Democracy

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Virtual Meeting

Contact: Susan Lightwing 

Items
No. Item

20/56

Declarations of Interest

To receive any declarations of interest.

Minutes:

Name of Member

Type of Interest

Item/Nature of Interest

Councillor Cooper

Non pecuniary

Agenda Item 6 - Member of Teesside Pension Fund

Councillor Higgins

Non pecuniary

Agenda Item 6 – Member of Teesside Pension Fund

Councillor C Hobson

Non pecuniary

Agenda Item 6 - Member of Teesside Pension Fund

Councillor Hubbard

Non pecuniary

Agenda Item 6 - Member of Teesside Pension Fund

Councillor Rooney

Non pecuniary

Agenda Item 6 - Member of Teesside Pension Fund

 

20/57

Minutes - Corporate Affairs and Audit Committee - 4 March 2021 pdf icon PDF 327 KB

Minutes:

The minutes of the Corporate Affairs and Audit Committee meeting held on 4 March 2021 were submitted and approved as a correct record, subject to the following amendment:

 

Minute No 20/60 paragraph 3, final sentence added:

 

The Auditor clarified that the £0.6 million lease costs related to Middlesbrough Council and not the Teesside Pension Fund.

 

NOTED

 

 

 

 

20/58

SUSPENSION OF COUNCIL PROCEDURE RULE NO 5 - ORDER OF BUSINESS

Minutes:

ORDERED that, in accordance with Council Procedure Rule No 5, the Committee agreed to vary the order of business to deal with the items in the following order: Agenda Item 5, Agenda Item 4, Agenda Item 6, Agenda Item 7 and Agenda Item 8.

20/59

Annual Report of the Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) pdf icon PDF 1019 KB

Minutes:

The Annual Report of the Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) was presented by the Head of Strategy, Information and Governance for Members to note the position in respect of information risk set out in the report, and propose any further steps that might be taken to promote good practice in information governance within the Council.

 

The report provided assurance to the Committee that information governance (IG) policy and practice within the Council was in line with legal obligations, and consistent with the principles of good governance.

 

The last annual report to the Committee (6 February 2020) set out six key priorities to reduce information risk for the 2020 calendar year and beyond.  Shortly after this, the UK was locked down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and at the time of writing significant restrictions remain in place.  As with all business areas, these restrictions resulted in delays to planned activity, as relevant employees were either re-directed to emergency response or otherwise unable to progress work, for example, due to the unavailability of the workplace.  Therefore, work on these, and other priorities identified during 2020 and set out within the report, would be completed during 2021. Nevertheless, good progress was made in the following areas during the year, as detailed in the submitted report:

 

·        Many of the actions from the 2019 ICO Consensual Data Protection Audit had been implemented or were in the process of being implemented. The ICO undertook a follow-up audit in December 2019 and its report was attached at Appendix 1 to the submitted report.

·        A key priority from the audit was to address procedural and resourcing issues around statutory information requests, notably Subject Access Requests. While some progress was made on this during the year a significant backlog remained. However, plans were in place to address this issue and there could be some confidence that issue would be resolved this year.

·        Another key priority was improving control over physical access to buildings to mitigate data breach or loss through unauthorised access. COVID-19 affected this risk in two ways: significantly restricting access to buildings and requiring the Council to clear all paper from office spaces with over one million pieces of paper being removed from the Civic Campus during the year.

·        Revised physical access arrangements would be put in place for re-occupation and communicated in the re-induction employees would undertake prior to returning in September.

·        This method would also be used to communicate the revised information governance framework.

·        The Council was in the process of moving to Microsoft 365 which would provide the opportunity to put in place appropriate controls and retention of email.

·        An internal audit of the Council’s CCTV arrangements was underway, which would inform the Council’s plan to implement a single approach across all schemes.

 

Other areas covered in the submitted report included:

 

·        Progress on the Information Strategy, including the policy register and those updated during the year.

·        Changes to information asset registers in the year, which were minimal.  A data quality audit within Children’s  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20/59

20/60

Update in regards to Legal Services progress in response to Ofsted Inspection of Children's Social Care Services pdf icon PDF 152 KB

Minutes:

A report of the Director of Legal and Governance Services was presented to provide the Committee with an update on Legal Services and the response

to the Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Social Care Services.

 

The issues in relation to capacity remained, with case numbers continuing to remain at a high level. However, the numbers had decreased, with care cases currently at around 100, compared to 140 in December.  At this stage

the reason for the decrease was not clear, as there had been a number of contributing factors, including changes to Gateway Panel, a more effective use of the PLO process, and Court increasing their hearings further to the covid issues, meaning more cases had concluded.

 

In terms of the resources to meet this demand, there had been some changes to the team since the last update.  The role of the Principal Legal Executive (People) had been changed to Head of Legal Services (People).  The interim postholder applied and was successful in securing the permanent position, bringing some stability to the team.

 

Two permanent Solicitors had been recruited, although another Solicitor was leaving the Authority.  In the interim, this post would be filled by one of the Trainee Solicitors who already had experience of the role and would qualify as a Solicitor later this year.

 

There was one Legal Assistant vacancy, which was currently being recruited to.

 

The role of Court Progression Manager (CPM), that would sit within the Legal Services Children’s team as the lead officer, to ensure the timely progression of cases in family court proceedings, had also been filled. 

 

Based on the current staffing of 4.6FTE fee earners, plus the trainee Solicitor, the team can effectively manage around 75 active care cases. As the current active care cases were above this, a number of cases were currently outsourced to a local Children’s Solicitors firm via the Council’s procurement process.   Provision had been made for the firm to deal with a maximum of 100 cases over the next 12 months at a cost of approximately £4,000 per case.   It was clarified that this figure did not include the costs of disbursements.

 

A Legal Services review was underway to determine how to resource the service to meet the demands, use resources to the best advantage. The timescale for the completion of the review was July 2021.

 

Legal Services continued to contribute to the improvement journey for Children’s Services in a number of ways, both strategically and operationally. 

 

Monthly audits had been introduced, with feedback continuing via the 1 to 1 sessions between individual team members and the Head of Legal Services, with the objective of achieving a standard and consistent practice across the board. 

 

The Head of Legal Services had been one of the leads in a project undertaken by a subsidiary of the Local Family Justice Boards, which was tasked at looking at Care Orders at home, as this region was an outlier in terms of the care order at home numbers. 

 

The Public Law Working Group  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20/60

20/61

Annual Audit Letter 2019/2020 pdf icon PDF 603 KB

Minutes:

The External Auditor, EY, presented the Annual Audit Letter 2019/2020 following completion of audit procedures for the year ended 31 March 2020.   The Auditor was required to produce the Annual Audit Letter under the Code of Practice.

 

The Audit Results Reports for Middlesbrough Council and the Teesside Pension Fund 2019/2020 had been presented to the last meeting of the Corporate Affairs and Audit Committee and no new information had been added.

 

AGREED that the Annual Audit Letter 2019/2020 was received and noted.

20/62

HR Assurance Report - Health and Wellbeing pdf icon PDF 302 KB

Minutes:

The Head of Human Resources presented the annual HR Assurance Report – Health and Wellbeing.

 

The aim of the report was to provide the Corporate Affairs and Audit Committee with an annual review of the corporate approach to the management of Health and Wellbeing within the Council, as well as details of the actions for the year ahead.

 

The previous report was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic and resources were re-allocated to support staff during that difficult period. However, a presentation was provided to Corporate Affairs and Audit Committee in September 2020 to update on actions throughout the pandemic.

 

The Council currently offered the following health and wellbeing services to employees:

 

·        Employee Assistance Programme – a telephone access service that

            provided counselling support, legal and financial information, health advice             and access to more online resources, as well as the ability to speak in             confidence to a third party.

·        Face to Face Counselling – accessed via a manager and a completely confidential service currently provided by Alliance Psychological Services. This service was introduced in the second half of the year in response to the pandemic.

·        MRI scanning – provided if recommended by GP or Specialist Medical Practitioner and there was undue delay via the NHS. This service was currently provided by Alliance Medical.

·        Occupational Health Services - currently delivered by Medacs. The majority of appointments have been provided over the telephone due to the pandemic but face-to-face appointments were available when required.

·        Annual Flu Vaccination programme which targeted  front-line workers in Adult

            Social Care and Children’s Services.

 

The planned Health and Wellbeing activities in 2020/21 were significantly disrupted and were adapted to deal with restrictions imposed by the pandemic.  These activities included:

 

·        Flu vaccines - 222 council employees were vaccinated and 274 staff from maintained schools.

·        75 trained Mental Health First Aiders continued to support fellow employees and managers offering a listening and signposting service in the workplace.

·        One day Mental Health First Aid training had to be suspended and the North East Better Health At Work ‘Maintaining Excellence’ assessment deferred.

·        Health Champions/Advocates continued to provide support as best they could under the pandemic restrictions. The Council currently had a network of 25 Health Advocates.

·        Employee Induction converted to online and the HR team continued to attend (Market Place events) alongside MHFA and Health Advocates/ Champions to share support available with new employees.

·        Greater use was made of internal Employee Facebook page to promote services to staff.

 

 

 

 

In recognition of the impending mental health crisis referred to by health professionals, funding had been secured for a full time HR Business Partner for 12 months. The post would focus specifically on the health and wellbeing of staff, deal with the predicted fallout of mental health issues due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, and develop a longer-term strategy for ongoing support.

 

The post holder would assess and research potential impacts, working with staff and managers, design/deliver/commission appropriate services working with existing partners, and develop new relationships.  Digital opportunities for different  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20/62

20/63

Any other urgent items which in the opinion of the Chair, may be considered

Minutes:

The Vice Chair thanked Committee Members and Officers for their contributions over the past year.