes, so I think first of all to pick up on the point we made at the beginning, at the point the resident raises the complaint, but I feel in some ways the complaint begins before then. It's our failure to deliver a service to them or in some way meet their expectations, which I think leads to these issues. And I think there's been a, perhaps we've missed opportunities to see the connectivity between complaints, between members' inquiries and between MP inquiries as well, because a resident is often so frustrated that they will pursue a matter through a number of these routes. And today, and this is a very early indication why I'm literally just sort of coming across this, but I've had some visibility through the resident experience programme. So it feels that we could do more to identify themes and trends so that something is getting picked up at the point where it has been raised via a number of routes. I think one of the things you'll notice in the report is there's a lot of explanation about how complaints are raised. It's this route, unless it's this, and then it's this, and stage one are dealt with by services, and et cetera. And at a very high level, it's easy for me to come in with new eyes and say these things, but I feel that often describing this process shows to some extent where the problem is. So this idea that stage one is sitting with services, one of the things that we are doing is ensuring that there's visibility of these stage one complaints and that we've got corporate leadership and a corporate approach to them. Because I was in a meeting earlier this week where we were talking about complaints leads for services, and I'm not 100% excited on whether there is a register of service leads for complaints. I think in some services, we want to make sure that that role is really clear and that you're set up for success to lead a complaint in your service, and that we've got standards at a corporate level that we're working collectively to enforce. So the reason I make that point is because I think often the stage two escalation has come out of a stage one complaint not being dealt with to an appropriate level of comprehensiveness or quality or tone. We haven't shown empathy. We haven't been able to show that the resident has felt, I think it was mentioned in December when the last meeting on this happened, you know, the agony and distress of residents. We need to acknowledge that when we reply to them. So I think having greater corporate leadership and oversight and perhaps joining up some of those service-specific practices, I think could be an opportunity to, these are very early statements, they need to be looked into and proven out. And I appreciate that. I think what I've been stood in is a little bit about what in particular is driving the increase in, and I'm just taking the stage one to stage two, because that's what's striking that the complaints are in it there in the first place because they've got to stage one. And something is clearly going wrong at that point because they're going from stage one to stage two. It may be the nature of the complaints that they are of a type that are almost infractable and are likely to generate a stage two. and we recognise that there are going to be complaints that are wholly without merit. There are going to be complaints because the resident is asking for something to be done that simply cannot be done or it would not be lawful for the council to do. So there may be an extent to which the rise is because residents have unrealistic expectations of what we can do. But there might be other factors as well that you've been able from a quick dive in to identify and I think we'd be interested in your take on what is driving this. So you've made the point previously I think that we haven't had sufficient insight to sort of action some of these issues and as recently as today I've had a look at some of this data about escalations and the highest percentage of them relates to housing and housing repairs but bear in mind that there's a weighting factor here because this is one of the highest volume services so naturally it is going to have a disproportionately high it seems percentage of complaints. but the next two down are delays so the sheer timeliness with which we came back to a resident and the other aspect which I do want to dive into is conduct of staff is given as a reason and that could be as that couldn't that doesn't mean the staff member has necessarily not acted in an inappropriate way but perhaps their tone wasn't quite right or to your point they've given a no we don't do this or we can't do this but it's not a sort of qualified no explaining the policy or the procedure or the remit or role of the council so this idea that we're giving a comprehensive rationale for why we're not supporting the complaint or we can't address it I think it's potentially one of the things that we are addressing now with a standards checklist so have you done all of these things when responding to a complaint those things range from acknowledging the resident's distress apologising but also explaining the reasoning for the response you're getting which in some cases may not be a response they like I'm going to now open the discussion up I may come back in but I think Saika you want to raise something I'm Councillor Poundar from St Mary's and St James's Ward so I've been on this committee for three years now and complaints have been the main issue and I think you do realise and I thank you for your apology but these residents are our they're real people and the simple thing that since I've become a councillor I am constantly apologising to our residents because it falls because it falls on us people don't see you people see us they turn to us and I'm constantly trying to be the bridge and the gap between the resident and the council but simple things that should be picked up on when a staff member leaves and the complaint is at stage one the trail gets lost and six months later the resident still hasn't got the issue sorted out because the staff members left they email me or I go door knocking they come to me and I intervene I get an answer straight away saying well actually we're really sorry but the staff member left so the trail disappeared but that's put my resident at a disadvantage and hence I want to talk about my community that is also has no confidence in complaining they complain once they complain twice then they don't bother and then their mental health gets affected and then they don't they don't trust our services so there's a cycle of effect and I just feel that it's three years being on this committee we still haven't sorted it out and I appreciate your trying but the first bucket call is a staff member this only happened three weeks ago where a resident found out about housing which we know that we have a housing crisis but instead of saying to the resident well actually you know I've lived in a bed sick with three children I mean how is that helping how is that helping how dare they speak to a resident like that and obviously the resident doesn't remember who that person is so there's no way of need to find out to account that person so we really do need to look into how our staff members are treating our residents and how is it that a staff member can leave and senior corporate members don't know where that where the train has gone so I just would like going forward to get the situation handled and start afresh and try and try and nip all of this in the bud and try and get our residents voices heard just before Melanie comes in just to flag up the point you've made about the person being not traceable so all these calls are traceable and they are recorded the specific example you've given me is actually quite shocking so I'm going to sit down with Melanie and listen to that call so I'm going to sit down with Melanie I can find out from the resident which resident it was because I can't remember it off my head but I know I've got a train of it somewhere I respond on this point I fully accept and having read some of the previous news coverage and meeting minutes this is a reputational issue for the council but it's also an issue of that is ultimately what we are here for is to deliver these services for residents and when we have failed them in some way with the service that we are able to deal with that in a timely way and acknowledge it I think in relation to the example that you have cited that's really shocking to me and I think one of the things I'd like to look into is where we've got things being managed in individual services are those services set up for success for example if someone leaves so who's got an overview of all of the complaints so that if someone is going and we can see that something's assigned to them these are the basics that we need to get right that you've got some continuity of care for every complaint the other thing that's been talked about previously is training training training and there's been a big focus on training but I actually think it's accountability accountability accountability so one of the things that we have seen and the council ward had the chance to review this meeting at the north hub a couple of weeks ago we do have some live dashboards for members inquiries where we've started to show on a live basis how many members inquiries are still outstanding how many are being met within SLA and I did want to highlight this as a potential opportunity for complaints because in January the number within SLA was 31% in February 46% in March 68% so the trajectory where you've got visibility of accountability is that things will improve we need to try and apply some of that good process and good practice around insights to drive action and accountability if we get these complaints right then everything else people can cope with everything else it's just the complaints I believe we can care even if we're not able to resolve your complaint or resolve it in the way you'd hoped we can still show that we care about that and that we think it's valuable to justify this to you thank you thank you again really thank you Nick and yeah really the problem is I give three scenarios yeah it's a real scenario I'm not mentioning the name and everything one is some people make complaint against the social worker because of the service yeah and it is interviewed then investigated by the manager or someone they send an email saying this is a problem by the third party when some investigation has happened if you blame to the third party yeah organization you need to contact them I know this case that's why I'm telling yeah they never contact them then local councillor intervened and after there is no answer nothing that yeah two councillor intervened then resolve first scenario second scenario in my scrutiny committee one one member accused that even councillor can solve the problem without the councillor hasn't resolved third scenario I'll give you this is I raise a casework yeah someone has a problem then officer it was sent my caseworker to the officer and officers after some weeks chasing this is not my job it's going to be another officer job yeah then nothing has happened I have to talk to my leader and also executive councillor and executive councillor intervened yeah still hasn't happened but we got that something will happen in future this is three scenarios I give you this is a resident and last one is one of the community respected guy whose problem was as a councillor we have to go to the door step yeah we have to get and we are elected by the member if they are getting this kind of service yeah how we think we are doing good job there is the problem is when we did access to the my committee to the social care and that time I proposed that should be any thing contact to the council should be outcome base yeah we don't know there is anything in the outcome base because if someone say my light is not working yeah outcome is what is outcome is we send someone there and fix the outcome yeah is nothing there because there is a not proper monitoring system yeah this is the problem we are facing and as my question and also is a report what is Nick and other say when you send any if anything Nick mentioned if not appropriate for the council to do this resident always expect good answer apologetic because people they don't understand what the services people haven't got the house people haven't got the case work eight people living in the two bedroom house about two weeks ago someone crying because his father in law is nearly bed bound no house yeah they expect something good answer from the council they can say sorry we can't solve that because there is enough house and everything this kind of language should be used from the officer the language of the officer is not right thank you so I think the couple of things that leap to mind there is the third party point so I can only give an example from my service we had an outage with one of our forms on the website not long after I joined my team got comms to put a message on the website saying we're working with our third party supplier to solve the issue I asked them to take that use suppliers but we can't lay these things at the door because the quality of those suppliers and how they perform is our responsibility so I hope that answers the question there but I think there's a wider point about making sure we don't do that in our responses to complaints I think on the issue about the housing issue and this is such a challenging one for Islington I know the sort of context that we're in with this one but it's the qualified no isn't it we're not able to do this for you but we explain our challenge as a council what we are trying to do to help families and again provide that care because we won't necessarily be able to solve every resident housing problem even if they complain about it but the states don't know enough about the complexities of the housing side to say too much more about that but I have heard what you said one more thing especially adult social care when people raise any issue now new system is online they don't get any answer I did raise it my committee then even I raised some safeguarding concern is when people raise safeguarding concern our department supposed to send an email saying we were looking this one by so many days nothing is happening new system was adopted more than two years now but residents are not getting and I did raise it John and other that the service is not educate because people haven't got track yeah even some safeguarding concern was raised and it was referred to here to there here to there here to there but originally who raised a safeguarding concern they don't know where the actual concern is as me because I do work in phone line I can give you like the data protection I can't say who is that one I can give you evidence if you what 's going on in that also social care and this is not it the thing chair just to flag up that this particular safeguarding concern was raised by the last scrutiny committee and I was shocked at the time I'm shocked now but we did ask that this go to the director of social care because of safeguarding concerns aren't being I think we've all heard from the committee particularly this issue around culture and I just want to really underline that and get the importance of that right particularly around things like defensiveness as well from the staff and we've had that I think some of my colleagues have as well when we have raised a complaint on behalf of the residents who've come to us whether that be at stage 1 or stage 2 and had a response back sometimes it feels a little bit panicked or it felt slightly dismissive or it's not really a duress issue and it felt a little bit I hate to use the words but lacking in terms of what has come back to us and I had a recent case once myself and Councillor Turan where the only time we got a response back that was actually quite heartbreaking to read because it was from an officer who acted I think in an incredibly full of integrity fashion in the response that they brought back to us was when we had to go to the leader of the council about this issue and before that there was quite a lot of defensiveness that was coming back so I just want to really highlight that as can we get this right because I don't want to see officers in that position either where they're having to write long emails that puts them in some respect on the front line when it maybe wasn't their fault in the first place so if we can really get that right that would be really helpful and my second question is probably less emotional so the second question really relates to response time so you've got in here about the corporate stage one complaint being 22 working days against the target of 10 increase being the backlog of stage one complaints in housing can you give insurances that we're not going to be there again so how are we going to make sure we don't get to a situation where we have more backlogs consistently happening so in terms of the backlog I've been trying to dive into that and find out how we got there in the first place my understanding is that once we've been through and deduplicated some of the numbers we've arrived at 116 that weren't correctly allocated so I think there's an aspect here around the process and what we ask of residents or councillors when raising complaints how easy do we make it to know what you're raising the complaint about and it getting rooted to the right place on our end but this idea that where is the triage and etc and these are things that may be in place but I just need to get more of an understanding it's making sure that we don't misallocate things because as soon as we've misallocated something it is going to get lost it's going to go into a black hole because people will think and I've seen it with other completely separate issues I don't know anything about this so I don't know where to go with it and that's causing a lot of delays and that's causing a lot of stage 2 so I think if we can get it right at the start and ensure the complaint goes to the right area I think that's going to go some way on your point about the culture and the defensiveness completely appreciate this I think some of the comments that I have seen anecdotally about the responses or the frustration with responses is that we're really good at listing everything we did which always sounds a bit defensive doesn't it if you think about it in your own life well I've done this and I've done this and we've looked into this but if we're not sort of saying in spite of all of that we haven't been able to meet your need or we're sorry and probably the resident maybe cares less about all the things we've done and perhaps the reason why we weren't able to serve their complaint or deal with it in a specific way tone I mean we understand defensiveness we all feel defensive when we feel like maybe our service is kind of being criticised or under attack but that's the culture change we've got to see these things as an opportunity to improve our service and I think that's often where we kind of could reframe our thinking so that we don't have those thoughts yeah thanks very much councillor trisha clark you know you mentioned the agony that residents go through at the beginning but I think with this issue I think frustration is the word and you've mentioned that word frustration and you know frustration it just develops into this anger and hatred against the council you know and so my example is a lease holder who has gone stage one stage two and is now thinking he's going to the ombudsman and is totally frustrated and even I when I saw it was a lease holder I thought oh you know I was just about to sort of ignore it and I thought no and I picked it up and there's still no response but it's like are we not treating lease holders as human beings or something like that and that's one example and then another example which hasn't gone to the complaint yet but is someone that I picked up today who's not getting any response on their query about housing and is writing in frustration I've sent these emails no response no response and then I send an email to her copying the housing officer in and then immediately the housing officer responds and it isn't even it's exactly what you're talking about it's a little bit dismissive it's not good enough so that's what I want to say there but my question is about this process you stay in the stage one complaints are moving from services to corporate complaints unit but my question is so the corporate complaints unit they must be already quite inundated how is it going to improve because the services are actually trained aren't they to deal with complaints but there's a backlog and how can we be sure that moving it to corporate complaints unit is going to improve the situation and how will we monitor that obviously we do have the team and who is obviously working in that service but for me it's not necessarily that service is going to solve all the complaints but it's that governance and monitoring but I really want to support that team to firm up and to get more grip so that we're actively they've got better insight that can help them drive the accountability of services so I think for me that's the value add for corporate complaints rather than they're responsible for solving all these problems at stage two it's more like stage one and stage one go to corporate complaints stage one go to corporate unit complains stage one went to services stage one goes to services and then stage two page 15 it says stage one complaints they're now going to corporate complaints unit have I read that wrong can I come in just to clarify Manny Lewis I'm the assistant director of resident experience this goes back to a point that Mel was making earlier about incorrectly assigned cases so what we found in some circumstances when we were looking through our system cleaning it up we found that cases were being reallocated from one service to another but they were incorrectly doing so so that meant the complaint was effectively lost in the system so to address that and to make it easier and simpler for residents to raise a complaint because residents at the moment have to pick for a long drop down list try and work out where that complaint is what we're doing is we're changing the process to say every complaint will be triaged by the corporate complaints unit and they will allocate the case out to the service for investigation so we're not going to be investigating all the cases but we will be making sure that they are routed and allocated correctly so will there be more resource put into that unit there's more resource going into that unit we've already got additional resource that we've taken over so to address the issue of the increased complaint we've actually doubled the staffing in that team we've also got additional resource so whilst we work through these issues to make sure we've got the capacity and results to deal with this I'm going to bring Councillor Jagger Armstrong in a moment but I just want to pick up on the resources point bearing in mind what we are looking for is a long term sustainable solution not a quick fix and then back in the same position in 12 months time can we have confidence that there is a budget and I appreciate we can only look at the potential budget for 2526 but are we confident and I think this is probably a question for you Paul that we have sufficient provision in our budget for there to be a long term solution to the problems that we are trying to address so the very quick answer is yes and the reason is yes is because we know that the volume of complaints and the work that we are doing at the moment is very labour intensive there is an awful lot of effort going into it and actually looking at the overall improvement journey and plan that we have got is about making better use and more efficient use of those resources so whilst we have talked about very specific things that are changing around changing the form for people to put forward complaints there is a lot of work around the systems and processes to make sure that those are right there is an awful lot of work around the leadership and the culture and the organisational visibility and reporting rhythm there is a live dashboard constantly we have weekly meetings at CMT it's on everyone's radar as a priority to get things sorted in terms of that quality but the things then that mean that it stays is the learning that we take from the complaints it's the quality assurance that is built into those processes it's the technology that we use to help do that and we can look at ways that we can quality assure a draft response in an automated way to check that we're responding to all the points etc and then I completely lost my train of thought just on that final bit but then there's also then looking at the systems that we're using and making sure that we don't have instances where a whole swathe of complaints get kind of stuck or lost because they're not allocated actually having a proper grip on the system having a single system which is really user friendly which is allows people to kind of interact with it in a way that they want to interact with it rather than having to putting in barriers to that usage and then having ways of reporting out about user behaviour in that system and those almost like kind of mystery shopper type reviews periodically to make sure that all of the parts of the system are working that leads us to the long term solution for this and all of that working in an efficient way means that actually the resources that we've got will be enough that residents deserve so for me this is absolutely not just a resources question so as Paul has mentioned we are already leveraging technology potential in order to streamline some of these processes and take out some of that so Lani's right we've talked about this need to not make residents have to think where do I need to put this complaint but actually once we've got intelligence in the systems you may not have as much need for manual triage right we can start to route things automatically and get them into the right queue straight away Paul's talked about the quality assurance of responses that we can provide so we can use technologies to mine the systems and compile the information but not as a defensive list of things we did a comprehensive list of approaches we've taken but acknowledging and being empathetic towards the resident and we're also as you've heard using greater insights for monitoring so some of these instances that you're talking about where things have simply fallen through the cracks one of my strongest imperatives in getting across this is understanding how we can avoid that but I did want to come back to Councillor Clark's point about the emails because actually email is something people are familiar with they want to use it I think for a lot of people including councillors it's more user friendly than the systems I totally understand that I also understand if a councillor emails somebody you'll probably get a quicker response but at the same time things that are going through emails we're not cited on them in terms of the data so we won't necessarily know that that complaint's come in and etc we are looking at our opportunities with systems to integrate so if an email does come in you can automatically create a complaint or case out of it rather than re-key it into the system because inevitably people will use a number of different doors to raise this stuff but we do need to be cited on each and every complaint because the example you've given somebody complained somebody complained somebody complained nothing happened then they came to you and you complained we don't see that trajectory and we need to be able to see it so we can act on it thank you chair councillor nurse this is your brother sound strong I agree ward first and foremost I think I'm hearing the right things when it comes to communications the processes for complaints and I think what you mentioned about accountability is really important so it's great to know that we're using that as a tool and it was great to see those percentages going up but there's also an element of transparency so when I do look at the indicators here I can see a lot of red on the rag rating and I know a lot of it is kind of historic and I think what is really good is that transparency does exist and I don't mind personally seeing red because I know that we've actually acknowledged there's a problem and I know that the council has got the right intentions to make sure that we improve on it the other thing comes into place is when you do look at the percentages when it comes to resident satisfaction rate that's decreasing when you look at percentages of complaints that's been mentioned that's increasing satisfaction about first point of contact responses that's going downwards so which brings up the point that has been raised about kind of the culture of care so I think and hopefully as residents know that the council cares about them but I do wonder whether we model that within our own council so do our frontline staff have that care go through to them as well and how we're making sure that we're properly training them giving them also those opportunities to show that this is what our culture is like and it was great to hear that we've doubled the staff in a specific area but I'm really conscious that over the next plan to reduce staff by 600 and going back to what we talked about backlogs and sustainability I would love some reassurance that we've got things in place to make sure that the pace of that change doesn't mean that these numbers continue to go down sorry for the question thank you chair councillor Jason Jackson hollow award and share funds and communities I would not want to echo what my fellow committee members have raised about the lack of empathy I would say from some of our workforce to our residents and you've kind of just mentioned about raising or using intelligence tools to kind of help things and I can't help to think think if we were to code that using some of what's raised here we're going to have a problem in terms of is that the right standard approach or how things should be done I want to look forward because from what I'm hearing from the team you're presenting things will get better or you sort of identify that things need to get better because I think I can't help to feel how do our workforce because I know there's an amazing group of staff that are doing all they can I can't help to get a picture that what is the conversation like when these things are being presented to several teams how do they respond do they respond with actually we're doing all we can or there's actually limited resources for us to do what we could do better or are they actually I'm trying to understand what day our workforce are sort of responsive because like everyone stated this has been ongoing we've said this you know it's now you know the sacraments of three years we kept saying the same thing I've seen you do all you can to navigate this space so I guess I want a bit of transparency to tell us because we're here we can put on the political hat sometimes but we actually want to know our workforce saying no this is actually the real issue here and I don't know if you can do that and then I can if chair will allow me then I would sort of want to go into what's next you've talked about integrating with other sort of feedback channels with access Islinton Hub and other member inquiry I'm trying here or is that what our workforce actually telling us what the issue is thank you so I can give a couple of responses there first of all it's very easy for me to sit here today on day four of having responsibility for this service and say things will get better but we've been saying that as a council for months and months and probably longer certainly before I joined the council so I'm so let me move on to what we are thinking about for the next three to six months but I would say the request to bring an annual report here in June I welcome because we can do more of a deep dive into the data the insights the opportunities around systems the culture what we're hearing from services Councillor Jackson which to be honest I haven't been in those conversations so I don't know we have that's the nature of things of the council so we've got to work smart and find out how we can focus on the right things but in terms of this programme of works at a high level conversations that Paul and I are having with our colleagues around as we start to work more closely together is we've touched on the pulling together of complaints members inquiries and MP inquiries MPs inquiries actually aren't being logged on any systems so that's a step we need to remediate immediately and we feel at the moment you've got two systems dealing with these things we have to have a forward procurement plan for that and potentially look for opportunities to consolidate that will come back in June there is the corporate leadership that I spoke about so stage one being dealt with by services ensuring that at a corporate management team level that everyone is brought into this idea that we have that culture of accountability and also what are the consequences if people don't demonstrate that culture of accountability I think we're very good at aspiring as a council for greatness but where we don't find greatness sometimes we miss the opportunity to learn or to otherwise manage robustly I want to look at the key performance indicators themselves and just make sure that we have got and are tracking all the key performance indicators that we could be or should be to really get into that data I spoke about some of the reasons for a stage 1 becoming a stage 2 how are we getting much more into those reasons and understanding what's behind them we talked a lot about the quality of response so I think there are a number of things that we would be looking to do here in terms of our plan so there are where can we leverage technologies we're already looking at members inquiries what can we do around complaints but also the standards so Kelly my colleague sitting behind me working with Manny on pulling together a list of standards this isn't about who thinks what is good quality it's about a shared list that I would like this group to see of things that have been arrived at as things that we would expect to see or the residents would expect to see and then I think there's going into that root cause analysis understanding the data quality so we know that not everything is captured in the system we know that people are working off system that people who didn't trust the system internally or externally have been using spreadsheets to manage some of the reports and asking for dashboards off the spreadsheets we've said no to that right because we start to proliferate information and we don't see the full picture and the use of the system I think we've the complaints case tracker system was in some ways a distress purchase right we were in a really bad situation as I understand it with the ombudsman's findings and etc and I think we've potentially in many cases not just here have bought systems thinking about everything that the user's experience of using the system and I know that there is a lot of resistance to using the case tracker system and the iCasework system for members and inquires we need to understand why that is what can we do working with those vendors to make it better or as Kerry and I were talking about today when we go out for a new system what are our requirements let's get it right for the time so that's a few of the things that you can expect to see more on in June and Chair just to say a bit more about Councillor Jackson's fundamental point if the issue was resources that would actually be much easier and I would frankly if the issue was resources I would sit here and say to this committee the issue is resources we need to in the next budget put much more resource into complaints and I would go and see the Chair of the Committee and I would sit down with him and say we've got to put more resources in frankly that would be really easy I'm very clear that the issue goes far beyond resources it reminds me quite a lot of the work that was done on the contact centre and how actually we had one of the best resourced contact centres in London more than any of our neighbours but the system was awful and we saw what happened we saw there was more call abandonment there was less call resolution and there was lots of calls people were calling up five six seven times and Melanie has outlined that there are actually more fundamental issues here around systems and around culture and that is going to take some time to bed and it's only fair I say that as Melanie says there has been a restructure this rug now comes under Melanie's team and even in the short time they have they have hit the ground running so I welcome the Chair's suggestion and then you'll report in thank you and I guess you've kind of given us an expectation in the next couple of months we will see some news but there are some of the things that you've raised that to me sounds quite more long-term and managing expectation is pretty much a big thing just like you've raised even with how people are dealing with our complaints again if they were managed in a way that you're dealing with a real human on the other side it's not just a name or number there's actual someone going through something that just needs some level of reassurance now the point of the short point I'm trying to make here is this new changes if the culture doesn't change right because I'm sure some of the ways things were trying to address in the previous time was they brought in new ideas new tools but the culture remains the same so I guess my question is what is the plan for the culture that exists around this who's responsible who do we hold accountable does that apply as part of the action that needs to be taken I think I've outlined the need for accountability I can't show you the plan at such an early stage but I think recognising what we need to do around culture which for me is a lot of it is about accountability and care so how do we turn something like care into a meaningful way of working that people are actually exemplifying every day I think it's tough enough to crack but we've got to start looking at the accountabilities first I think yeah I mean a huge influence on the culture is the leadership and the leadership of the service the leadership to the top of the organisation is absolutely of the view that this is an absolute priority and getting those getting the people writing the responses to the complaints are not housing offices or council tax offices they are corporate citizens responding on behalf of the council to a human being and getting the culture around it being a corporate response and not just it's not my business it's in someone else's department which we were set up to work in that way through the way that complaints were triaged through the system so we talk a lot about systems but this is absolutely not a system project this is about making sure the technology enables us to respond in a corporate way sorry very briefly I think it's in a similar vein to what Councillor Jackson has just asked I'm going to pivot slightly I think I was wondering how are we going to crack the culture piece in terms of where are we learning from because I was reflecting I've been part of an organisation that changed their complaints procedure to a reporting procedure and obviously that's not semantics it's actually quite stigmatising to be a complainant and if you want to be a learning organisation you want people to report to you so you can improve versus I'm complaining that's annoying complaining and I don't want to get into let's change all the wording on the website and get accused of being semantics and not concentrating on things that matters our residence I'm just wondering where are we learning from to make this we know culture is really hard and there are some fundamentals that might be useful to learn from other sectors or other parts of local government that have done it really well because the culture piece is the tough piece right it feels like sorry that wasn't brief at all apologies so I think we I think I sort of said early on in the exchange that a complaint is a sort of service failure so how is it that we can understand that so that we don't let the resident down in the first place so they feel they have no option but to complain because really I don't think anyone wants to complain I think people are complaining out of a state of real frustration desperation etc so for me I think the opportunity to learn so this week a couple of complaints that were escalated then to Councillor Halloran the leader of the council and Victoria were passed to me so that I could take a look and I liaised with the relevant service to say could I get a bit of a breakdown of what happened here so that we can start to use them as case studies what I'd really like to do is do a bit more kind of promotion of complaints as a case study what happened what we can learn from this so regardless of where the complaint was where we've got a forum we've got a complaints board which features as I understand it the complaints lead for the council how much time in that board do we spend using case studies to learn from how much time do we spend in our directors forum for example talking about complaints and Victoria's told us this week this is our forum as senior leaders we can use it for things that we think are important so I think we need to commandeer a lot more council time to showcase these kinds of issues and how we deal with them and are we learning can I just add one thing to that chair and that is we do have a small members working group on resident experience which does look at those case studies as well anybody is welcome to join that working group I think one of the things we've emphasised is actually bringing case studies to that group case studies are really important dip sampling is also really important in terms of getting a sense of across the piece how we are dealing with complaints I think everybody tonight that has spoken has expressed very clearly how important this is to us as the political representatives of the community to get it right I think we all welcome the organisational changes and the clear commitment to make this an absolute central priority of what I would call the corporate arm of the council I am very pleased that the leader is here tonight who has made it abundantly clear how important this is to us as a council very pleased that the attitude around the report when you come back to committee it won't be a rehash of what we've done tonight it will be looking at the report and seeing the steps that we've taken nobody is expecting that by June there will be a complete it's going to take time particularly around culture but I think we're all heartened by the clear commitment that has been expressed that this is a central priority and I think on behalf of the committee would like to thank Paul and Melanie and also Kerry and Manny for all of their hard work not just tonight but certainly over the past few months in trying to improve matters we know it's going to be a long journey but I think we're at least on the way okay we're going to move on now to the budget monitor I imagine that Paul is staying for that but if anybody else wants to leave by all we do we've all read the report I don't know whether it's Councillor Ward or Paul Clark was presenting or indeed Rachel was presenting on this excellent but just the usual brief summary of highlights and then we'll move on to questions thank you chair so I'm Rachel Harrison Deputy Director of Finance so we bring to you today the quarter three 24 25 financial update for the council the total for directorates of quarter three is just under 16 million projected overspent which is 1.9 million worse in the quarter two position however there has been positive movement in corporate items bringing the net general fund projection to 3.2 million over which is actually 1.1 million better than we were projecting last quarter some some some directors have reported improvement in their forecast position adults is now forecasting a balanced budget position and this is because of overachievement on their placement savings and underspends on their staffing budgets due to delays of recruitment community strategy and change position has also improved and that is due to senior management mitigations such as holding vacancies reducing non-pay expenditure and ending costly agency contracts favourable movement has also been seen in community wealth building and that is due to improvement in the planning income forecast and an increase in grant funding however unfortunately environment and climate change we have seen adverse movement and that is mainly in parking due to bringing suspensions income previously reported as a risk into the forecast with there being slippage on the rollout of high speed broadband across the borough discussions have now concluded with open reach though so we do expect the works and therefore the income to be materialised in this financial year 25-26 we are now in April it feels weird talking about quarter three now so we're closed down finally resources has seen a worsening position and that is mainly due to cost pressures in legal one-off contract costs in digital services and delayed delivery to Somval Council wide cross-cutting savings the Chancellor announced the spring statement last week so I thought I would just conclude with a few takeaways from that announcement that were relevant to local government it was confirmed that there will be a spending review in June where departmental spending plans up to 28-29 will be set then a budget statement is expected in the autumn the Office for Budget Responsibility highlighted the substantial risk that local authorities face and the increasing pressures being reported it was noted that 29 authorities were actually granted exceptional financial support in 24-25 compared to just one in 17-18 so really just highlighting the really difficult financial climate we are operating in and then just to note that the forecast on CPI is expected to rise this year to a peak of 3.8% in July compared to 2.5% last year in 24-25 so which could make sort of delivery of normal pay savings sort of more challenging to deliver so I thought I would just note that and that's it for me thank you happy to take any questions I know Councillor Stark you had a question yeah it's just a clarifying one you kind of touched on it there it was just where you talked about street operational services it was page 46 in the printed copy forecasting an overspend of 1.427 million so then you said largely due to delayed delivery of savings which were aimed to generate additional enforcement income so it's just a point of clarity so what is that referring to in terms of delayed delivery of savings and what were you expecting in terms of that aimed at additional enforcement income thank you my understanding that service put forward savings in relation to a new contract which hasn't sort of delivered as initially planned so moving into 25-26 there are plans to consolidate some of that enforcement work so the one that you've highlighted is environment but we also have enforcement work taking place in community safety so the plan is to consolidate it all into community safety completely review it and then with a view to renegotiate some contracts to really kind of make sure those savings don't slip further thanks for that report and update not looking forward to autumn's statement but in terms of where we are something that I can hopefully look forward to is the end of the solo saga so I'll be expecting any further delays because I think the last one has cost us £500,000 is that something that is going to be recovered through the insurance process or is this actually our own money so maybe just a clarification on that and again where are we with the insurance process because I'd love for that line to be removed from so I was specifically thinking about the insurance but if you know about one there so they'll open so just in terms of the insurance so what was insured was reinstatement there are elements of betterment that the council will need to fund itself as part of its capital programme in terms of the insurance claim it's still ongoing and we have regular reviews on it in fact I'm due an update very soon the last one was about a month ago and everything is kind of progressing in terms of nothing has slipped backwards in terms of our expectation that we will be fully reimbursed to the insured level and I know that Conister Williamson is working day and night to get the full so-called restored and the new trampoline park opened and I believe that's happening in LA I'll ask before an update Can I just clarify on the betterment item what number are we looking at in terms of how much is looking at was exposed to that I will I'll have to confirm I've got the information just not at my fingertips Just on that before I turn to Councillor Clarke there is the reinstatement but there's also the fact that income has been lost certainly by better has there been any consequences for us because of the fact that the Sobel has not been open for a period of time and if so if that doesn't fall on better but falls on us are we covered by insurance for that? So we are definitely covered for the losses up to a certain point and if the delay in reopening is beyond I think it's two years but beyond the period of time which we are insured for because we're doing extra work then we will not be covered for the rent beyond that period so my memory is that we're covered for the two years and I think we're a little bit over two years now for that element of the building if that makes sense I feel like So effectively anything that we've caused by way of a delay by wanting to improve the centre I can say build that better but that becomes a little bit confusing that's on us we take the hit but everything else our insurers take the hit and is that what we're squabbling about at the moment? Broadly speaking and then there will be uninsured losses like the excess which we'd be pursuing through a claim against Thames Water Councillor Clark and let's hope Thames Water don't go under before we get the money from the Thank you I think it's really positive your statement about you've really reduced the overspend that's really good and thank you very much for that and I wondered if you could tell me how much we'll get from Openreach if that interests me and just there's some really good strength in this budget as well the number of apprenticeships and the amount that IMAX gets in benefits for people that haven't been able to claim them so really good things and slightly I'm just puzzled by the rise in the number of avoidable hospital visits due to the lack of access to effective primary care and just wondering how well how that affects is that what's that to do with our budget but also how do we recover from that you know how do we reduce that does it affect our budget the number of avoidable hospital visits that's on page 22 I said that I quite often go to the wrong report I missed that then so yes just to the Openreach please the amount of income that we were budgeting this year is about a million so that's kind of what we have carried forward and assuming into next year like the actual total budget on suspensions would be far higher but there would be a mixture of different suspensions and there wouldn't just be in relation to broadband it would be sort of you know just different sort of works on the streets that need suspension so I don't think I could really go into like the sort of the finite detail on that I'm afraid I've got an answer to the insurance question if you see so we have towards the overall insured losses we've received three million there's still a balance of about 4.3 that we're expecting there is a conversation to be had around whether GLL should pay for the betterment as part of the contract that we have with GLL in terms of the uninsured losses there's the million pound excess which we would pursue through Tense Water and then there is an additional £600,000 which is loss of rent beyond the insured limit which is two years that takes us to March the answer to the question around the loss of rent for the extension £600,000 you've got a bit of staff vacancies and I'm just sort of looking at it from I believe it's an underspend reflected on the okay I guess I'm just trying to look at we're not storing up something that's just going to come to us later on I'm just trying to get it at this point we don't have are there going to be need for those staff I guess that's the point I'm trying to get at underspend is mostly to do with staffing sorry so there's an overall overspending community wealth building on the staffing there are staffing pressures within there related to the capital delivery team primarily which is about £300,000 or so and then the majority of the rest of the variance is due to the income expectations around commercial property there is I'm just looking at the detailed breakdown of the variances there aren't any staffing underspend within CWB it was just in regards to my introduction it was CSE that had had favourable movement due to staffing vacancies and obviously because of its disbandment and I think that was known about then the recruitment will happen once the disbandment has happened if that makes any sense thank you Paul and Rachel for coming and presenting and we note formally the budget monitoring report which brings us on to the monitoring items and I said there would be an opportunity for the scrutiny chairs because we've got a slightly shorter agenda than at some meetings to update on anything that they want to update on does anybody want to take the opportunity thanks not too long of a report on homes and on homes and communities we're looking at community centres that's meant us having to speak to some of the East Lytton run community centres a couple of visits have been done we are at the stage of recommendation which I think that will be happening at the next meeting coming up soon it has been quite insightful I think there's been a little bit of the asset review as well which has sort of crossed over but what we were looking at sort of more of the community centres so I think there's a lot more recommendations so far without speaking for the rest of the committee until the signing off might be quite interesting it's been a fun one community centres is a popular topic everyone wants to make sure community centres are well used so overall it's been an interesting review so far outside of that the committee has been trying to I'm going to put this on record been trying to get the housing association to attend I haven't done so feel free to invite them here but we hopefully hope that if it's not in this year this up to May point that maybe they will attend very soon but we are really encouraging them to do turn up we we we are holding softer conversations so I will let them watch and get back to us there may have been discussions earlier on tonight about getting housing associations to engage with us I couldn't possibly comment I'll take Councillor Clark and Councillor Childry thank you yeah well we have a very successful special meeting on the climate emergency last night it was well attended about 55 people attended and Matthew Colburn was a key speaker he's the deputy mayor for London on environment and energy and he was absolutely excellent and really focused on how important it is to the working class that we have that we sort out the environment because as was mentioned by the health officer who spoke she told us about the people who died in the last heat wave so it's such an important issue and we focus on building resilience and adaptation and we had a panel of speakers and we heard from the new corporate director of the environment Wayne Stevenson and we heard from Councillor Romana Champion the executive member for the environment and all doing really good work on this issue thank you thank you I think you may know that we have chosen this year older people accommodation because of the adult social care budget and one of the money was clean for the sort of adult social care home and everything that's why we have chosen and our member visited to the local center and also now because we used to be there is shelter accommodation but because of the conservative funding was good drawn there is no more shelter accommodation available and now housing association has changed their service and we asked because provider is Clarion housing used to be I think about 10 or something shelter in East Linton Council we are looking for date to hearing from them how they are providing services and everything although I'm not able to stay there but my committee member they can ask the question and we were hoping to make some plan some suggestion for next planning because this is going to be biggest issue not only that demand also how we can planning system how we can give them like now I think it's 900 accommodation that need to be shelter accommodation yeah but we need to discuss this how because older people growing up in future we need more older accommodation like shelter care home and other and we are hoping to make right solution for the next council thank you excellent so just going back to our scrutiny and the informal brainstorming session that I'd like us to have around the recommendations proposed dates either the 14th following on from the session that we're having so that would be a Monday or having it the day after on the 15th and what I would have in mind is kicking off 6 o'clock or 6.30 depending on what works for everybody refreshments on the chair and don't worry I doubt that I'm as generous as councillor Williamson was last year and something like an hour and a half where we just brainstorm ideas not a formally clocked meeting but with the support of democratic services for the purposes of getting our conclusions into a written format what do we think do it all on the 14th or I think the 14th makes sense and I know it may mean a slightly longer evening but I think getting it done when the topic is absolutely in the forefront of our minds and having a night off on the Tuesday probably works for everybody so it will be in person because it can't work otherwise Ernie I think from an accessibility point of view even if listening options are made available I think that would be appropriate certainly having discussed it with Councillor Williamson and how it worked last time because it will be an interactive session involving people putting post-it notes working basically firing off each other I really think that it should be in person I'm perfectly happy to go and set up a team's link but I think participation for people on TV will inevitably be diminished and I appreciate that everybody has huge commitments it's not a mandatory session nobody's going to get doctor and attendance point for not coming but I'd like to have as many people there as possible to feed in and if we will try and accommodate people as best as we can but it won't work if lots of people are online it just can't work before we close the meeting anything else that anybody wants to raise in which case Jonathan and I with Sam will work out the arrangements for the 14th over the next couple of days any further requests for follow ups can you get them to me by tomorrow afternoon but that concludes our meeting this evening and 9.07 not bad we're getting better we're getting better