Agenda and minutes

There were no substitutes at the meeting.

Apologies for absence were submitted by Councillors Martin Batey, Philip Bailey, Andrew Fletcher, Victoria Holliday, Nigel Housden and Roy MacDonald.

To receive questions / statements from the public, if any.

There were none received.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meetings of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee held on 17 April 2024 and 8 May 2024.

The minutes of the meetings held on held on 17 April 2024 and 8 May 2024 were approved as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

To determine any other items of business which the Chairman decides should be considered as a matter of urgency pursuant to Section 100B(4)(b) of the Local Government Act 1972.

None received.

Members are asked at this stage to declare any interests that they may have in any of the following items on the agenda. The Code of Conduct for Members requires that declarations include the nature of the interest and whether it is a disclosable pecuniary interest.

None received.

To consider any petitions received from members of the public.

None received.

To consider any requests made by non-executive Members of the Council, submitted to the Democratic Services Manager with seven clear working days’ notice, to include an item on the agenda of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

None received.

To consider any responses of the Council or the Cabinet to the Committee’s reports or recommendations:

The Committee noted the current tracker of its recommendations to the Cabinet.

To hear from Thomas Barker, the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust Head of Community Response.

Suggested time 1hour

The Committee heard from Thomas Barker, Head of Collaborative Response, East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust that the Trust was innovating with its partners to do the right things for its patients. An example of this was a Community Wellbeing pilot in Bedfordshire, Essex and Cambridgeshire that tackled response, prevention and protection to create additional capacity to achieve Category 1 life threatening incidents being responded to on average within 8 minutes.

Mr Barker added that a collaboration with Norfolk Fire and Rescue service had seen six fire stations, with an additional three in the pipeline, that are able to provide emergency medical response to patients that suffer cardiac arrest. It has seen in quarter one 55 calls responded to with the Fire and Rescue Service arriving ahead of the Ambulance on 68% of those calls with an average of an 8-minute earlier arrival time.

Mr Barker stated that there were currently 220 Community First Responders in Norfolk and last month provided 4,000 hours of voluntary support to the Ambulance service. The Trust was advertising for additional volunteers in those areas where they were needed.

Mr Barker commented that the Trust’s approach was to increase its capacity through these different approaches to seek to reduce the response times for category 1 incidents as well increasing recruitment in full time staff. In this financial year it was seeking to recruit an additional 152 staff in Norfolk and Waveney.

Mr Barker advised that this regional collaboration work had been recognised by the Home Office as good practise.

Councillor Vickers, along with other committee members, thanked the Ambulance Service and the Fire and Rescue Service for the work that they do and asked if there were plans to expand these schemes for other category 1 incidents and whether there was funding to continue the work beyond the pilot.

Mr Barker stated that the ambition was to expand to a dual crewing model to enable a more innovative way of delivering the service into target areas where response times were historically longer.

Councillor Hankins asked how closely the Ambulance Trust worked with primary care especially when dealing with emergency calls.

Mr Barker advised that as part of Trust’s new Clinical strategy it had created six new unscheduled care coordination hubs that were multi-disciplinary teams including primary care so that 999 calls that were not an emergency could be passed via a portal to other care providers to pick up those calls and provide swift replies. The Trust was looking at adding other providers into the hub including palliative care services.

Councillor Cushing asked whether there were gaps in North Norfolk with no Community First Responders (CFR) and what help could be given to local communities to help get funding for training and equipment for the responders.

Mr Barker stated that the Trust had recently completed a mapping exercise of CFRs across the region and that could be shared with the council to assess where some more local support would help. In terms of funding  ...  view the full minutes text for item 175.

To consider an end of project report on the North Walsham High Street Heritage Action Zone Programme.

Suggested time 30 mins

Councillor Dixon reminded the Committee that there had been a site visit prior to the committee meeting to take a look at all the different parts to this project.

Councillor Vickers asked what further evaluation there would be of the economic benefits of the scheme that could be used for similar schemes in other towns in the district.

Councillor Toye stated that the Council was always looking for economic benefits but there needed to be ongoing cultural and other activities to continue to draw people to the towns. The real opportunities come now as the project laid some good foundations which are starting to be built on with the arrival of new businesses and visitors to the town.

The Assistant Director Sustainable Growth (ADSG) commented that the ongoing evaluation of the market towns was vital to assess North Norfolk’s economy and it would be worthwhile putting in periodic checks to assess the drivers for change in the towns.

Councillor Toye added that there was some measurables such as footfall, but you could often tell by walking into a town how the town is working. Regular engagement with businesses was also important. At this stage it was not intended to do any measurement in a structured way.

The Economic Growth Manager added that the key to the scheme and the biggest learning experience to unlocking the funding was finding local champions for the scheme.

Councillor Penfold thanked officers for their work in getting the scheme delivered and there had certainly been an improvement in a feeling of pride and ownership of the town. It was surprising though that there had been no measurable objectives put into the project at the outset and it would be good for objectives such as footfall and transport use to be measured and come back to the committee in twelve months time and asked what evaluation Historic England had asked for.

The ADSG advised that Historic England were a very late entrant to the project and their evaluation template which was largely about the financial spend was after the work on what evaluation was needed had already been considered. For this type of project, it would be good to have some objectives that were clearly measurable, could provide a project baseline and be monitored to provide evaluation. It is built in other schemes that are happening now such as the Coastwise project, but in this project it didn’t happen which were largely down to resources which were extremely stretched for this scheme.

Councillor Toye stated that it could come back in twelve months’ time but it may be information as there was a lot of collaboration and it may be difficult to measure.

Councillor Penfold added that it was looking at the scheme in a holistic way rather than just how the council performed and asked whether there was additional funding from Historic England to do this.

The ADSG stated that he was not aware of such funding, but town centre health indicators included footfall, vacant  ...  view the full minutes text for item 176.

To consider a report from the Director of Resources on the provisional outturn position for the 2023/24 financial year for revenue, capital and reserves.

Suggested time 30 minutes

Councillor Cushing referred to discussions at the recent Governance, Risk and Audit Committee (GRAC) meeting on the delay in getting the Council’s 21/22 and 22/23 accounts externally audited and that it could mean a variance of up to a £1m in the council’s accounts.

The Director of Resources (DoR) stated that the position on the accounts may change but it would be a surprise if the general fund changed a lot as the budget adjustments were normally to do with capital and valuations which don’t greatly affect the revenue position. The accounts though won’t be full audited but there will be some checks on those two years of accounts.

The DoR added that the timetable was for the 21/22 and 22/23 accounts to go the GRAC meeting in December and the effects of the audit would only affect the reserve balances rather than the whole budget setting process for 2025/26.

Councillor Dixon asked about the level of underspends and overspends within the budget and what controls there were in place to assess these.

The DoR advised that service managers were being reminded of the need to achieve the budget savings and the intention for the September round of meetings is that the budget monitoring report will have a section on the achievement of the £975K savings that are needed as well as the additional £250K target.

Councillor Hankins asked what the reason was for the £492K variance in the waste management budget.

The DoR advised that this could be due to fluctuations in the waste prices to landfill, additional contractor costs, debt write off and performance clauses pay back.

Resolved – that the report is noted.

To consider a report that provides an update onthe progress beingmade in implementing the Corporate Plan 2023-27 Action Plan 2023-24 and The Corporate Plan 2023-2027 Action Plan 2024-25.

Suggested time 20 mins

Councillor Cushing commented that the reporting period of the action plan was for three months ago and was it possible for a more up to date report to be produced. The Chief Executive (CEX) responded that it had not been possible to do that with the agenda deadline for this committee.

Resolved – that the report is noted.

To consider a progress report by the Council’s Chief Executive on the Peer Review Action Plan.

Suggested time 20 mins

The Chief Executive (CEX) advised that the Peer Review team was having a follow up meeting on 30 July to assess progress made so far although the action plan had a 18 month timescale.

Councillor Cushing referred to discussions at the recent Governance, Risk and Audit Committee meeting on staff shortages in the finance department and asked what progress was being made on the workforce development plan.

The CEX stated that appointments had been made into the accountancy team and had been strengthened. Generally, there were workforce pressures, recruitment challenges as well as affordability within the council’s budget.

Councillor Fredericks added that a people strategy was being developed that would look at gaps in staffing provision.

Councillor Vickers asked what work had been done in assessing the gaps in services with statutory provision compared to those which were discretionary.

CEX advised that those were political choices, and the Corporate Leadership Team were having discussions with the Cabinet and would take advice across the political parties.

Resolved – that the report is noted.

To receive an update from the Scrutiny Officer on progress made with topics on its agreed work programme, training updates and to receive any further information which Members may have requested at a previous meeting.

The Committee considered the amended work programme and noted that there would be a transition period until all the changes took effect.

The Committee noted that the Homelessness Task and Finish Group had not finished its work programme in time to report to this committee meeting. However, it was scheduled to meet shortly. The Committee agreed that if that happened the committee would hold a special meeting on 13 August to consider its recommendations.

The Committee further noted that neither the Committee Chairman or Vice Chairman were available to chair the meeting on 20 September 2024 and the committee agreed that it be polled about whether to hold its meeting on that day or another suitable day when either the Chairman or Vice Chairman could attend.

Resolved – that (A) the changes to its future committee meetings be approved,

(B) an additional meeting of the Committee, if needed, be arranged for 13 August 2024, and

(C) Committee members are polled on whether or not to move the date of its next scheduled date of 18 September.

To pass the following resolution, if necessary:

“That under Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972 the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following items of business on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph _ of Part I of Schedule 12A (as amended) to the Act.”