Minutes:
(A) The Leader
The Leader of the Council, Councillor Stephen Carr, attended the meeting to give an update on his work and answer questions from the Committee. Councillor Carr began by emphasising how, by front-loading budget reductions, investment and use of invest to save, Bromley was ahead of many other authorities in preparing for the funding reductions still to come. Work was continuing on baseline reviews, and both the Council and the public realised that reductions in services would be necessary. Lobbying of government would continue, particularly on issues such as removing the ring-fencing between health and care and in the field of education budgets. The Council wanted to make progress on integrating health and care and seeing genuine devolution of power to the London boroughs, and interviews had been held with potential joint venture partners. Councillor Will Harmer had been appointed as an executive assistant to help with modernising the Council and achieving channel shift so that contact with residents was on-line wherever possible.
A Member commented that Members needed to see more formal risk management documents, and consider opportunities as well as risks. Councillor Carr responded that risk was considered carefully, particularly on issues such as the creation and use of the Investment Fund, and he discussed the need for the Council to take a more commercial approach and be more imaginative about managing risk.
Councillor Carr agreed with comments that it was necessary for the public to understand the restraints on the Council’s budgets and for the Council manage expectations and educate the wider public, not just the minority who turned up to the public meetings.
Councillor Carr gave an update on the situation at Crystal Palace Park. The exclusivity period with ZhongRong Group had now ended and the Council was in discussion with the GLA and other interested parties on the way forward. Substantial investment was being made with the GLA to implement six major improvement projects in the Park. There were limitations on how the Park could be developed in the Crystal Palace Act, but local residents were now enthusiastic about the possibilities for change. Improvements in the Park linked into infrastructure improvements such as the extension of Tramlink, which the Council was still pressing for.
(B) The Chief Executive
The Chief Executive, Doug Patterson, attended the meeting to update Members and answer questions. He summarised the budget pressures and emphasised the need for the Council to be more creative and commercial in its approach as it faced further budget reductions, and to accept the incentives to increase business rates. Officers were working on the information for Members to make the tough decisions on which services had to be withdrawn. There were immense pressures and challenges through demographics, protection of education budgets, demand for housing and care services and pressure on the PRUH. As the only democratically accountable organisation in the borough it was right that the Council had a greater say in health sector spending, but with this came huge responsibilities. At the same time, the structure of the Council as an organisation would have to change and become much smaller. The balance of staff would shift leaving only a small client-side with a centralised commissioning team – this “thin client” approach was now well-advanced in Environmental Services. It was intended that the Council would move from the Civic Centre site within three to five years and there would be more joined-up working with other boroughs.
Responding to the Chief Executive’s statement, Members made the following comments –
· The wider implications and risks of decisions about budget reductions needed to be understood.
· The talents and experience of Members needed to be utilised more, particularly in managing contracts.
· Members required a cadre of expert officers to supply the high quality reports and information they needed. The Chief Executive agreed that this needed to be looked at, and added that with fewer officers available to provide support there might also need to be changes to the way Members were organised.
· A clearer picture was needed of the Council’s minimum statutory responsibilities. There were also areas where the Council had statutory responsibilities, but not the enforcement powers to back them up. The Chief Executive informed the Committee that the Council was working on this with KPMG to try to establish a model of minimum statutory responsibilities. This was beginning to develop pictures for how individual services could look, but it was important to remember that there were many grey areas and correct process had to be followed with all decisions.
· Full integration with health should be pursued, and further discussions on how to progress this were needed. The Chief Executive stated that there were massive challenges in providing more accountability in health services, not least because of the way that the King’s Trust provided services across a number of boroughs.
· A Member asked whether there was now a model for what the Council would look like in 2018. The Chief Executive responded that it would certainly be a smaller organisation, with the current departmental structure needing to be re-packaged, but the detail depended on decisions on services and commissioning that Members would take.
· Safeguarding issues must be given priority when looking at social care budgets.
· Councillors needed to look at how they carried out their scrutiny role and how they could focus more on policy development – this was being considered by the Constitution Improvement Working Group.
· The Council needed better presentation on the difficult choices and senior officers needed to be more aware of presentational issues – the recent concerns over the BYMT funding were a good example, although it was accepted that the Council’s position had been consistent throughout. It was also suggested that the public needed more information on why the Council was making particular decisions.
The recent public consultation meetings had shown how much the community was beginning to understand the message about the hard choices ahead.