Scottish Borders Council

Agenda item

Future Services Reform Theme Group.

Update on Work Programme and Outcomes by Chief Executive, Eildon Housing Association.  (Briefing paper attached.)

Minutes:

9.1    With reference to paragraph 7 of the Minute of 27 November 2014, there had been circulated copies of a briefing paper by the Chief Executive of Eildon Housing.   There had been 2 recent meetings of the Future Services Reform Theme Group, one setting out the broad agenda of the group and the other to scope out the activities and agree initial priorities for progressing key actions.  The Group would look at a number of areas – Estates and Asset Management; Procurement and Community Benefit; Digital Services; Health & Social Care Integration; and Shared Services.  The Group had agreed to establish a short life working group to look further at Estates and Asset Management across the Partnership, to better understand and share the pattern of asset ownership and future intentions, which would allow the identification of opportunities for effective disposal, sharing, maintenance and efficient use.  A settlement by settlement approach was planned, starting with Hawick.  One of the proposed outcomes for the work-stream was to develop and test an approach for sharing future plans related to the estates and asset management plans of partner organisations, initially in the Hawick area, to better co-ordinate use of collective assets.  It was anticipated that this pilot process would report at the end of 2015 and would inform bi-lateral discussions on assets.  A further working group was being established to take forward Procurement and Community Benefit.  This group would ascertain what would be required to align procurement activity to ensure maximum community benefits were achieved, by ensuring the collective Partners’ efforts were balanced, delivered/deliverable, sustainable, and met local needs.  It was not intended that the group would seek to influence individual Community Planning Partners’ procurement processes in any other way. The proposed outcomes for this work-stream were, by summer 2015, to establish a common understanding of significant procurement exercises across the partner organisations over the next 3 to 5 years; also by summer 2015, to share knowledge, experience and best practice with respect to securing community benefits and ensuring that they were delivered; by autumn 2015, to seek to co-ordinate an agreed optimal mix of community benefits from partner investments; and by winter 2015, to assess the need for a standing Community Planning Partnership group to enable Partners to keep abreast of developments and opportunities with respect to procurement collaboration.  

 

9.2    In terms of Digital Services, the main focus of this activity in the Community Planning Partnership was currently the development of the ‘Looking Local App’ pilot, and the group intended to follow up on opportunities that emerged out of this pilot.  The proposed outcome would be, by Autumn 2015, to identify learning from the ‘Looking Local App’ pilot process to help inform future collective digital service delivery initiatives.   With regard to Health and Social Care Integration, it was proposed that the group acted as a reporting channel for the integration structure to feed into the Community Planning Partnership.  The proposed outcomes would be, by summer 2015, to establish an appropriate reporting mechanism linking the Integration Board with the Community Planning Partnership; and to ensure that wider opportunities arising from the development and implementation of the Integration agenda were identified on an on-going basis.  For Shared Services, the group had taken a cautious approach and was currently gathering information on Shared Services initiatives elsewhere in Scotland in order to assess successes and failures and inform future activities in this strand.  More specifically, the group was investigating the opportunity to develop co-produced material/literature which promoted the benefits of living and working in the Borders that Partners could use when recruiting staff.  The proposed outcome for this work was, based on identified best practice, to establish the opportunities and appetite to progress shared services activity in the Scottish Borders where relevant partner agencies had signalled serious consideration of an opportunity.

 

9.3    Members asked a number of questions.  In terms of Health and Social Care Integration, Tracey Logan advised that this would be covered in the governance paper on the Integration Joint Board, including at strategic level with the Community Planning Strategic Board.  A half day housing related Health and Social Care Integration Event was planned for 22 April, although that date had still to be confirmed.  The RSLs would be invited to attend.  Councillor Bhatia advised of two more rounds of community engagement and that from April 2015, it would be an Interim Integration Board.  Nile Istephan confirmed that Hawick had been the natural choice for Estates and Asset Management programme due to the level and nature of the assets and the amount of information already available.  Once the methodology had been established, this could be applied in other areas which could be progressed quickly. 

 

DECISION

         NOTED the update, including the outcomes for each strand of work of the Future Services Reform Group.

 

Supporting documents:

 

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