Agenda and minutes

Agenda and minutes

Special Meeting, Value and Performance Scrutiny Committee - Thursday 5 January 2012 6.00 pm, NEW

To improve accessibility individual documents published after 1 May 2020 are available as HTML pages where their original format supports this

Speaking at a Council or Committee meeting

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.

32.

Declarations of Interest

Minutes:

There were no declarations of interest made.

33.

Out of Hours Call Handling Contract pdf icon PDF 14 KB

Background information

 

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).

 

Why is the item on the agenda?

 

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.

 

Who has been invited to comment?

 

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.

 

What will happen after the meeting?

 

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.

 

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.

34.

Dates of Future Meetings

The following dates were noted:-

 

30 January 2012

26 March 2012

Minutes:

Noted.