VENUE / Board Room / TIME / 4 – 6 pm
MEMBERS PRESENT / Ash Wood, Beth Plant, Sinéad O’Connor, Dave Brown (Chair), John Downes, Maggie Walker
IN ATTENDANCE / Mike Wild, Angela HampsonIan Williamson. Geoff Little (City Council Observer)
APOLOGIES
Agenda Item / Purpose / Who / When
1. Chair’s Welcome
The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting. John was welcomed to his first meeting and members introduced themselves.
2. Minutes of previous meeting
The minutes were accepted as an accurate record. Proposed by Ash and seconded by Sinéad.
It was agreed there w will be two separate sets of minutes in future for Part A and part B. Part A will be in note format using a simplified template. Beth will design this for the next session.
Matters arising
- Board reluctantly accepted Val Bayliss-Brideaux’s resignation. All recognised her contribution to Macc’s work during her years as a Trustee. Sinéad will contact Val formally to thank her on behalf of the Board.
- Val’s departure means there is no representation of Manchester Carers Forum on the Board. It was agreed that the Carers Forum are a key partner whom Macc always felt should be represented on the Board. The Forum will in the near future become a partner and therefore a member of the Partners Group.
- Following a discussion about recent news stories it was agreed that all Board members should claim expenses to which they are entitled.
3. Governance
- Board Recruitment – Ian reported that a dozen application packs have been requested so far with more being made via the website. Responses will not be looked at until the dealine of 31st May has passed. It was agreed that the first round will be based on a standard shortlisting process with a more targeted approach for the second stage of recruitment in September. Now that Val has left the Board, the Governance subgroup has lost another member. Beth will help during the recruitment of Trustees.
The advert has been widely circulated through voluntary sector networks. Geoff reported that he has written to the Business Leadership Council for Greater Manchester and the Local Employment Partnership to encourage interest from the private sector.
- Board Policies – it was agreed to produce a Code of Conduct for Observers and for new members. The Governance Subgroup will look at updating the Board Policy Handbook to support the induction of new members.
- Governance skills audit – agreed that the Personnel Subgroup would take a lead on this and developing a Board Appraisal process.
Action / Governance Subgroup
Personnel Subgroup / May 2012
June 2012
4. Personnel
- Management review. Dave noted the appointment of Alison Gilchrist and that on 4thApril staff and Board members had met with Alison and her colleague Pam Howard. They had then spent the afternoon talking to Board members, then with Mike and then other members of the Management Team. A method for the work with rules of engagement was proposed and following discussions Alison revamped this and it was circulated to all staff the following morning. Mike commented that there was confidence in the Management Team in the choice of consultants, their understanding of the organisation, their people skills and the fact that there is now a clear plan for the work. A session for non-management staff was held on the morning of 16th April for staff to contribute their views and opinions. One-to-one sessions with members of the Management Team will take place during the coming week.
5. Finance
- Finance Report – Angela presented a draft year end statement subject to accruals and prepayments. The only funding not received is the March payment from the Children’sTrust. The report does not show expenditure against budget because the pattern changed so much with the infrastructure and office move coming mid year – the original full year budget is meaningless. Income is at least as much as we had hoped for.
The legacy money from CN4M has now all been distributed (a report is available).
- Audit -There will be two audits this year due to the change of legal status. The first will be for the FSA up to 27thSeptember 2011 and the second for Companies House to 31stMarch 2012. Angela expects to have completed the first by the end of May.
Mike commented that this position had been arrived at following considerable discussion with the various parties involved. What has become clear is that there are few people around who have experience of converting from an IPS to a Charitable Company and therefore the agencied (e.g. banks) don’t know how to cope – they therefore default to their established procedures which treat us effectively as a new company, erring on the side of caution. It is for this reason that we have had to establish new bank accounts.
One advantage Macc has in the process is that we have produced accounts to charity standards (SORP) even though this was above and beyond the FSA requirements, so that aspect of the change of status has no real effect on us.
The Board thanked Angela for reports and acknowledged the additional work she was putting in due to all the changes.
- FundingUpdate– Mike noted that there are some changes to funding from the Children’s Trust having been informed at short notice of a 10% reduction. Geoff commented that he has asked for clarification on this point and been informed that it is a 5% reduction half way through this year and another 5% reduction next year. Mike said he felt Macc could manage with such a reduction, a greater impact was the fact that he and Nicola had been asking for clarification for some months and had no indication that there was a cut to be expected. Mike had been in touch with the officer who commissions the service who had apologised for the late notice of the change.
- Reserves Policy – Ian presented his report looking at the current state of Macc’s reserves and the future needs of the organisation. A number of key points arise from the change in Macc’s position:
- When we originally established Manchester Community Central capacity building service, it came into Macc as a result of a contract which might in future pass to another organisation – and therefore staff would have a right to transfer with the contract. Because of the changes to the City Council’s commissioning intentions regarding voluntary sector infrastructure, it is now more likely (but not certain) that procurement of the service would cease or change so significantly that TUPE would not apply. Therefore Macc’s liabilities have increased
- Currently we have £138,000 in reserves based on the previous policy. Ian noted that this includes cover for staff sickness for staff appointed before 25th April 2005 as their existing terms and conditions are very generous and the risk of these terms being activated increases over time as people age. A specific reserves figure was set some years ago of £24,000 (being the average potential sickpay costs for 1 year of the relevant staff). In order to reflect the increased risk and changes to staff costs, Ian proposed a more realistic figure is £30,000. This was accepted.
- Bringing together the above risks, Ian proposed an aim to increase the reserves by £83,000 to bring a total of £221,000.
The Board considered the recommendation. Geoff commented that City Council policy even in the worst case scenario is to try to give enough notice to enable organisations to manage risks properly. The Board agreed to accept the new recommended reserves target and create an action plan for increasing the reserves as the opportunity to do so arises. This can only be done with the use of unrestricted surplus income. Ian will work with Angela to look at how any unrestricted surplus from the current year can be put into reserves.
6. Operational
- Health and Safety – Ian reported on progress with the Landlord in implementing the recommendations from the Fire Safety Assessment. The Board welcomed news that measures are being implemented.
7. Strategic Plan
- Community Engagement – Mike reported that he is in negotiation with partners about delivery of the community engagement workstream. He has sent out in principal funding allocations (as showin in the Budget approved at the April Board meeting) to existing partners: BME Network, Faith Network, MERCi and the learning, Skills and Employment Network. This has not included VYM as the Children’s Trust budget is not yet confirmed. The partnership agreements are based on the Health Equality Stakeholder Engagement (HESE) model used by NHS Northwest. This is a scheme by which a range of voluntary sector groups with an expertise in working with a particular equality strand enter into a framework funding agreement for certain supplied services. In the NHS model this is about providing evidence for equalities impact assessments, consultations etc. For Macc’s purposes it will include a range of functions such as sharing information. For the BME Network it will also include the requirement to provide a secretariat for the Equalities Hub. Partners have been given an assured amount for April – June with an indicative amount for rest of the year while the details of agreements are resolved.
All partners are involved in a programme of work for the initial three months to continue development of the model and build collaborative working. This includes practical targets such as the development of a single voluntary sector ebulletin and the delivery of an event on Community Budgets.
- VCS Assembly - Mike has received a report on models and issues for establishing a Third Sector Assembly. This is an internal document to inform planning. It looks at how other areas have addressed questions such as whether membership of the assembly the same as membership of the infrastructure body and whether representation is done by election or selected following recruitment. It is particularly useful to look at areas where the assembly has been set up after a Community Empowerment Network has closed down – many have gone down a much less strictly democratic route and adopted a lighter touch structure. Birminghamfor example has mixed elections to the steering group with a selection process for voluntary sector champions.
- Consultations – Mike has received draft reports from the consultation events around volunteering and infrastructure. Although the events had been well facilitated Mike felt that the report on infrastructure was of unsatisfactory and a disappointing piece of work. The volunteering report and its accompanying development plan were both much better pieces of work. The key need is to have a clear record of what local groups said so that Macc can produce a response and demonstrate how we are delivering what the sector identified as needed.
- Branding – Mike has terminated the relationshipwith Transmission Creative as our marketing advisers. Their support in helping us coming up with a strapline for the logo has been poor and Mike has been informed that the two staff members are to go their separate ways. He is therefore looking to a new organisation to contact and Howl Marketing has been recommended.
8. Service Areas
- Development –The Board noted the success of the recent safeguarding conference and asked Ian to pass on their thanks to Nicola thanks for her hard work. The combined work around safeguarding for adults and children and young people was welcomed. Ian will ask Nicola to make a presentation to the Board in future about the work on Big Manchester. Sinéad noted that Mind is working with Macc as the lead body in the Time for Change initiative.
- CapacityBuilding– The Board noted the report on casework: demand for basic support is lower than expected but in depth support is considerably higher. The annual target of 50 is already exceeded (currently at 60). Use of the website is significantly higher than expected. Our interpretation is that groups are using the resources first and then contacting the service when they need support with complex issues.
- Volunteer Centre -Beth to look through the policies for the Volunteer Centre. Mark’s report was noted and the Board commented that they are very impressed with the development of this new service.
- Transforming Local Infrastructure meeting – the Board noted the report of the 16thMarch 2012 meeting. Partnership has agreed that Mike can advertise for interim support to increase capacity to initiate projects and get the recruitment of the TLI team under way. Mike reported that they have almost completed the first project (TLI02) which is a ‘transition fund’ of 56,500 aimed at for partners at immediate risk. Three groups have been awarded funds:
- MCCR – to create extra capacity for withdrawing from infrastructure support and to transform becoming a community centre in Moss Side. This is coupled with ongoing Business Improvement support.
- MERCi– to support the Sustaining Change programme to reorganise.
- Third Sector Essentials – still ongoing but the subgroup have concerns that the GIO Project is no longer viable and this may bring into question the future of TSE as a whole. The group will only fund what is relevant to Manchester has asked TSE to distinguish between their work in the city and beyond.
10. Any other business
- Personnel Subgroup: next meeting is 3rdMay. Sinead advised that she is stepping down from the group.
- Time of Board Meetings:unless otherwise arranged, these should normally be
- Part A: 3.30pm – 4.00pm
- Part B: 4.00pm-6.00pm