Agenda and minutes

The minutes of the meeting held on 10^th January 2007, having been printed and circulated, were signed as a correct record with one amendment to the attendance list to include Councillor Dennett’s apologies on Council Business.

            The Council had recently received confirmation of its star rating and “direction of travel” awarded by the Audit Commission.  The Council had been assessed as being a ‘4 Star authority: Improving Well’. Copies of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) scorecard for 2006 were circulated to the Board, for information.

            The Board was also advised that the Corporate Assessment: The Harder Test would take place during the end of March and beginning of April 2008 and that a Joint Area Review (JAR) of Children and Young People’s Services was also scheduled to take place in 2008.

            The Board congratulated Culture Services for moving from a 2 star service to a 4 star service, which was particularly impressive as the national trend in culture services was downward with only two or three other authorities seeing any improvement.

            The Board expressed an interest in looking at 3 star services in more detail and in this respect it was agreed that a further report would be submitted to a future meeting of the Board.     

            RESOLVED: That

(1)               the report be noted; and

(2)               a further report on 3 star services be submitted to a future meeting of the Board.           

            The Board had considered the draft Efficiency Strategy at its last meeting and had made specific comments about its style, but more particularly asked that greater emphasis be placed on service quality. The next step to take the strategy forward was the identification of work streams aimed at realising both cashable and non-cashable efficiency savings.

Following discussions at the last meeting along with issues raised previously through the Budget Review Working Party, a number of activities had emerged to form a workstream programme. Some of the activities had already commenced and reports had been made to the Board; however, some would still needed to be initiated and all would need to be reported back to the Board on progress.

            The report gave details of each workstream and its current status. It was suggested that officers be asked to investigate ways in which these activities could be resourced and it was also suggested that quarterly progress reports be submitted against each of the workstreams, once initiated.

RESOLVED: That

(1)               the work streams be approved and be developed into a formal programme; and

(2)               officers investigate how the programme be reviewed.

            The Board considered:

            (1)  whether Members of the press and public should be excluded from the meeting of the Board during consideration of the following item of business in accordance with Sub-Section 4 of Section 100A of the Local Government Act 1972 because it was likely that, in view of the nature of the business to be considered, exempt information would be disclosed, being information defined in Section 100 (1) and paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972; and

            (2)  whether the disclosure of information was in the public interest, whether any relevant exemptions were applicable and whether, when applying the public interest test and exemptions, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighed that in disclosing the information.

            RESOLVED: That as, in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information, members of the press and public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following item of business in accordance with Sub-Section 4 of Section 100A of the Local Government Act 1972 because it is likely that, in view of the nature of the business, exempt information will be disclosed, being information defined in Section 100 (1) and paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972.

The Board received a progress report against the 2006/7 Internal Audit Plan which gave a summary of the audits completed in the third quarter September – December 2006 and which gave details of other initiatives Internal Audit had been involved in during this period.

RESOLVED: That the Internal Audit Progress Report be accepted.