Ealing Local Strategic Partnership

Report for Executive Board

Title: LSP Executive Terms of Reference and Membership

Report from: Policy and Performance
Author: Ann Griffiths / Item number
3

Background and purpose of the report

LSP Executive in April considered proposals around LSP Executive Membership. Further to decisions at this meeting an updated membership list is provided for reference.
The meeting in April also agreed that the LSP Executive should have a refreshed Terms of Reference to reflect its changed role since the original ToR was agreed in 2006.
This item provides a draft ToR for consideration and approval by LSP Executive further to any development and amendment required.
It also sets out some possible implications of accepting these ToR as the focus of the Executive in the coming year, in terms of performance management, 2nd tier boards, and the role of the DMG. It proposes for consideration some approaches to ensure the maximum effectiveness for the whole partnership in helping LSP Executive achieve its goals.
Recommendations
It is recommended that LSP Executive:
  • Note the updated Membership list and agree any further amendment required.
  • Consider and agree the proposed Terms of Reference and any changes required
  • Agree any further action and work required to deliver to these ToR in the coming year
  • Discuss the implications from these ToR for the LSP Executive’s interaction with other LSP groups and projects, agree proposals on the long term relationship between LSP Executive with other boards and project groups, or discuss and agree to further proposals being brought forward in October
  • Agree to review the ToR and Membership annually.

Role and Purpose of the LSP Executive: Refreshed Terms of Reference[1]

The LSP Review conducted in 2010 concluded in a clear priority role for the LSP Executive in strategic leadership of active problem solving and project work on key local issues, and delivering improvements and outcomes on strategic issues no single organisation could achieve alone.

To reflect the outcomes of the review and the changing requirements and priorities for local partnerships, it is proposed that the Terms of Reference for the LSP Executive going forward should be as follows:

The LSP Executive will:

  1. Agree a strategic vision and priorities for Ealing, expressed through a refreshed Community Strategy based around the priorities of local people
  1. Secure delivery of the vision through regular monitoring of progress on key priorities
  1. Prioritise a programme of major projects, reviewed annually, to contribute to achievement of the goals of the Community Strategy, including initially:
  • Produce a joint approach to collection and use of data, to enable production of a single needs assessment and work towards future joint commissioning to meet these needs
  • Review in partnership the families in highest need locally and design a streamlined and effective approach to meeting their needs
  • Develop a joint strategic approach to use of local property assets
  • Conduct targetted joint work in Southall to target specific issues
  1. Act as the focus of, and support the delivery of, strategic value for money projects across partners in the borough, driving efficiency, reducing duplication and bureaucracy through partnership working and acting as the steering group for key areas of value for money work requiring significant cross-partner working
  1. Take overall responsibility for the outcomes of work managed through the Health and Wellbeing Board, Children and Young People’s Partnership, Safer Ealing Partnership, Employment and Skills Group, and LSP priority projects, ensuring effective programme and performance management of the work conducted through the LSP
  1. Communicate across partnership organisations the outcomes of work conducted to deliver partnership efficiencies and improvements
  1. Through the actions of individual members, build relationships between partners to progress projects and wider positive change
  1. Take individual and collective responsibility for focussing action on active problem solving, including focussing LSP meetings on sharing information to support innovation

In order to achieve this, representatives on the LSP Executive will be required to attend at least 3 out of 4 of the annual meetings, and no representation from substitutes will be accepted unless for reasons of long –term absence and agreed prior to this by the Chair.

Implications of these Terms of Reference

These Terms of Reference place the LSP at the heart of delivering value for money across Ealing’s service delivery organisations, focussing on agreeing and achieving a strategic vision for the Borough, and making delivery of active projects and results for residents its key goal. It will prioritise work that could not be achieved through other means or through individual organisations working together on a more ad-hoc basis.

This focus has implications for how the wider partnership operates and how delivery of our priorities and objectives are monitored.

Managing Performance

Proposals around performance management and monitoring of the Community Strategy are set out in the separate paper on this item.

In the long term, it is intended that a Single Needs Assessment and Local Information System developed through the Data project will enable an automated system of reporting performance and providing an easily accessible analysis of local need, to enable us to measure easily our performance against key objectives. This will also enable us to do systematic reviews of the areas that can most be added to by partnership projects, and inform our programme of work for future years.

However, in the short term we need to be able to monitor our progress against our objectives and to understand changing priorities, in order to be able to hold organisations to account and inform future priority LSP projects.

Many of the proposed measures of success for Community Strategy goals are captured through indicators currently collected by the Council, and can be collected routinely through existing reporting mechanisms without additional processes. However, there are necessarily areas in the Strategy that go beyond the Council PIs, which will need to be reported on more qualitatively or through other organisations’ indicators.

In order to minimise additional reporting burdens, we suggest that these indicators should be the areas reported on through existing ‘2nd tier’ partnerships boards, and LSP projects, delivering on areas of priority for the partnership. To reflect the Community Strategy priorities these would be the Health and Wellbeing Board, Safer Ealing Partnership, and also the Skills and Employment group working on issues of prosperity locally – as well as the work of the LSP Projects and the Children and Young People’s Board in tackling cross-cutting issues.

Where these boards are not currently collecting information directly aligning with the suggested priorities of the Community Strategy we will undertake work to ensure that that work programmes of these boards and the information they collect and report can be reported more consistently and directly into the LSP Executive, to ensure a more genuinely coordinated work programme across the whole partnership

Role of the Delivery Management Group

The DMG was established a year ago to take responsibility for setting up and delivering priority LSP projects. Since this time project working groups have been established or developed from existing groups to take on responsibility around individual projects. Within the governance structure for these projects it is often appropriate to report directly on progress to the LSP Executive; performance management more broadly can be reported directly from existing second tier groups to LSP Executive. Coordination of project links and outputs is managed through the Council Policy team.

It is therefore suggested that the DMG has succeeded in fulfilling the role it was established to achieve and should now be disbanded. The Chair of this group has agreed to this way forward and such a move will create greater capacity to focus on delivery of the priority projects and direct accountability to LSP Executive.

Alternatively, the focus of the DMG could be reprioritised and refocused, for example to take on more responsibility for the performance monitoring of the Community Strategy on behalf of the Executive. This should however be seen in the context of a DMG Membership consisting several of the same representatives as LSP Executive; in order to refocus its work Executive will need to agree the role expected of such a Delivery group to add value to its agreed ToR, and agree to nominating appropriate attendees to this group.

Recommendations

- In the short term, ensure that we establish more formal links between the partnership boards who are accountable for delivering priorities in different areas: Safer Ealing Partnership, Health and Wellbeing Board, Employment and Skills Group – and that these groups’ reporting of progress is aligned with expectations of the Community Strategy

- Consideration should be given to the extent to which these groups fully reflect our priorities and what areas of measuring success against our priorities may require further focus or structure

- Executive should consider the value of DMG alongside its own role, and agree whether this group will continue to add value. If so, membership and priority focus should be reconsidered; if not then DMG should be disbanded and Executive should accept receipt of performance and progress monitoring from coordinated by the Council Policy team and through existing boards as below:

- An initial collection of information around existing data on our performance against priorities in the Community Strategy informs initial proposals for 2012 projects focus, initial findings on which should be presented to LSP Executive in October, with formal presentation of project changes, reprioritisation or new work to be pitched in January 2012.

APPENDIX 1: Background Info – Historic TOR

The terms of reference agreed for the LSP Executive in 2006 were as follows:

The LSP Executive is responsible for:

  1. Securing delivery of the Sustainable Community Strategy and the Local Area Agreement.
  2. Continuous improvement and coherence of delivery by the Thematic Partnerships
  3. ‘Horizon scanning’ and interpretation of strategic issues and national policy to ensure LSP and Thematic Partnerships anticipate opportunities and challenges.
  4. Ensuring governance, finance and performance management standards are met.
  5. Scrutinising thematic partnerships in relation to community engagement, equalities, neighbourhood renewal, cohesion and sustainability.
  6. Establishing consultation and engagement mechanisms with local people and organisations.
  7. Promote joined up working and thinking between Thematic Partnerships.

[1] Historic Terms of Reference are provided as Appendix 1.