Agenda item

The Chief Executive, Mr Ade Adetosoye, attended the meeting to respond to questions from the Committee. The Chief Executive had circulated a written update for the Committee as part of the agenda papers.  Mr Adetosoye responded to questions, making the following comments –

·  The Pension Fund recovery had been completed nine years early and as a result had delivered a significant saving to the Council.

·  Over half of the Council’s 89 Transformation Projects had now been populated with targets to support the headline information provided to Members.  Moving into year two there would be a focus on key deliverables through the Transformation Board.

·  It was agreed that it would be helpful for more Members to be sent links to relevant consultations undertaken across the Borough to enable Members to publicise and promote the consultations on social media.  There would be work undertaken on the Member’s intranet site to better facilitate this.  It was also noted that the Communications Team did provided Members with links to consultations affecting their wards but it was recognised that more could be done. 

·  Consideration could be given to greater use of technology to facilitate public involvement in meetings – for example using Skype for public questions.  This would also help support Council priorities around reducing carbon emissions.

·  Bromley was doing excellent work in relation to hospital discharge and was receiving national recognition with the Chief Executive of NHS England due to visit Bromley to see the work being done.

·  The refresh of the Building a Better Bromley priorities had been slightly delayed but should be back on track over the next few weeks.  There was a clear direction of travel from the Leader and Cabinet and a meeting had taken place with the Council’s statutory partners.  The next step would be to consult with Members of the Council.

·  The Public Health Nursing Contract had been awarded to Bromley Healthcare and would commence in the next few weeks.

·  In terms of the monitoring of staff sickness, the Chief Executive confirmed that there was not generally a “culture of sickness” in Bromley and monitoring demonstrated that there were comparably low levels of sickness  across the organisation.  It was also suggested that the move to increased homeworking would also result in lower levels of sickness absence.

·  An appointment to the position of Assistant Director of Integrated Commissioning had been made on 3^rd February 2020 and pre-employment checks were being undertaken.  An advertisement for the statutory post of Director of Children’s Services had been placed on 4th February 2020 and there had already been a good amount of interest in the post.  Following advice from the Director of HR it had been agree to postpone the recruitment of Director of Adult Social Care until April 2020.

·  The national response to the global coronavirus emergency was being led by Public Health England.  Locally, there had recently been a presentation to the Health and Wellbeing Board.  The Committee noted that the statutory Director of Public Health would lead any local response if it became necessary to deliver the Public Health England Plan within the Borough.  The key message from Public Health England was that there was no need to panic, plans were in place and the Local Authority was as prepared as it could be to support the response from Public Health England.

·  In relation to test purchasing the sale of knives, the Chief Executive agreed to gather additional information from Trading Standards and provide an update following the meeting.

The Committee thanked the Chief Executive for his update and congratulated Officers on the planned savings resulting from the Transformation Programme as well as winning the Pensions Treasury and Asset Management award category of the Public Finance Awards.