Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Rackett.

There were no disclosures of interest.

The notes of the meeting held on 9 February to be submitted for signature.

The final minutes from the meetings on 22 and 27 February will go to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 7 March to be agreed and signed.

The minutes of the meeting on 7 February 2012 were submitted and signed.

There was a discussion about the content of the minutes of the meeting on 9 February 2012.

It was agreed that the minutes would be submitted to the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 7 March 2012.

As agreed at the meeting on 22 February, responses to this document from the Task Group will be circulated at the meeting for agreement.

A statement of response to this statement incorporating the Task Group’s questions and raising any issues will be included in the final report.

The Chair outlined his response to the document; he referred to the ‘big topic’ consultations and noted that he had not heard any more about this. He also felt that ‘elected members’ be added as a stakeholder group. This was agreed by the Task Group.

Councillor Jeffree felt that the document was a little verbose. He said there was a need for a headline statement and suggested “We must all find ways to work which are simpler, provide better services and deliver them more cheaply.  Simpler, Better, Cheaper.

The Task Group agreed that the document provided a good overview and the changes suggested.

The Task Group may wish to consider their conclusions and recommendations in the following areas and any other areas that the Task Group feels is appropriate:

·               Key lessons learnt from Watford’s experiences so far

·               Planning for future service delivery

·               Future Shared Services

·               Outsourcing of further services

·               Governance

·               The effect on the local community

The Task Group is reminded to consider their experiences as non-executive members of the current outsourced and shared services.

The Task Group is asked to review the matrix/toolkit and make any changes and agree the parameters for its use.  This will form part of the Task Group’s final report.

The Task Group’s report will be drafted on the basis of the conclusions and recommendations agreed at this meeting.  The draft report will go to Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday 7 March for final agreement.

The Task Group began by discussing what lessons had been learnt through the service redesign that had taken place.

The Chair felt that the services that had been shared were appropriate services to choose.

Councillor Jeffree noted the example of SLM where the Council had outsourced the service to a company with specialist expertise in running leisure centres. He added the example of ICT where the Task Group had heard that it was not easy for the Council to remain up-to-date.

Councillor Bell said that one lesson that had been learnt from sharing the ICT Service with Three Rivers District Council was that the situation of the services needed to be fully investigated prior to entering any shared services. He noted that shared services had saved £1.6 million but there had been significant problems with ICT. He would prefer shared services to privatisation.

The Chair said his preference was for in-house delivery, then shared services and outsourcing should only take place when the first two options were not feasible.

Councillor Johnson stated that he had no pre-conceived idea of what delivery method was best. Each service should be benchmarked and a decision taken. He referred to Councillor Bell’s point and asked how success should be measured; shared services had saved money but there had been problems with the resulting joint services.

The Chair added that he felt that delivering the service had to take precedence over other outcomes.

Councillor Martins said that with ICT another lesson was that the importance of the impact from Members should not be underestimated. It was for Members to monitor the position of services.

The Chair informed the Task Group that another lesson learnt was that an apparent similarity between councils did not mean that working relationships would be easy.

Councillor Johnson felt that under the committee system of governance, where there was a leisure committee which oversaw the leisure centres, councillors would be aware of problems sooner.

Councillor Jeffree said that another lesson learnt was the importance of flexibility to be built into contracts.

Councillor McLeod added that the ability to scrutinise partnerships needed to be built into the contracts. Baselines should be included and contractors would need to justify their performance.

Councillor Bell agreed and added that he had not had a lot of contact with residents about the leisure centres until there was a petition about facilities for ladies-only swimming.

The Chair informed the Task Group that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee received a number of performance indicators from SLM.  The Committee could look at whether they wanted to receive any further performance indicators.

Councillor Johnson responded there was still a role for ongoing scrutiny now that service committees were no longer in place.

The Chair suggested that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee could receive an annual report of outsourced services. Alternatively, an outsourced services committee responsible to Overview and Scrutiny could be established.

Councillor McLeod highlighted complaints logs as an important source of information about how services were operated.

Councillor Jeffree  ...  view the full minutes text for item 13.