CABINET MEMBER REPORTOverview and Scrutiny Committee (Regulatory, Compliance and Corporate

Services) - 22 October 2019Councillor Portfolio Period of Report

Paulette Lappin Regulatory, Compliance and Corporate Services

October 2019

CORPORATE SUPPORT SERVICESStrategic Support Unit

Strategic Support’s main priority continues to be the support and project management of the Public-Sector Reform projects. All the open projects and sub-projects are being supported.

In addition to this the team are supporting the refresh of the Health & Wellbeing Strategy, Children and Young People’s Plan, SEND Joint Commissioning Framework and other key initiatives.

At the end of September, Strategic Support offered support for the Joint Targeted Area Inspection focusing on Children’s Mental Health. The team organised the logistics relating to the inspection and provided support to the inspectors and staff.

Strategic Support supported recently in bringing the Autism Hub to Southport Town Hall Community Room to allow information, advice and guidance to be provided to the community in an accessible location on a weekly basis.

The Strategic Support team has organised and supported the recent launch and monthly drop in sessions for the Innovation, Challenge and Improvement (ICI) Factory, a new initiative giving staff the opportunity to suggest ideas about how we could do things better for our customers and residents.

The team has also lead on the organisation of the Star Awards and alongside One Council volunteers, they are currently assessing the nominations received ahead of the celebration event on the 15th November at The Atkinson.

The Commissioning Support Team

The team continues to lead and support several key commissioning projects/activities, PSR projects: - Personalisation, Acute Wrap around, also providing children’s placements and Quality Assurance activity.

Priorities agreed with Interim Director or Adult Social Services and Interim Director of Children’s Services include:

Supported Living and Community Support Provision, developing the procurement processes and re-commissioning.

Supporting better use of assistive technology in Supported Living Services. Performance management of domiciliary care and re-ablement to support effective hospital

discharges including delivery of the capital programme in order to offset demand in services, support to embed a single-handed care approach alongside social workers and occupational therapists.

Capital grant to care homes and supporting the project to explore gross fees.

Supporting the Provider established North and South Sefton Care Home Group met on 25th September and Council Officers made presentations on the above work and also outlined the focus on improvement quality in care homes and Brexit. Ongoing collaboration with the Group will take place to ensure that it has a focus on improving quality and affords Providers the opportunity to discuss the issues in workshops and focus groups.

Procurement of statutory advocacy services and working with Healthwatch and Sefton Carers Centre to improve the specification for the services.

Supporting provider engagement and exploring good practice. Re-procuring leaving care framework and Extra Care in existing schemes. In addition, the team will be providing support in developing a draft joint commissioning

strategy for SEND provision.

The Quality Team have been involved in and coordinated several multi-agency monitoring and safeguarding responses, ensuring that services are being provided in safe and effective ways to vulnerable people.

The team continues to work closely with the other Liverpool City Region teams to share and develop good practice.

The Procurement Team

Continues to assist and advise on procurement activity across the whole Council and has over 60 procurement exercises at differing stages on the current work plan. Many of these are complex procurement exercises that exceed the OJEU procurement thresholds. The team continues to work closely with all service areas and has introduced quarterly reporting aimed at improving the forward planning of procurement activity across the Council/

The Central Procurement team continue to be involved in working closely with the other Liverpool City Region Procurement teams.

Performance and Business Intelligence Function

The Service has been:

Supporting the Joint Targeted local area Inspection examining how local services respond to children living with mental ill health, including, by providing a comprehensive series of children’s social care, school, youth offending, police and health data.

Continuing to develop the operational performance dashboard to track SEND performance for requests for assessment, planning and issue of EHCPs.

Continuing to process data relating the Troubled Families Programme, maximising the opportunity to draw-down government funding for payment by results.

Further developing performance reports for Communities and the Council’s early help offer, focussing on demographic profiling, operational outputs and strategic outcome measurement.

Developing Youth Offending performance reports. Developing Adult Social Care reablement, home care, and finance performance dashboards. Supporting school appeal mapping, collating provider data submissions, and undertaking

data processing. Analysing and reporting 2018/19 academic year educational attainment and progress

information for EYFS, Phonics, KS1, KS2 & KS4. Analysing mortality data and identifying causes of death across the borough. Analysing the data on the Council’s local welfare scheme, identifying demographic areas of

significant demand to inform intervention strategies.

Analysing data about complaints to the Council for the previous 12-month period, identifying volumes by services, departments and teams.

Conducting a series of workshops and events to recruit independent visitors and advocates for Children Looked After.

Leading on the consultation and stakeholder engagement on behalf of the Council, including the Health & Wellbeing Strategy, the staff survey, Sefton crowd and Sefton connect fund.

The immediate priorities for the Service are: Analysing and reporting overall 2018/19 academic year educational attainment and progress

information for EYFS, Phonics, KS1, KS2 & KS4 by characteristics and wider determinants, e.g. SEND, deprivation, etc.

Developing the new Corporate Performance Framework. Analyse the statistical release for the Indices of Deprivation 2019 (IoD2019) and the Index of

Multiple Deprivation (IMD2019) and produce a report to show statistics for the borough of Sefton and localities within the borough.

Implementation of a ‘sandpit’ enterprise data warehouse, which will be a test system and central repositories of integrated data from one or more disparate sources used for reporting and data analysis.

Support the categorising and processing of existing legacy paper records in the SEND department.

Leading on the consultation and stakeholder engagement for the SEND services baseline survey and air quality survey.

The Service continues to: Support PSR programme and the day-to-day performance management of key services

across the Council by analysing and providing data, producing detailed reports which generate valuable insight and supports better business decision making.

Continue to support the Council to respond to comments, compliments complaints, FOI, Subject Access and other representations, with a focus on Children’s Social Care, Adult Social Care and SEND.

Continue to provide comprehensive support across the Council relating to information management and data protection, assessment of proposed information sharing arrangement and the investigation of potential data breaches.

Process existing legacy paper records from across various Council departments, securely destroying records that no-longer need to be retained and digitising those that do.

The Communications Team

The Communications Team continues to support on number of key Council priorities, recent work has included:

Continued Year of Friendship campaign, moving from children and young people focus to a Place to Meet – the campaign is the subject of both LGC and Comms2Point0 Unaward submissions and continues to go from strength to strength. Planning is taking place for another Big Lunch inspired by Big Picnic Events earlier in the year.

Continued support for internal Star Awards, moving from promoting nomination submissions to planning communications support around the event itself, assisting Strategic Support colleagues and One Council Champions.

Supported colleagues on the joint mental health inspection undertaken by Ofsted, CQC, HMICFR and HMPS.

Continue to support the preparations for Borough of Culture 2020, producing a long form video and building the Liverpool City Region Constellations events into our pre-launch build up

Building on impactful Clean Air Day messages in August, we worked closely with colleagues in Public Health to produce the Public Health Annual Report and bring it, and its core message around clean air, to life using animations.

Worked with key partners Merseyside Police and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service alongside other partner organisation communications team to provide coverage on social media and news channels for landmark anti scrambler bikes event, which included Jamie Carragher.

Continue to play an active role in EU Exit planning, providing advice to inform the critical messages the local authority will potentially have to share with its stakeholders.

Working closely with colleagues in Public Health on Sefton in Mind messages, covering the period between Suicide Prevention Day and World Mental Health Day to promote support and advice in Sefton. Worked closely with partner communications team at Merseyrail to offer free travel to destinations in Sefton as part of the campaign, which proved very popular.

Provided communications support to promote the borough’s status of Dementia Friendly Sefton, including live social media coverage of a celebration event held at The Atkinson in Southport.

Promoted Sefton and its learning community as an inclusive ‘Borough for everyone’ through coverage of EAL celebration ceremony where we celebrated how good our schools are at welcoming communities from around the world.

Provided communications support across a variety of channels in build-up, real time and post event for Southport Air Show and the British Musical Fireworks Championship.

Communications used excellent relationships with local media to gain coverage of the successful bid for £1.6m Heritage Lottery Funding for the Southport Townscape Heritage Project, who alongside local press coverage, were also featured on Radio Merseyside, supplemented across Sefton Council’s social media channels.

Also in Southport, Comms promoted and covered the successful inaugural Active Workforce 5K in its first event outside Crosby; supported the promotion of a new Vivienne Westwood Exhibition

Following Council’s declaration of a Climate Emergency, Sefton communications made sure the authority was visible on its channels, in particular social media, during Climate Action Strikes, sharing messages relating to single use plastics on our coastline and sharing content from partner organisations, for instance some our school communities with a presence on social media.

Corporate Communications launched the annual push for secondary school admissions places in 2020/21, with Primary school admissions also due to be promoted heavily.

The Sexual Health Sefton Service was launched, with Sefton Council’s Communications function supporting colleagues in the NHS to promote its launch.

There have been a number of consultations taking place on the Your Sefton, Your Say platform, notably, Corporate Communications have been active in promoting those for proposals to re develop Southport Market and to garner sentiment on plans by Sefton Council to make significant changes to Council Tax relief for empty or uninhabitable.

Produced a number of publications, including the regular One Council Brief for staff.

Staff Survey has seen Corporate Communications lead in content creation and promoting internally.

CORPORATE RESOURCES

Corporate Finance

Statement of Accounts 2018/2019

The Council’s auditors, EY, concluded their audit after completing their work on the Whole of Government Accounts, which had a deadline of 30th September 2019. The updated Statement of Accounts, with the final unqualified opinion following the conclusion of the audit, was published on the Council’s website on 27th September 2019 in line with statutory requirements.

Budget Monitoring 2019/2020

The most recent forecast revenue budget position (as at the end of August 2019) was reported to Cabinet on 3rd October 2019. This continued to highlight the significant pressures being experienced in several service areas, particularly Children’s Social Care, Locality Services and Home to School Transport. The reported forecast overspend was £2.663m, an increase of £0.148m on the position in July. The forecast deficit could be met by not implementing the Business Rates reserve increase and utilising the majority of the Budget Pressure Fund. Should the position worsen officers would need to identify mitigating actions and continue to review all budget forecasts, including current vacancies and non-essential expenditure, with a view to meeting any shortfall. The next forecast (as at the end of September 2019) will be reported to Cabinet on 7th November 2019.

Medium Term Financial Plan 2021/22 – 2022/23

The MTFP for the next three years is being updated to reflect the announcements in the Spending Review 2019 published on 4th September 2019, as well as any other information available. A report on the updated MTFP will be presented to Cabinet on 7th November 2019.

Internal Audit

Work to deliver the Internal Audit Plan continues, with audits having been completed in the period in the following areas:

RecommendationsAudit Title

Audit Opinion High Medium Low

2019/2020

Corporate Governance (Annual Governance Statement)

Moderate 1 10 1

ICT Leavers - draft Moderate 0 4 2Accounts Payable Moderate 8 3 0Accounts Receivable Major 20 8 0Melling Primary School Moderate 1 5 1Private Vehicle Sales Follow-up review Recommendations implementedTreasury Management follow-up review Recommendations implementedM58 2019/20 Q1 Grant Certification Assurance provided to facilitate certificationSTEP 2019/20 Q1 Grant Certification Assurance provided to facilitate certificationTroubled Families – Period 14 Grant Certification

Assurance provided to facilitate certification

A59 2019/20 Q1 Grant Certification Assurance provided to facilitate certificationUrban Traffic Control 2018/19 Q4 Grant Certification

Assurance provided to facilitate certification

Audit Title Audit Opinion

RecommendationsHigh Medium Low

Urban Traffic Control 2019/20 Q1 Grant Certification

Assurance provided to facilitate certification

ASC Systems Development (previously LAS Project)

Ongoing Assurance Provided

LCS Project Ongoing Assurance Provided Operational Risk Register Ongoing support providedBusiness Continuity Ongoing support provided

Reports in italics are draft reports.

Responsible officers have given assurance that the recommendations made in the reports will be implemented within reasonable timescales. Follow up audit work will be undertaken to substantiate this.

Health and Safety

During the period, the following key pieces of work/projects have been undertaken:

A new temporary Senior Health and Safety Officer has been appointed to provide additional capacity during the recruitment of a Health and Safety Co-ordinator.

An annual report on health and safety has been developed to provide assurance on the progress of embedding health and safety within the Council. The report is due to be presented to the Cabinet in the Autumn of 2019.

There has been a focus on designing and delivering a risk assessment course to be rolled out to approximately 400 managers in the Council who manage staff. The training is due to be delivered in October/ November 2019 with a follow up of the risk assessments that are subsequently completed by the managers.

Revised risk assessment guidance has been draft and re-launched across the Council. There has been work started on designing a Council wide training needs analysis tool for

health and safety which will lead to a Council-wide Health and Safety Training Plan. The health and safety team have devised a revised schools inspection programme which is

being rolled out during the second half of the financial year.

The Health and Safety Team has continued undertaking some site based statutory buildings compliance reviews to determine the current position.

There was a total of one RIDDOR accidents during the quarter.

All RIDDOR incidents are reviewed by the Health and Safety team to ensure that the accident is properly investigated and that the lessons learnt are shared with other service areas where appropriate.

Insurance

During the period, the following key pieces of work/projects have been undertaken:

The annual insurance renewal has been completed with costs uplifted in line with the tender terms undertaken in September 2018. There may be some cost pressures in future years across the insurance programme stemming from the changes in the Ogden rate announced in July 2019 which is used by insurers to calculate catastrophic losses on liability claims.

A mini tender exercise was also completed of more specialist policies via The Chest to ensure the policies represent value for money. These policies relate to Premises Pollution, Directors and Officers Insurance for the Mayors Charity, Sefton New Directions and Sandway Homes, and Professional Indemnity and Public Lability for Sefton Arc and were procured last year outside of the main Insurance Tender due to their specialist nature. In addition, quotes for Cyber cover have also been obtained with some further information to be provided by Sefton and clarification on the terms required from the insurers involved before a final decision can be made on how to proceed.

Meetings have been held with brokers within the Local Authority sector as part of market

engagement before a tender exercise is to be undertaken in December 2019. By early engagement, each party should gain an understanding of the expectations required of them and hopefully this will lead on to the presentation of good quality tender submissions from the maximum number of participants.

The Insurance Team will shortly be undertaking a tender exercise with the aim of obtaining quotes for an external validation exercise for a sample of the Council’s largest by sum insured properties to provide assurance that the current valuations used are accurate.

The Council continues to defend cases robustly to protect the public purse. The team also

works extensively with Service Teams to improve the management of insurable risk in areas where there are high numbers of claims. The Council generally has high defensibility rates and such risk management activity will assist in maintaining and potentially improving the position further. An area that requires strengthening has recently been identified within the Authority’s car parks and work is currently underway to assist the relevant service areas in gaining the best out of their available resources in order to provide as much of a defence to claims received as possible.

To assist with strengthening awareness of the Team’s areas of work, the Intranet page for Insurance has recently been updated, in line with others within the Risk and Audit Service.

Risk and Resilience

During the period, the following key pieces of work/projects have been undertaken:

Implementations of the actions identified in the Risk and Resilience Improvement plan continue to take the work areas of Emergency Planning, Business Continuity and Risk Management forward. Actions include:o Supporting a live play exercise with One Vision Housing and Merseyside Fire and Rescue

Service which took place on 27 June at Irlam House, Bootle.o Participation in a multi – agency table top exercise with Merseyside Resilience Forum to

consider implications and response to a cyber attacko A briefing to Chairs of local Safety Advisory Groups in regard to arrangements for

Operation London Bridge plans

The Risk Team have reviewed a sample of operational risk registers returned for the quarter 2 period and provided feedback to risk owners for action at the quarter 3 review period.

An exercise has been completed to explore positive risk or risk opportunity, initially within the Risk and Audit team. The learning from this session will be further explored with all service areas across the council.

The Corporate Risk Register has been reviewed and was presented to the Audit and Governance Committee in September for approval.

As part of the review process meetings have been held with risk owners to assess the current position of their risks and further meetings will take place to ensure continual improvement to risk management arrangements across the Council.

Following completion of Business Impact Analyses (BIA) for all service areas of the Council, a template for a Business Continuity Recovery plan was developed. The data collected from the BIA’s and from further meetings with relevant plan owners was used to populate the recovery plans. This work is virtually completed.

A member of the Risk Team gave a presentation on all aspects of implementation of a Business Continuity Management system at the recent Finance Department away day. This raised awareness of Business Continuity arrangements in place across the departmental teams and introduced the E learning module for all staff to complete.

Work has started around the production of a Finance Department emergency plan to highlight specific capability and contribution that may be required as part of the Council’s overall emergency response.

Energy and Environmental Management

This team manages the Council’s (including schools and New Directions) energy and water supplies, carbon management, environmental education and community domestic energy/affordable warmth programmes.

Specific actions to note:

Gas supply contract has been transferred from Crown Commercial Services (CCS) framework to the North East Procurement Organisation (NEPO) framework (OJEU compliant and government approved) to secure a saving of £145,000 per year for the next two years (2020/21 and 21/22). We retain the services of Corona our current gas supplier, which will minimise any disruption to service.

Electricity options from within our existing framework as well as alternative options are being considered for 2021 onwards.

The procurement of a managing agent for water supply (utility) is currently underway. We anticipate award of contract at the end of October 2019 to allow for Sefton to self-supply from United Utilities and achieve a saving on water utility costs.

Three Sefton Schools* have had LED low energy lighting fitted over the Summer holidays using Salix funding. Initial data analysis shows savings in money, energy and carbon being achieved. The offer will be available to other schools next year. (*Hillside High School Bootle; St. Nicholas’ Primary school, Crosby; St. Luke’s Primary School, Crosby)

Work is progressing on Sefton’s Climate emergency declaration to support the process being led by Andrea watts and Stephan Van Arendsen.

Work us underway on a business case for the Strand Shopping centre to install solar p.v. on the roof and retrofit LEDs in the communal areas.

Our Affordable warmth team are very active currently visiting flu clinics to offer help and support to residents vulnerable to the cold and/or experiencing fuel poverty.

Property and Facilities Management

This Team manages the Council’s asset and property portfolio including pro-active programme of property disposals to both rationalise the portfolio to remove unproductive assets and realise capital receipts. This process assists in the reduction of revenue costs and raises capital which contributes to the funding of the Council’s Capital and Growth Programmes.

Specific Actions to note

Settlement of dilapidations claim for Merton House Settlement of Interim Schedule of Dilapidations Heritage Centre Southport Liaison with Regeneration on projects for Growth Programme Proposed acquisition of Bootle Post Office in conjunction with Council Consultant Report to Cabinet in October on the outcome of negotiations for the sale of the Council’s

interest in St Wilfrid’s School site. Ongoing negotiations for Lease of Pleasureland Completion of cable landing site Eco Centre Liaison with Building Maintenance colleagues production of Council records and input into

provision of Technology Forge system Expression of Interest for Carnegie Library Management of Rating Consultant for 2017 and 2021 Rating Lists Liaison and ongoing advice in conjunction with Green Sefton for preparation of informal

tenders and Expressions of Interest for their assets

ICT

Cyber Security

The Authority is currently undergoing its annual review of Cyber Security in line with PSN (Public Services Network) requirements and work is underway to ensure any required remedial works are completed in line with project timelines. Specialist Cyber Security training for ICT Client staff is now completed and colleagues are due to complete exams to achieve Cyber Essentials Certification. The design of further awareness raising bitesize learning is underway alongside corporate training colleagues.

A Cyber Security briefing has been completed for members and the quarterly Cyber Newsletter circulated to all Councillors for information. A briefing session has been completed for members of SLB and Information Asset Owners.

Transformation

Deployment of end user devices continues at pace, rollout for Councillors is nearing completion with 62% of all deployments completed.

Email migration to the cloud is nearly complete, with most users now located in the cloud; this activity is planned in parallel to the issuing of new mobile phones, to reduce any operational impact. The authority is experiencing some latency issues with email at present due to having a mixture of on premise and cloud based accounts, (delays of up to 15 mins being reported) this will be resolved once all accounts are located in the cloud.

Office 365 rapid upskill training has now been delivered to 48 colleagues across the organisation, these 48 ICT Champions are now enabled to support their teams in using the new 0365 platform. Further sessions are planned in October and then first quarter 2020. Me learning content for Office 365 is now live on Sefton’s Learning Platform and a marketing campaign has started to increase usage. Over the next few months the ICT Client team will be working alongside the ICT Champions to pilot the use of Microsoft Teams.

Work is underway to scope out the requirements of the authority in terms of voice communications, with a view to moving from the old ISDN (analogue) telephone system to a cloud-based platform which will support more agile working as well as a reduction in running costs for the authority.

Work continues in the scoping of phase 2 projects, alongside a detailed review of the core infrastructure and an assessment of the investment required, to ensure the continued provision of a robust and secure network.

ICT Contracts/Procurement

A Contracts Management Strategy was presented to and ratified by Cabinet on the 7th of February, the ICT client team continue to work closely with the Legal team on contract novation’s as well as liaising with the procurement team and service areas around new procurements as required.

The ICT client team are working closely with Strategic Support colleagues to procure a new CRM system, which will replace the legacy Northgate product, which is out of support. In addition, the Client team is supporting the Revenues and Benefits team on their procurement activity.

Award of the mobile phones tender is now completed, and the ICT Client has prioritised the ordering of new devices for lone workers currently without a phone, a further programme of handset upgrades will then follow.

ICT Support

Service improvement activity continues, with the implementation of extended support hours and the delivery of a Service notification tool already complete. In May Agilisys introduced the Self-Service Web Portal and Live Chat, the latter has already proved popular.

A recycling scheme is now in place for old ICT KIT, this scheme is being delivered by Agilisys as part of their Social Value offering as it includes a level of cashback to the authority. It is proposed to use any income generated to fund ICT devices for vulnerable groups such as jobseekers or looked after children.

Infrastructure

The ICT Client team has worked in partnership with Agilisys to migrate systems from SQL 2008 Server and Windows 2008 (end of life August 19 and Jan 20 respectfully). Most of this work is now completed with minimal impact on operational service delivery.

Work continues the ICT project to enable all EIP bases, all phase one are now completed and work is well underway for the remaining EIP bases. A full review of the ICT Infrastructure is now completed, and work is underway to refresh some of the core infrastructure as well as extending the corporate WiFi network to support Agile Working.

In addition, Sefton has now joined with neighbouring authorities, St. Helens, Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Mersey Travel and Wirral to provide Gov Roam, which supports agile working across discrete networks enabling colocation and regional teams, this will be ready for release prior to Christmas 2019.

Revenues and Benefits

Council Tax and Business Rates collection

Collection performance at the half-year point for both Council Tax and Business Rates is slightly ahead of the same point in 2018:

Council Tax Collection performance to 30 September 2019 was 58.14% compared to 58.06% on the same

date in 2018/19

Business Rates Collection performance to 30 September 2019 was 57.61% compared to 57.14% on the same

date in 2018/19.

Southport Town Centre Business Improvement District (BID)

Preparations are well underway for the renewal of the billing and administration arrangements for the new 5-year cycle commencing on 1st November 2019. The Business Rates team is working closely with the BID and ICT provider, Agilisys, to prepare for the first bills to be issued by the end of October 2019.

Procurement of Revenues and Benefits software solution

Work is proceeding to prepare a tender and specification of requirements for a Revenues and Benefits software solution. Members of the Revenues and Benefits team are working closely with colleagues from the Procurement, Legal and ICT Client teams. It is anticipated that the tender will be published by the end of October, with the evaluation of bids likely to take place during December prior to a recommendation for contract award being passed to the Head of Corporate Resources.

Benefits

Speed of processing for Housing Benefit new claims and changes continues to compare well to national official statistics published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP)

The DWP has provided DHP funding of £659,531 for 2019/20 for the provision of extra support to local residents who need help to meet rent payments. As at the beginning of October 2019, £365,578 has been paid/committed. Forecasting information collated by the service based on the volume of claims received, renewals expected and actual spend on claims already decided indicates that the full amount of funding for 2019/20 will be paid out.

Customer Services

The Customer Services team continues to experience a reduction in traditional contact methods via the telephone and visits to the One Stop Shops as there is more take-up of online services.

Since August 2019, the Council’s Housing Options team has provided weekly “Early Intervention for Homelessness” surgeries from Bootle One Stop Shop.

Sefton Citizens Advice continues to provide “Help to Claim” support from Bootle One Stop Shop to help Universal Credit (UC) claimants make their initial claim.

Universal Credit

From October 2019, the maximum rate at which deductions can be made from a UC award are to be reduced from 40% to 30% of the UC standard allowance.

The fact that deductions such as UC Payment Advances, Third Party Deductions and benefit debt will be capped at 30% may be positive for UC claimants on tight budgets - however, this may impact on Council Tax Attachment of Benefit requests and Housing Benefit Direct Deduction requests.

PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT

Operational IssuesAdvice and support continues to be provided to all service areas. Consultation is taking place with staff and the trade unions in respect of a number of staffing issues and weekly meetings are timetabled as necessary.

Various reviews and restructures across the organisation are continuing relative to budget savings/Public Sector Reform projects. These are the subject of trade union consultation. Briefings continue to take place regarding school budget issues.

The Department continues to have a full programme of work in respect of disciplinary, grievance and dignity at work issues. Support to service areas in respect of staffing reviews/restructures is being provided, together with advice and support in the management of sickness absence cases that are cause for concern and complex staffing matters.

Pay and Grading and Establishment Control Team

Job evaluation continues relative to all Council and School posts for new or revised roles. Job evaluations are also conducted relative to any operational and service reviews to maximise efficiencies as part of restructuring exercises across the Council. The Establishment Control team are then responsible for building any revised structures and changes to reporting hierarchies into the Councils operating systems.

The TUPE transfer of the former Arvato staff took place on 1st October 2018. Staff within Transactional HR, Pensions, Payroll, and the Business Support Unit have now been aligned to the Councils pay, terms and conditions. The review of the Revenues, Benefits and Customer Services and Operations support sections is well underway and consultation with staff and Trade Unions will commence in due course relative to the review proposals.

The Establishment Control Panel takes place every 2 weeks to consider requests in relation to the release of vacancies and the approval of any changes to the Establishment held in ResourceLink. All changes to the Establishment are mapped to ensure correct procedures are followed. Discussions have commenced with ICT Transformation Support with a view to reviewing the Establishment Control Forms and associated guidance to managers and implementing changes to make the process more user friendly.

Establishment Control review safeguarding checks held against posts e.g. Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS formally CRB), Health Care Professional Council (HCPC) etc. with Heads of Service and amend as required. This now includes safer recruitment checks. The team also manages and controls the temporary end dates relative to all fixed term contracts.

Regrading applications and appeals are processed in line with the Council protocol.

The team undertakes the review of HAY graded positions for new posts and the evaluation of HAY posts stemming from any revised proposals to the HAY grading structure.

The National Joint Council for Local Government Services have amended the National Agreement on Pay and Conditions of Service relative to the calculation of Term-time only (TTO) salaries. Team members are involved in the potential adoption of the NJC advisory model and are liaising with neighbouring authorities, Managers and Headteachers relative to its potential implementation.

A consideration of new case law on holiday pay is also taking place.

Team members are involved in service reviews and work to support transformational proposals and potential changes to service delivery. Work is ongoing with Trade Unions and staff members of the Emergency Duty Team and the Crosby Lakeside Hospitality Team relative to proposed settlement agreements regarding terms and conditions issues associated with Bank holiday working and Hospitality Terms and conditions.

One team member is involved in the collection and presentation of data required for the achievement of the National award of the Workforce Wellbeing Charter as part of the EIP3 project.

Management of the Matrix contract relative to the recruitment of all Agency workers continues along with the management of sickness absence, including production of reports, analysis and management data.

Transactional HR Payroll and Pension (THRP) Services

Following the TUPE transfer of Arvato staff to the Council on 1st October 2018, there has been a restructure (as part of PSR9) of the THRP team. This was effective from 1st July 2019 and the office has been moved around so staff now sit in their new teams.

A working Group has been set up to introduce workflow to help recruitment, transactional HR, payroll and pension processes. The voluntary resignation/retirement process is now live for all Council staff and the Working Group is now looking at the best way to handle other reasons for leaving e.g. dismissal, redundancy etc. and how these will be managed.

There are 2 other processes which are being looked at, to be put into workflow and they are changes to hours and extensions to temporary arrangements. The changes to hours process is currently being built and Hawthorne Road have agreed to pilot the new process.

The team are also looking at a solution for removing the need for paper claim forms and this is in the very early stages of development.

The Pensions Officer is continuing to work closely with the Transformation team and Personnel Officers to provide redundancy/pension information when required.

Occupational Health

For the period July to Sept 2019, a total of 151 referrals for SMBC employees were made to the Health Unit. This is directly comparable the number of referrals within the same period in 2018 which was 152.

The majority of referrals during this period were from Education Excellence (29.8%), Locality Services (23.2%) and Adult Social Care (14.6%). The main reasons were stress and mental health related (49.7%), musculoskeletal problems (29.1%) and post operation (5.9%).

Workforce Learning and Development (CLC)

Personalisation Training

SCLC is working closely with Adult Social Care to support the roll out of Personalisation training. This includes a package of consultancy and learning and development sessions which consists of different key elements which draw on best practice principles of Personalisation. To date we have delivered the following courses/sessions:

Care Act Briefings - 4 sessions delivered, total attendance 155 staff. Care Act Principles Duties - 12 sessions delivered, total attendance 215 staff

Assessment of needs, carer assessment and eligibility determination (2 days) - Day 1, 13 sessions delivered, total attendance 183 staff/Day 2, 13 sessions delivered, total attendance 174.

Person Centred Care and Strengths-Based Approach (SBA) – delivery currently underway. Recording in Social Care - delivery currently underway. 2x surgeries will be delivered in the Autumn/Winter to provide staff with an opportunity to

trouble shoot / gain advice and support regarding current cases/support plans currently being worked on.

Champions skills training - Towards the end of the personalisation training programme (February 2020) we are planning to identify a cohort of Champions to work with us to embed and monitor continuous improvement. This includes supporting reflection, skills development and provides staff with the opportunity to get involved in the delivery of future training.

Mental Health First Aid and Wellbeing Booklets

Mental Health First Aid Training will be offered to staff from January 2020. The course teaches staff how to identify, understand and help someone who may be experiencing a mental health issue, and teaches you to listen, reassure and respond, even in a crisis, potentially stopping a crisis from happening.

It is envisaged the course will enable staff from across the organisation to support their colleagues, service users and members of the community who may be suffering from a low level Mental Health issue to avoid further escalation and/or input from statutory services.

Two emotional wellbeing booklets are currently under development, one for staff and a separate booklet for managers. The staff booklet contains 8 simple tips to help our staff build their emotional resilience and the manager’s booklet explains their responsibilities and ways to help keep staff in their teams resilient. It also provides some guidelines on what to suggest when someone is feeling stressed or anxious.

Apprenticeships

We continue to promote and access the Apprenticeship levy, have established a pool of lead training providers and we continue to raise awareness of the apprenticeship levy with internal departments and schools. As of 31st March 2019, we have 166 apprentices registered on an apprenticeship programme, of which 89 are existing staff and 38 were recruited to new positions.

We have produced an Apprenticeship Strategy 2019 – 2022 which sets out as an employer the positive action we take in our approach to apprenticeships as part of our workforce development strategy. The Strategy will be presented to Cabinet on Thursday 3rd October for sign off and approval.

Liverpool John Moores University were recently awarded the Level 6 and 7 Leadership and Management Apprenticeship contract. These opportunities are being discussed with Managers as part of the PDR process and we are planning to offer the Level 7 from January 2020 and the Level 6 from September 2020.

Agile Working

SCLC continues to support the ICT Transformation programme across the Council through the delivery of joint drop-in sessions with support from Agilisys. The aim of these sessions is to support staff who need extra help with One Drive, SharePoint and OneNote. Dates have now been agreed until December 2019.

A further session of ICT Digital Champions training was agreed and will take place on 16th October 2019. The training will ensure we have a cohort of ICT Champions by service area who can support their peers with any ICT related issues e.g. Office 365, SharePoint, OneDrive etc.

Organisational Development/One Council Network

Recent activities include:

Upskilled and trained 44 ICT digital champions Attended SMT/DMT’s to promote One Council to increase the number of One Council

Champions across the organisation Created a welcome pack for One Council Champions Co-ordinated the foodbank challenge Looked at how and when we deliver the staff survey Met with the new chief executive re: One Council Worked with the Liverpool City Region to build apprenticeship specific cohorts NGLP Graduate Programme - 2x graduates were recruited and have joined the organisation

from September 2019 Attending a meeting with the University of Central Lancashire to find out more information

about the Occupational Therapy (OT) apprenticeship.

Democratic Services

Overview and Scrutiny

General Matters

Council Motion – Climate Change Emergency

The Council at its meeting held on 18 July 2019 approved a Council Motion about Climate Change Emergency. The Council resolution is multifaceted and includes the following:

“Request that Overview and Scrutiny Management Board consider the impact of climate change and the environment when reviewing Council policies and strategies and charge Task and Finish groups to also consider those impacts in any report and every topic”

It is envisaged that the cross-cutting nature of the climate change topic will involve all Overview and Scrutiny Committees, as well as the Management Board, becoming involved in the work of task and finish groups. It is anticipated that a report will be produced during the next Committee providing clearer direction on this matter.

Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Regulatory, Compliance and Corporate Services)

The last meeting of the Committee was held on 10 September 2019. The Committee again considered its Work Programme for the forthcoming year and also considered reports relating to the Digital Inclusion Working Group – Update on Recommendations; the Revenue and Capital Budget Update 2019/20; and Members Welfare Reform Reference Group – Update.

Working Group Update

Council’s Ethical Business Practices Working Group

Councillors Bradshaw, Doyle, Killen, McKinley, John Sayers and Yvonne Sayers had agreed to be Members of the Working Group. Councillor McKinley has been appointed as the Lead Member.

The Working Group has now met on five occasions and the Working Group’s next meeting will be to draw up recommendations.

Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Adult Social Care and Health)

The last meeting of the Committee was held on 3 September 2019. The Committee considered a report submitted by Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust on the Acute Sustainability Programme and heard from representatives of the Trust. The Committee received reports from the Sefton Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) providing an update of the work of the CCGs and data on key performance areas for Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust and Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The Committee also received update reports from the relevant Cabinet Members and on its Work Programme for the remainder of the Municipal Year.

Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Regeneration and Skills)

The last meeting of the Committee was held on 17 September 2019. The Committee again considered its Work Programme for the forthcoming year and also considered reports relating to Homelessness Annual Report 2018/19; Digital Inclusion Working Group - Update on Recommendations; Sefton Economic Strategy Update; Refuse Collection, Recycling and Food Waste Update; Winter Service Policy and Operational Plan.

Following on from consideration of the Refuse Collection, Recycling and Food Waste Update the Head of Locality Services be requested to organise a visit for Members of the Committee to the Gillmoss Materials Recovery Facility. This has been arranged and Members will visit the facility during the week commencing 7 October 2019.

Working Group Update

Effectiveness of the Council’s Enforcement Activity Working Group

Councillors Booth, Dowd, Michael O’Brien, Pullin, Roche and John Sayers have agreed to be Members of the Working Group.

The Working Group has met on three occasions and has approved its Scoping Document; and received presentations on the legal enforcement powers available to the Council and planning enforcement. It is anticipated that the next meeting of the Working Group will be held in October 2019.

Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Children’s Services and Safeguarding)

The last meeting of the Committee was held on 24 September 2019. The Committee considered reports on the NHS Sefton Five Year Plan, Special Education Needs and/or Disabilities – Continuous Improvement; the Children’s Social Care Annual Report; and the Fostering Service Annual Report; The Committee also received update reports from the Cabinet Member and on its Work Programme for the remainder of the Municipal Year.

Working Group Update

Persistent Pupil Absence Working Group

Councillors Bennett, Carragher and Keith, together with Mrs. Cain, Independent Advisory Member, have agreed to be Members of the Working Group.

At the time of drafting this report, the first meeting of the Working Group to scope the review and agree the Lead Member, is scheduled for 9 September 2019.

Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Overview and Scrutiny Committee (LCR CA O&S)

Senior Democratic Services Officers regularly attend LCR CA O&S meetings to be kept abreast of scrutiny developments across the City Region. The most recent meeting to be attended was the LCR CA O&S held on 4 September 2019. Details of this meeting and all other LCR CA O&S meetings can be obtained using the following link:

https://moderngov.merseytravel.gov.uk/ieListMeetings.aspx?CId=365&Year=0

Overview and Scrutiny Management Board

The Management Board meets to keep the Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the four Overview and Scrutiny Committees abreast of O&S developments across the Council.

The Management Board at its meeting held on 10 September 2019 appointed Councillors John Sayers and Roscoe as its Chair and Vice-Chair respectively for the 2019/20 Municipal Year. As mentioned above, the Management Board will play an important role in co-ordination of work in respect of the Climate Change Emergency Council Motion.

Admission Appeals

In addition to the provision of administrative support for meetings of the Council, Cabinet, and Committees, the Section has also organised and clerked school admission appeal hearings. The section has dealt with 13 applications for secondary schools and 59 applications for primary schools during the period from 1 September to 7 October 2019 (appeals are not heard over the summer holiday period).

Training for panel members for exclusion reviews has been arranged for Wednesday 6 November 2019, which is again being delivered “in-house” and admissions and appeals training will be arranged for early in the new year.

Civic and Mayoral Services

Mayor of Sefton’s Charity Events

The Mayor of Sefton has three Charity Fundraising events planned during her term, the first will be her Motown Night on Friday 15th November at ‘The Venue’ in Maghull Town Hall, the second will be a Charity Themed Burns Night on Saturday 25th January 2020 at Bootle Town Hall, and finally the Mayor’s Gala Charity Ball on Saturday 28th March 2020 at Southport Theatre & Convention Centre. Tickets are now available for all three events.

Mons Delegation Visit

A delegation from our twinned city of Mons will be visiting our Borough from 11th -13th October, part of the visit will involve discussing several projects covering the next 5 years, Claudine Stuart, the President of Mons Twinning Committee, recently visited from 16th-19th July to both meet the Mayor of Sefton and also to have a meeting with key people who will be involved in these projects. The projects include celebrating Sport, Music, the Anniversary of the Battle of Mons, and Exhibitions. The meeting was extremely positive and will be expanded further during the visit in October.

Remembrance Sunday

Preparations are fully underway for Sefton’s Remembrance Sunday Services, these will be on Sunday 10th November. The Mayor will be attending the service at Five Lamps, Waterloo.

The Mayor will be represented by the Leader of the Council, Councillor Ian Maher at the Bootle Service, Councillor Les Byrom will represent the Mayor at Alexandra Park, Crosby, and Councillor Mhairi Doyle will represent the Mayor at the Southport Service.

Electoral Services

The annual canvass for the 2020 Register of Electors started on the 22 July 2019 and will run through to the 30 November 2019. The canvass is now at the first reminder stage and the response levels have been high with 78% of all properties responding by the 1 October 2019.

There have also been seeing high levels of registration, which in turn can lead to duplicate registrations being made, registrations from overseas electors and requests to vote by post as a result of the speculation of a Parliamentary General Election.

With all the speculation of a snap General Election, all plans, including those with external stakeholders, are fully in place to deliver an election if there is a dissolution of the current Parliament.

The Electoral Services team will also be undertaking review of polling arrangements across the borough, a Neighbourhood Planning Referendum for Formby and Little Altcar on the 10 October 2019 and a review of all registered postal votes who have been a permanent postal voter for the last 5 years.

Preparations are under way for local government, Police & Crime Commissioner and Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Mayoral Election on the 7 May 2020. The decision to move the May Bank Holiday from Monday 4 May to Friday 8 May 2020 has had an impact on how votes will be verified and counted. Across Sefton, all votes will be verified after the close of poll on Thursday 7 May 2020 and the votes for the Borough elections will then be counted overnight. Votes for the PCC and Mayoral elections will be counted on Saturday 9 May 2020.

Changes to the way voter registration is administered are due to come into force in July 2020. This is still subject legislation passing through Parliament.

REGISTRARS

General Register Office (GRO) Annual Performance Report. This is submitted at the end of April each year to GRO (copy of 2018/19 report attached). The following comments were made by GRO Compliance Officer Pamela Kyle in respect of the registration service.

‘It is pleasing to note the excellent level of service achieved by the local authority during the past year. In particular, your excellent timeliness figures for births and still births, which exceed the national target of 98% by achieving 99% and 100% respectively. MCCD Deaths also exceeded the target of 90% by achieving 95%; this is facilitated by your robust diary management checks. Additionally, you have successfully met and exceeded the performance targets for appointment availability for births, deaths, still-births and notice of marriage and civil partnerships. I am pleased to note the assurance you have provided in relation to the local application of the Public Protection and Counter-fraud Framework. On the basis of your reported information, you have provided a sufficient level of assurance. In summary, I am pleased to report that you performing really well against the Key Performance Indicators and national standards, compliance against the PPCF framework and finally, in your service delivery.

Congratulations on your service performance and achievements and I look forward to working with you in this coming year.’

The service continues to meet its KPI’s in terms of performance and during the first week in August 100% of deaths without coronial involvement were registered within 5 days.

Opposite Sex Civil Partnerships - The government is not able to commit to a date for implementation of opposite-sex civil partnerships at this stage. The changes to the law extending civil partnerships and the associated rights and benefits to opposite-sex civil partners will be set out in regulations which are being prepared in parallel. These regulations will need to be debated in both Houses of Parliament before they can come into force. The government has, however, restated its aim that opposite-sex couples will be able to both give notice and register their civil partnerships before the end of the year. Due to the unpaid shutdown period we don’t have access to Southport or Waterloo Town Halls - the Register Office at Southport has a separate entrance. This could result in adverse publicity if couples wish to hold their civil partnership on the first possible date and we are unable to offer that.

Marriage schedule system - The Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Act will modernise how marriages are registered for the first time since 1837, through the introduction of a marriage schedule system and registration in an electronic register. The electronic register will be a more secure and more efficient system for keeping marriage records. It will also allow for the names of parents of the couple (mother / father / parent) to be included in the marriage entry and on marriage certificates.

Sefton Registration Service is a member of the Registration North West Training Group which delivers job specific training to registrars throughout the north west. Recently a training course delivered by a Sefton registrar received positive feedback of 98% and 4 of our staff members attended a course on ceremony delivery.

CORONERS

Philippa Marshall, Apprentice of the Year 2018, will commence her level 4 apprenticeship on 5th September. We have also managed to secure 75% funding from the apprenticeship fund for this post.

Legal Services

Contract and Employment

The Team acts as a key adviser on 6 major projects which forms part of the Council’s commercialisation approach. These projects are confidential and therefore beyond the scope of this report but this work is a key element of the Team’s caseload, supporting a key Council priority.

The Team advises on day to day contracts across the Council and provides support to Schools in the Borough. Recent work includes advising on a major procurement of the Council’s client relationship management and revenue and benefits systems. The Team also works across the region on a number of Liverpool City Region and Combined Authority projects.

Further examples of the work carried out by the Team include: drafting a Partnership Agreement regarding the commissioning of Health and Social Care Service; preparing the drafting of a contract with Riverside Housing for temporary dispersed accommodation and support service for homeless families;

assisting with the appointment of a new delivery partner to provide innovative monitoring as part of the RetroFIT programme; advising on a major urban redevelopment contract; data protection preparations for no deal Brexit; working on a Community Governance Review for the potential creation of 2 new parishes in the Borough.

The Team continues to provide employment advice to both the Council and the majority of the Schools in the Borough across a broad range of issues. The Team also handles all of the disputes and litigation for both the Council and the Schools. Currently, the Team is handing 5 claims in the Employment Tribunal and regularly appears in the Tribunal. Further, the team advises regularly on staffing issues in respect of the Council’s commercial projects.

The Team supports the Council’s Planning Function advising and negotiating on Section 106 agreements for a number of significant commercial and residential developments, in addition to assisting with other planning agreements.

The Team has also taken responsibility for definitive map modification orders, recently the team has advertised 7 and anticipates confirming 6 of these in November.

Property

The Legal Property Team continue to support colleagues in various departments to facilitate the Council’s management, aims and objectives in relation to its property portfolio. Recently the team undertook exchange of contracts in relation to the council’s disposal of land at the former St Wilfrid’s site at Hawthorne Road. The Team continues to advise on a number of high-profile confidential property matters, which because of their nature are beyond the scope of this report. However, this is a key area of work that helps drives a number of major Council initiatives.

Compliance and Regulation

The continue to advise the Council on a range of confidential information compliance matters, including data protection, FOIA and environmental regulations. These matters are confidential, which because of their nature are beyond the scope of this report but this is a vital support function for the Council.

The Team continues to handle a wide range of prosecution matters in the Courts, this includes a number of successful CPN prosecutions (including a positive report in the Champion newspaper) and a number of successful taxi appeals. The Team secured a successful housing standards prosecution in resulting in fines totalling £57,000 to be paid by the defendant, which supports living standards in the community.

The Team has taken over debt recovery matters, following the transfer back to the Council from Avarto and had some positive outcomes including: 1 Charging Order; 1 warrant of execution obtained; 2 County Court Judgments; 3 Pre-action debt protocol letters sent out. The cumulative total recovered since March has risen to £120k, which supports the Council’s financial position.

Children Social Care Team

The Team continues to work at full capacity. The Team provides advice to the Social Care department and also advises the majority of Sefton Schools in the Borough, along with the in-house Education Department and Special Educational Needs Department.

Advice is also given to the Safguarding Board and Child Death Overview panel. The Team have also been liaising with the courts regarding a Justice Review and provides advice and assistance on Private Social Care matters and Care proceedings.

From April 2018-March 2019 the team issued 135 public law applications before the courts and 127 of those were for children to be placed on care orders. Cases are heard before Magistrates, however in most cases applications are heard by District and Circuit Judges and some cases do go before section 9 High court judges.

The number of cases involving a foreign element have increased significantly in the past 12 months, this has involved the Team having to liaise with foreign consulates and cross boarders making the legal process of obtaining evidence and orders more complex. The Team is currently liaising with overseas jurisdictions including Portugal, Lithuania, Poland, Canada and America and have arranged for assessment of family members in India. The Team also has a very complex Iranian case which will require specialist international advice.

In addition to care cases the Team deal with adoptions and applications for Deprivation of Liberty DOLS and applications for young people to be detained in secure accommodation. There has also been an increase in unaccompanied asylum seekers, involving complex immigration advice to be given.

The Team operates a duty system so that social workers have access to timely and effective advice at the point of need, which underpins the social work function and reduces issues by providing effective advice at an early stage.

In addition to the 135 cases mentioned above the lawyers in the Team manage a heavy pre-proceedings case load and provide advice in respect of serious case reviews and Child Death overview panel for the Merseyside area. We also convene the Education Interest Group for Northwest Education lawyers.

The Adult Social Care Team deal with complex capacity issues and DOLS cases. This legislation in this area in changing next year to Liberty Protection Safeguards and will require the team to adapt to new complex legislation. We have one Lawyer who is employed to advise the Special Educational needs team and she is busy defending tribunal applications and had 3 application issued in the last week alone.