CUMBRIA IMPROVEMENT AND EFFICIENCY PARTNERSHIP (CIEP)
Notes of a Meeting of the Cumbria Improvement and Efficiency Partnership held on Friday 12 February 2010 at Penrith Leisure Centre, Penrith at 10am.
present
Mr J BrightBarrow Borough Council
Mr K DouglasEden District Council
Mr R ForbesNHS Cumbria
Chief Constable C MackeyCumbria Constabulary
Mr D MartinAllerdale Borough Council
Ms M MooneyCarlisle City Council
Ms K PowellLake DistrictNational Park Authority
Mr P RidgwaySouth Lakeland District Council
Mr J Savege (Chair)Cumbria County Council
Also in attendance:-
Ms L BlackCumbria County Council
Mr A CookCumbria County Council
Mrs J CurrieCumbria County Council
Mr C StewartCumbria County Council
63apologies for absence
Apologies for absence were received fromMr H Dyke and Mr T Campbell.
64.action notes from previous meeting
AGREED,that the Action Notes from the previous meeting held on Friday11 December2009 were a true and accurate record of the meeting.
65.CUMBRIAPCT
Ross Forbes, Director of Corporate Affairs with NHS Cumbria spoke to the group about the current priorities on the improvement and efficiency agenda for the NHS.
NHS Cumbria had come a long way since it was formed two years ago. The then brand new Cumbria PCT inherited alegacy of debt, threatened hospital closures. Since then the health economy had been successfully turned around, heading off a potential £100 million debt and were now infinancial balance, out of turnaround and on a sound financial footing.
Throughout this time NHS Cumbria had promoted the Closer to Home strategy and ensured valued community hospitals were keptopen by becoming an integral part of Cumbria’s health and social care.
The NHS was investing to save in primary care, putting patients at the heart of health and social care, educating them to be experts in their own illnessesand advocates capable of making real, informed choices. Clinicians were now in charge of commissioning, with budgets devolved to the six GP-lead localities. Health care would be designed to meet the specific health needs and circumstances of its locality, taking thebest from Integrated Care Organisation pilots and developments in health clusters.
NHS Cumbria had started working with Cumbria County Council about the provision of residential care and the possibility of locating future provision next to medical care. There were a number of areas currently planned for development of medical facilities including Cockermouth, Barrow and Sedbergh. Mr Forbes said the NHS would be happy to talk to any of the CIEP partners about the possibility of integrating services on these sites. Other areas of the health service under consideration include HR, IT Payroll and Finance and he said he would be willing to explore the possibility of sharing these services with partner organisations.
The Chair thanked Mr Forbes for his briefing.
66.NWIEP UPDATE
66.1NWIEP Strategic Forum
The CIEP Lead Officer presented a report which detailed a forum attended by him and the County Council’s Cabinet Member for Organisational Development on 20 January 2010. The workshop considered a number of areas including:-
- How effective had the programme been to date?
- What should next year focus on?
- What should next year focus on if funding is not available?
66.2NWIEP’s Got the Dragon Factor
At the last Partnership Board in December, a joined up approach to what we submitted to the NWIEP capital bidding round was decided. A panel of 3 from the Partnership Board (Vice Chair of Partnership Board, Chair of Program Board, and SLDC) considered a number of bids and after careful consideration it was decided that the bid to go forward were:-
- Collaborate Cumbria
- Flood Recovery Transforming Active Travel
- Customer Contact (a bid did not go forward to NWIEP on this)
On the 10 February, at the event in Wigan, the leads for the bids were given ten minutes each - 5 for presentations and 5 for judges questions. The regional judging panel included CEs of Wigan MBC and NWIEP, a lead Member, Regional Director of Public Health and a representative from the private sector. The first bid for Collaborative Cumbria was approved on the understanding that Cumbria provided 25% of the funding. The Flood Recovery Project was not approved and the CIEP was disappointed with this news and asked if it could be presented again to be reconsidered. This was AGREED.
The Chair thanked the CIEP Lead Officer for the report.
67.CAA IMPROVEMENT PLANNING
The Lead Officer for CIEP presented a report which updated the group on the results of the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). The paper aimed to stimulate a discussion on the possible areas for contribution by CIEP in 2010/11 and beyond. The paper was also being presented to the Cumbrian Chief Executives’ Group this afternoon.
In 2009/10 CIEP worked with Cumbria Strategic Partnership to identify potential areas that funding and resource could be applied to support delivery of the LAA. The Board discussed how this had and would requirethe commitment of funding and resources to ensure that the support was meaningful and effective.
The Board discussed that whilst the work programme for 2010/11 was being developed, the Board needed to consider areas highlighted through CAA that required or would benefit from CIEP support. It was anticipated that NWIEP funding would likely not go beyond 2011, which meant that CIEP would need to continue to ensure it had adequate resource and capacity in place to be able to support the work required, including sustaining the existing subscription model all partners were currently committed to.
The CIEP Lead Officer said that if there were 2/3 areas coming from the CAA, potentially housing, shared services and climate change, which needed developed further. There may be an opportunity to fund this from NWIEP, as their programme and agenda had not yet been agreed.
The CIEP would need to consider how to engage with the audit commission in future to improve the findings in the next assessment. Everyone felt the work in Cumbria had been undersold and under represented in the 2009 CAA and agreed that colleagues would carry out work to pull together the evidence and information to demonstrate this.
The CIEP discussed the options for taking this forward and partners felt that what the group needed was a strong leader model and anticipated this would come from the Cumbria Leadership Forum. The issues of co-location and IT were just 2 of the issues where shared services would prove to be a huge advantage, and they hoped the strong leadership model would enable strong progress to be achieved.
It was AGREED, CIEP requested that the Cumbrian Chief Executives’ Group meeting that afternoon continue the discussion under the item on ‘CAA Improvement Planning’ and inform the CIEP Chair of the outcome and which areas they wished CIEP to support on, for the Partnership Board to take forward for the next meeting in April.
The Chair thanked the CIEP Lead Officer for his report.
68.UPDATE FROM CIEP PROGRAMME BOARD
The Vice Chair of the CIEP Programme Board took partners through the latest RAG report and highlighted points of interest.
Key impacts this period
£45,500 yet to be committed on the Efficiency/Shared Services by Program Board. A proportion of this would be used to support the Joint Legal Services Business Case.
The Programme Board would be making a decision about Local Links around whether allocation solely for Cockermouth Local Links or used across the Districts on 6 Local Links.
There was a variance on Quarter 1 & 2 spend of £49,079. CIEP Support Office to ensure leads were aware of need to pick their variance up in current quarter
Key achievements this period
20% Capital of Revenue budget had now been committed: £60,000 to support Local Links Programme; £48,875 for Highways Hotline Postbox integration with the District Authorities.
Sign off by Program Board of delivery plans for Local Government Network Feasibility Study; Waste Management Partnership Feasibility Study; Terms and Conditions of Employment Audit totalling £55,760
Letter of praise received from Leader, Cumbria County Council to NWIEP Member Rep, Cllr Elizabeth Mallinson following her letter outlining the cashable and non cashable efficiencies achieved so far by CIEP investment.
A second member representative for NWIEP had been appointed - Cllr John Bowman, from Copeland Borough Council.
Shared Services Update
Legal Services: Joint Legal Managers Meeting on 11th January. Angela Harwood, Cumbria CC lead officer on exploration of Shared Legal Service. CIEP in contact to offer support, revenue for development of business case. NHS Cumbria expressed their interest in involvement at business case stage.
HR & Payroll: Vice Chair of CIEP Program Board presented Business case at Jan Program Board. Cumbria County Council currently in discussions with Allerdale, Carlisle & Barrow.
Others welcome to enter discussions re offer of service delivery by Cumbria County Council to authorities
Decriminalised Parking: Delivery Plan to formulate Business Case accepted. CIEP funding support of £20k. Doug Coyle, Cumbria CC leading on business case.
Health & Safety: LDNPA and Cumbria Constabulary formulating questions on gauging current provision and appetite for Shared Services to be shared with all
Mapping document created which outlined 'bundles' from 4Ps report, progress on each, lead Authority (includes Constabulary). Version control was through CIEP Support Office. Would be used as focus for 2010-11 plan.
It was AGREED this would be circulated to the Partnership Board for their information together with an External Contract Review document containing end dates.
It was AGREED that a report be prepared for the Leadership Forum with a review of progress towards shared services and a strategy for taking this forward. This would be presented to the CIEP Partnership Board first.
The Chair thanked Mr Stewart for his report.
69.harmonisation of terms & conditions audit
The Assistant Director – Personnel and Performance at Barrow Borough Council presented a report which detailed a proposed project from the joint commissioning and shared services theme on terms and conditions of employment comparison.
It was widely acknowledged that any shared services project would have significant HR implications not the least of which is that each constituent organisation would have different terms and conditions of employment for their staff. Harmonisation of these different terms and conditions was a necessary first step in preparing the ground for the roll out of the shared services strategy.
This project would map out where we are not make any changes to terms and conditions at this stage, the analysis would be reported back to CIEP in a future paper.
The Chair thanked the Assistant Director for his report. There is an opportunity for NHS Cumbria and the Constabulary to also be engaged in this project. It was AGREED relevant contact names would be provided to the Assistant Director – P & P.
70.NW E-GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
The CIEP Lead Officer presented a report which was asking for support from CIEP for the NWeGG in their bid to the commissioning theme of NWIEP.
This project has been run between Cumbria CC and South Lakeland District Council.
The work completed to date shows that significant advantage for the citizens of Cumbria.
The main purpose of this project was to improve the effectiveness of financial assessments in adult social care (ASC) for non residential care across the whole of the North West through the adoption of best practice guidelines and closer working with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).
Recent work in South Lakeland has shown that, for vulnerable older people, there were over 25 eligibility checks across 47 services relating to only two needs: “Warm, safe and secure housing”, and “Staying in general good health as long as possible”.
Of these, the financial assessments undertaken in adult social care were perhaps the most longwinded and stressful. There was a particular opportunity here as much of the difficult to source data was held within the public sector by DWP.
It was clear that significant changes were required in a number of areas in order to shift the orientation of service delivery to one that was customer led and one that cuts across organisational silos and boundaries, else older people in the North West would continue to struggle with a significant degree of cumbersome and unnecessarily complex ‘support’.
Some of the partners felt that the local authorities concerned should find the money from their own budgets instead of applying for special funding for this but it wasAGREED that the CIEP support the bid from NWeGG.
71.SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS
The proposed meeting schedule for 2010/11 was AGREED. Meetings would take place as follows:-
16 April 201010 amPenrith Leisure Centre
11 June 201010 amPenrith Leisure Centre
13 August 201010 amPenrith Leisure Centre
1 October 201010 amPenrith Leisure Centre
10 December 201010 amPenrith Leisure Centre
4 February 201110 amPenrith Leisure Centre
1 April 201110 amPenrith Leisure Centre
10 June 201110 amPenrith Leisure Centre
12 August 201110 amPenrith Leisure Centre
72.ANY OTHER BUSINESS/FORWARD PLANNING
72.1NWIEP Bernadette Hurst
The Chair agreed to meet with Ms Hurst. (Action: JS)
72.2Membership of the Group
A letter had been received from Peter Ridgway explaining that it was his intention to resign as Chair of the CIEP and everyone thanked him for his contribution to the group. It was AGREED that Jim Savege would be appointed as Chair of CIEP with Kevin Douglas as Vice Chair. It was also agreed that chairing of these meetings would alternate between the two.
73.date and time of next meeting
The next meeting will be held on Friday 16 April 2010 at Penrith Leisure Centre, at 10 am.
The meeting closed at 12.05pm
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