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Venue: St Aldate's Room, Town Hall
Contact: Alec Dubberley, Democratic Services Officer
Items
| No. |
Item |
31. |
Apologies for Absence and Substitutions
Minutes:
Apologies for absence were received from
Councillor McCready with Councillor Fooks attending as
substitute.
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32. |
Declarations of Interest
Minutes:
There were no declarations of interest
made.
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33. |
Out of Hours Call Handling Contract  PDF 14 KB
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Background
information
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The Council has an existing
contract with an external supplier to provide out of hours calls
service. The contract has now expired and needs to be renewed. The
City Executive Board, on 7 December, took a decision to grant
project approval to award a new contract (full decision at page 1
of the agenda).
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Why is the item on
the agenda?
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The decision of the City
Executive Board taken on 7 December 2011 has been called-in by
Councillor Fooks with support from Councillors Wilkinson, Rundle
and Campbell.
Councillor Fooks has given the
following reasons for her call-in:-
- Report was
“vague”
- The report delegates
the decision to officers with “no member
input”
- Anxious to avoid poor
service with the new contact.
- Would like to see
what safeguards are in place to avoid poor performance in new
contract.
Attached to this agenda
is:
- The minute extract of
the City Executive Board meeting
- The report considered
by the Board on 7 December
- An additional report
which was previously considered by the Council’s Management
Team. This report provides further information on the rationale for
the officer’s recommendations and should assist the
Committee’s deliberations.
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Who has been invited
to comment?
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Helen Bishop (Head of Customer
Services) and Karen Tarbox Customer
First Programme Manager) will attend the meeting.
Councillor Fooks will attend
the meeting to discuss her reasons for calling in the
decision.
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What will happen
after the meeting?
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There are 2 possible courses of action for the
committee:
- To disagree with the call-in which
will mean the original City Executive Board decision is made at
this point
- To agree wholly or partly with the
call-in and report to the next City Executive Board giving reasons
and asking for reconsideration. The decision will not be made until
the City Executive Board reconsideration
Should this be necessary, an additional meeting of the City
Executive Board will be arranged.
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Additional documents:
Minutes:
The Chair introduced the item explaining that
the decision to grant project approval to award a new contract for
the provision of an out of hours call-handling contract had been
called-in from the City Executive Board by Councillor Fooks with
support from Councillors Wilkinson, Rundle and Campbell. The
Committee was required to either agree with the original decision
or refer the decision back to the Executive Board with
recommendations from this meeting.
Councillor Fooks was asked to explain her
reasons for initiating the call-in and highlighted the following
concerns:
- There had been a lack of input from
members to date and the decision taken by the Executive Board did
not allow for any member involvement in future.
- A service based away from Oxford
would be detrimental to service provision as the area would not be
known by the staff taking the phone calls.
- Concern over the value for money of
the contract and what level of service would be provided for the
contract price.
- Unsure how the contract could be
stopped or modified in the event that the supplier does not perform
adequately.
In response to Councillor Fooks’
concerns, Councillor Price assured the committee that the out of
hours service was an important service
to the administration and a high quality service was vital. He said
that he regretted that, due to the cost, an in house service could
not be provided. Councillor Price went on to explain that a joint
service with other Oxfordshire authorities would save money.
Tim Sadler assured that Committee that
officers had taken action to address early teething problems with
the current out of hours provision and
the service was now performing well.
During the debate the following was
covered:
- The calls were currently charged in
the region of £2 per call. A new contract would incur an
annual flat fee rather than a charge per call.
- Any new contract would be more
expensive than the current arrangements as the true cost of the
service was not built into the original contract.
- The sustainability policies of the
tendering companies would be an important factor when selecting a
supplier
- Should the new supplier fail to meet
the service standard required by the Council there would be penalty
clauses built into the contract. It was
however noted that officers would be closely monitoring service
performance which should mitigate any risk to a decline in the
service.
At the conclusion of the debate the Committee
voted by majority on whether or not to make any recommendations
back to the City Executive Board. The decision taken at the City
Executive Board meeting in December would therefore stand.
Resolved to not refer the decision back to the
City Executive Board for
reconsideration.
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34. |
Dates of Future Meetings
The following dates were noted:-
30 January 2012
26 March 2012
Minutes:
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