Agenda and minutes

The Chair introduced Members and officers to the meeting

Councillors Khurana, Hyde, Chapman, Chowdhury, Heather and Poyser

None

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This applies to all members present at the meeting.

None

RESOLVED:

That, subject, in minute 116, Declaration of substitute Members - to the deletion of ‘Councillor Chapman’, and the insertion of ‘Councillor Hyde’, and also to the insertion in minute 123, Workplace Strategy - page 4 of an additional bullet point as follows – ‘Reference was made to the need to assist staff, especially longer serving staff, who were finding organisation change difficult, particularly with regard to the locations project, and there should be good timely communications to all levels of staff regarding the project, and other projects. This should be an institutionalised response to everyone involved in organisational change’

 the minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 18 June 2019 be confirmed and the Chair be authorised to sign them

The Chair stated that a presentation would take place that evening on Performance Indicators, and the Committee could also look at the role of Members in deciding, presenting and effectively scrutinising P.I’s, and how improvements can be made. A further presentation would be submitted to the next meeting of the Committee in September

For members of the public to ask questions relating to any subject on the meeting agenda under Procedure Rule 70.5. Alternatively, the Chair may opt to accept questions from the public during the discussion on each agenda item.

The Chair outlined the procedures for Public questions, filming and recording of meetings and fire evacuation procedures

The Executive Member Finance, Performance and Community Safety, Councillor Andy Hull, was present and accompanied by Roger Dunlop, Director of Strategy and Change, and a presentation was made to the Committee, copy interleaved

During discussion the following main points were made –

·         Background – up until 2010, Local Authorities were required to report data and monitor progress against Best Value Performance Indicators. There are no longer any duties or obligations on the Council to have in place corporate performance arrangements, other than the requirement to provide statutory returns on a list of measures

·         Islington’s performance framework is used to – monitor progress in delivering priorities and direction of travel towards achieving outcomes, measure the impact of activity to determine whether the money and effort put in is making a difference, to benchmark ourselves against other Local Authorities, and to drive continuous improvement an identify any issues at an early stage

·         Council’s Performance Framework – the Council has arrangements for monitoring delivery and performance against key priorities and services. Key elements of the framework are – a suite of corporate performance indicators reported monthly or quarterly, overseen by departmental management teams, CMB, and Scrutiny Committees. From the Autumn these will also be reported quarterly to Joint Board

·         There is also oversight of other key related data – monthly budget monitoring through services, Departmental Management Teams, CMB, Executive and scrutiny. There is also quarterly corporate and departmental risk monitoring, Annual Executive Member reports to scrutiny, setting out activity and achievements of those services that sit within the EM portfolio. In addition, a number of Partnership Boards are in place to oversee activity and performance on specific themes, including Community Safety, Safeguarding, Health and Wellbeing, and Children and Families

·         How to choose what to monitor – Indicators should relate to delivery of key services, or corporate priorities set out in the Corporate Plan, and measure outcomes, rather than outputs. The Council should be able to influence the outcome, either through in-house or commissioned services, or through partnership working. Data should be easily available and reported frequently to enable regular monitoring of progress. It should be possible to set a target, not just to monitor, and targets should be challenging, and the measure should be clear and unambiguous, and be easy to understand whether an indicator needs to go up and down

·         Corporate Health measures – in addition to the current KPI’s, a suite of corporate health measures has been developed to enable monitoring of core business requirements, and standards, that sits across all Directorates. The suite of measures relate to complaints, responses to requests for information, data security incidents, staff sickness levels, agency workers, apprenticeships, digital services. These will be routinely monitored through DMT’s and CMB

·         Process for setting targets – DMT’s lead the process for indicators that sit within their areas. They seek advice from relevant service leads and have regard to recent performance data and corporate priorities. Proposed targets are set for the year ahead, and are endorsed by CMB

·         The  ...  view the full minutes text for item 135.

Councillor Andy Hull, Executive Member Finance, Performance and Community Safety was present, and was accompanied by Keith Stanger, Service Manager Crime Reduction

During the presentation the following main points were made –

·         Community Safety Crime overview – Safer Islington Partnership have led on 5 key areas – Crimes involving young people, Hate Crime and ASB, Drugs and Adult Offending, VAWG and Domestic Abuse, and Exploitation and Extremism

·         Overall crime reduction of 5%, over 1600 fewer victims, while crime across London rose 4%

·         Small increase in violent crime (0.4%)

·         Significant reduction of over 60% in theft snatch offences, through a co-ordinated partnership response

·         Continued reductions in Serious Youth Crime (-3.5%), youth violence (-6%), gun crime (-17%), knife crime offences (-14%), and knife crime victims under 25 (-10%)

·         27% reduction in robbery offences in the past year, following a peak in offences in 2017/18. The Police now have robbery cars available, allowing for quicker identification of perpetrators

·         Domestic violence offences continue to rise (7%), in line with London increase, but positive outcomes for victims remain a challenging area. There has been a small increase in racial crime, but reductions in all other forms of hate crime

·         Crimes involving young people – supporting families against Youth Crime funding for Transitions project Cally and Andover and free Trauma informed practice training to local youth and family service

·         Youth Council led events – Youth fest in April and SummerFest at Platform in July

·         Knife Crime information leaflet for parents to be launched in Summer, professionals guide to follow. DIsproportionality project funded by Youth Justice Board

·         Action Plan on school exclusions overseen by a task and finish group under the Children’s Safeguarding Board, to address the connection between exclusions, offending and exploitation

·         Task and Finish Group for review of Working Together for a Safer Islington Plan

·         Challenges – despite a reduction in violent crime types, the challenges remain with recent serious incidents in Islington and continued high number of fatalities across London. There is also the complexity of the issues that young people are presenting with, including Adverse Childhood Experience, trauma, inability to self-regulate. Further reductions in first time entrants is being achieved, however custody and reoffending rates are higher than liked, and the Council and partners are committed to a trauma informed approach to address these areas

·         Violence against women and girls – The Keel DVA team has supported 50 families with support from DVA counselling service. A new Health IDVA post has started work at Whittington Hospital ED and adult mental health services

·         A free comprehensive VAWG Training Programme commissioned for 2019/20 for multi-agencies, and LBI are working with 4 other North London Boroughs on addressing harmful practices

·         The work around FGM will increase this year with an additional £10k received from Government. Chance UK has secured Home Office Funding for Safer Space project,supporting 10 families affected by DVA

·         There is a need to hold more perpetrators to account – DA crime detections are down 4% in June, compared to the same period in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 136.

Councillor Andy Hull, Executive Member Finance, Performance and Community Safety was present, together with Jon Cumming, Chief Digital and Information Officer, and made a presentation to the Committee thereon, copy interleaved

During consideration of the presentation the following main points were made –

·         The transition phase was outlined, and it was stated that the transformation programme will be taken forward from 1 June 2019

·         The customer perspective – customers did not feel that they had a voice in the direction or priorities for IT

·         The Plan to build a new service – Strategic Project initiation – technology in the community, digital experience for residents, business transformation, application renewal and consolidation, Core IT services

·         The functions of IT – Business relationship management – enterprise planning, programme delivery, application services, operational services, commercial and performance services and security risk, and cyber risk management

·         The digital services organisation – organisationa change process had taken place between 4 March – 1 June – there were 53 vacancies, 43 posts were advertised, 28 appointments made, 6 are still vacant, recruitment is underway in 9 posts, and 10 posts not advertised

·         People and Organisation – uplifting skills, better processes, culture shift away from hero to embedded, customer orientation, managed activity

·         Approach to the technology challenge – Tier 1 Core IT services – EUC/Laptops, Windows 10, Avaya Telephony switch, WAN, Regional Adoption Agency, PSN Compliance, My e-account, Share Point 2010, SAN backup, iWorld, Microsfoft teams. Tier 2 Business critical applications – Cemeteries, Environment and Highways Systems, Social Care systems, upgrades across many systems, Housing, CCTV, and many more

·         There is the need to move to Windows 10, and the strategy is to ease laptops at a cost of £800k per annum. This purchase has been approved by the Executive, and the plan, and it is planned to roll out replacement of 80% of laptops, and upgrade 20%. There is an aggressive roll out strategy completing in January. Wi-fi will need to move from 2.4GHz to 5 GHz

·         A Member referred to the need for Members to use digital technology to be able to attend fewer meetings at the Town Hall, and there is a need for cultural change to enable the use of digital technology to be fully utilised. It was stated that there is a commitment from CMB to enable training to take place, together with cultural change

·         Reference was made to the introduction of WAN,and it was stated that although this was scheduled to be introduced in Summer 2019, this had been delayed

·         Councillor Hull referred to the fact that there were a number of senior vacancies still to be filled and that if Members could assist, where appropriate, in agreeing market supplements this would assist in recruitment to such posts, which was vital to the introduction of the new strategy

RESOLVED:

That a further report be submitted to the September meeting on contingency planning that is in place to ensure the deadlines for the introduction of the new strategy will be met  ...  view the full minutes text for item 137.

RESOLVED:

That the report be noted

The resolution for this item is in the exempt minutes.