Shared Services Review To Be Continued….

The Performance & Finance Overview & Scrutiny Board completed its review of Shared Services, ‘What’s the Best Way to Deliver Savings & Improvements through Shared Services’ in April 2011.  At that time, the process was to submit the report to Cabinet and for the Cabinet Member to produce a response at the same time.  This inevitably caused a delay and the system has now been altered  to allow review reports to go straight to Cabinet as soon as possible after they are completed.  The Cabinet Member response report will then follow at a later date.

The Shared Services review report went to Cabinetin September 2011.  The Cabinet Member’s response was unusual in that whilst she agreed with the recommendations in principle, she didn’t feel that it wasn’t prudent for the Council to commit itself further on the shared services agenda until there was a clear steer from the Welsh Government on the way forward.  This was due to a number of reports and reviews coming out of the Welsh Government on this issue around the time that the review was completed.

It is the responsibility of all Overview & Scrutiny Boards to follow up their review work by asking for an action plan that details how accepted reccommendations are being progressed.  On this occassion, there is no action plan to track.  As it is coming towards the end of the municipal year and the end of this particular council term, it was an oportune time for the Board to decide how it wanted to monitor this review.  The Performance & Finance Overview & Scrutiny Board met on Monday 6th February and this was one of the items that the Board discussed.  The Board were advised that there were a number of options that they could consider.  They could choose to ‘close’ the review as there was no action plan to monitor and then have any further reports from the Cabinet Member or Director periodically as part of the normal schedule of work plan items, or they could choose to keep the review ‘open’ and schedule a follow up report in 6 months time.

The Board members concluded that as such a lot of work had gone into the review they wanted to keep it ‘open’ and have a structure follow up report in the new municipal year.