REPORT FROM THE CABINET MEMBER FOR RESOURCES AND TOWN/PARISH COUNCIL EMPOWERMENT

TO THE MEETING OF FULL COUNCIL

ON 17 JANUARY 2007

1. Resources:

Directorate structure and staffing continue to evolve. Safer Communities Directorate has now been disbanded with its functions absorbed into other Directorates; the new Directors of Children’s Services (Steve Beynon) and Environment and Neighbourhoods (Stuart Love) have taken up their posts; a new Director of People and Organisation Development (Steve Bartholomew) joined at the beginning of January and John Lawson, Director of Policy, Performance and Partnerships began a 3 month career break on 10  January.  John Lawson’s responsibilities have been passed to other Directors and Officers including Alison Lowton, who joined also on 10 January, to take interim responsibility for Legal and Democratic Services. 

2. Parish Empowerment:

Following our attendance at various national seminars and articles in the national Local Government press, we have received twelve requests from across the country to visit various areas to explain our leading Parish empowerment and devolution initiatives. Rather than visit all twelve - although I am happy to do so - we have invited them all to our Annual Parish seminar in June. Clearly, being able to present our initiatives to them all in one go will be significantly more efficient - but also by them coming to us they will be able to see at first hand what we are doing.

Eleven parish and Town Councils on the Island have invited me to visit them. These visits are all being arranged over the next few months.

I am really pleased to say that ten existing Clerks are now undertaking the training to enable their parishes to apply for Quality Status. Our target is for 50% of our Parishes and Towns to have quality status by 2008 - we are already have the highest percentage of Quality Parishes compared to the rest of the Country - but we have no desire to rest on our laurels and we will continue to lead the country in this. All the training that is being provided for Parish and Town Councils is now badged under the County Training Partnership - this is a partnership of the Isle of Wight Council, the local Association and the local Society of Clerks. A Training Strategy has been adopted and this includes a training schedule for Clerks, Parish & Town Councillors and also whole Councils - this has commenced this year with sessions on ode of Conduct during January and February. The next Parish induction day and parish Press are programmed fro March.

Finally the revised Parish Charter will shortly be issued for consultation.

3. Corporate Risk:

The lead responsibility for risk management at director level has now passed to Steve Beynon, Director of Children’s Services. This emphasises the theme that risk management is the responsibility of everyone and can be led from a service based directorate just as well as it can be led by a central department. Steve will bring a new perspective on risk from his former workplaces.

The Council’s senior management is focussing on agreeing its key risks and developing mitigation strategies to deal with them. For these ‘strategic’ risks , the main focal point for managing them will be the Directors Team.

The Council will be entering a period of service planning in the next few weeks which will include the identification of the key risks which impact on service areas. Such service risks will inform the mitigation planning that individual departments will have to do if they are to achieve their objectives over the coming year. Greater emphasis will now be given to managing risk as opposed to simply identifying it.

Risk will now be monitored on a regular basis at Service Boards.