Agenda and minutes

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Apologies for absence were received from Cllr Bektas Ozer, who was substituted by Cllr Nia Stevens.

Apologies for absence were received from Cllr Ergin Erbil, Deputy Leader of the Council, due to a prior engagement. No other Cabinet representatives were available, but officers were available to answer questions at the meeting, or written questions could be submitted.

Apologies for slight lateness were received from Cllr Elif Erbil and Cllr Mohammed Islam.

Members of the Council are invited to identify any disclosable pecuniary, other pecuniary or non-pecuniary interests relevant to the items on the agenda.

No declarations of interest were received.

To agree the minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting held on 23 June 2022.

NOTED that there were outstanding actions for the Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive (Minute 5). The requested information would be circulated to OSC Members.

ACTION:  Fay Hammond / Marie Lowe

AGREED the minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting held on 23 June 2022 be confirmed as a correct record.

The report summarises the findings of the Corporate Complaints Annual Report 2021-22 and focuses on the nature of complaints and learning they provide to improve services in the future.

The report summarised the findings of the Corporate Complaints Annual Report 2021-22 and focused on the nature of complaints and learning they provided to improve services in the future.

Fay Hammond, Executive Director of Resources, introduced the report and invited questions from the Committee.

Members of the Committee asked the following questions:

Q.  The 27 complaints advised as upheld by the Ombudsman were highlighted, but that the report provided little information on these. It was suggested that a narrative paragraph be included in the report as a matter of course, as there was a breakdown for other complaints, but not the 27 upheld. It was requested that the categorisation / detail of the 27 complaints upheld by the Ombudsman be circulated to OSC Members.

A.  Fay Hammond advised that the information could be provided by email, and that officers would be able to attend a future meeting if Members had further questions.

ACTION:  Fay Hammond / Will Wraxall / Governance Team

A summary of the 27 upheld Ombudsman complaints 2021-22, including the substance of the complaint, and the actions agreed to address them, was circulated to Members.

Q.  Members asked what was being done to understand the nature of complaints received, and to deal with more issues preventatively.

A.  It was advised that there had been work undertaken to investigate the root cause of waste service complaints and issues, including officers going out with bin collection crews, analysis of data from customers and crews, and customer call centre staff sitting with the waste service officers. Some issues had been identified in relation to agency staff, which had now reduced as more crew were now permanent. From the last data, for August, the number of missed bins was reduced. More data would also be gathered for September. It was most important to prevent issues arising in the first place.

In respect of Housing repairs, there had been a restructuring of staff so that customer call team staff were now based in the Edmonton Green housing hub with the housing repairs staff. This had led to improved performance.

Q.  Members questioned that the table at para 3.3 of the report did not add up to 100%.

A.  It was possible this was a result of combined complaints, or miscellaneous categories, but would be checked and a response provided to OSC Members.

ACTION:  Fay Hammond / Will Wraxall / Governance Team

The figures in the table only included services which received at least 1% of total complaints. The remaining 20% of total complaints consists of a number of services which receive very few complaints individually, but which total between them 11% of complaints. It also included 9% of total complaints which had not been assigned a category correctly – this has been addressed as a control issue with the introduction of Verint, for which a service must be identified within the system when allocating the complaint. The Complaints team apologises for the lack of clarity in the OSC report and will look to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

The report and appendices sets out the draft work programmes for Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the seven standing Scrutiny Panels for 2022/23.

The Scrutiny Annual Work Programme report and appendices set out the draft work programmes for Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the seven standing Scrutiny Panels for 2022/23.

The Chair advised that areas of duplications had been identified and highlighted in the work programmes as follows.

Page 36 – Overview and Scrutiny Committee where it is proposed that the relevant panels consider the Annual Safeguarding Report.

Page 37 – Local Plan information on updates and timelines.  It is proposed that the Regeneration and Economic Development Panel will lead on this item at a single item meeting the date to be advised, to which all Members of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee will be invited.

A work programme amendment for Overview and Scrutiny Committee was proposed to change the date for Budget consultation from 12 January 2023 to 16 January 2023.

Any further changes would be made in consultation with the Chair.

Members suggested additional text be added to agendas for clarification to Scrutiny Panels that they should be only considering and asking questions specific to their panel remit in response to combined reports.

AGREED that the Scrutiny Annual Work Programme report and proposed work programmes for the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Scrutiny Panels for 2022/23, subject to the above amendments, be recommended to Council for adoption.

To note that the next Overview and Scrutiny Committee business meeting is scheduled to take place on Thursday, 10 November 2022.

NOTED

1.  The next business meeting of Overview and Scrutiny Committee was scheduled on Thursday 10 November 2022 at 7pm at the Civic Centre.

2.  A call-in meeting was scheduled on Tuesday 11 October 2022 at 6:30pm at the Civic Centre. Members were asked to confirm their availability, or arrange for a substitute for the meeting.