Agenda item

Cabinet to receive a presentation from Gary Hughes, Principle Advisor from the Local Government Association (LGA) on what a Corporate Peer Review is, the benefits of the review, who is involved and the process, timings of the review and subsequent report publication. Corporate Peer Reviews are flexible and the overall aim is to challenge and share learning to support EFDC in their improvement journey.

The Cabinet received a short presentation from Gary Hughes a Local Government Association (LGA) Principal Advisor on what a Corporate Peer Review was, the benefits and the process involved (a copy of his presentation is attached). He noted that his colleague Kirsty Human would be this council’s Peer Challenge Manager, but she was away at another council at present and so could not be here.

Mr Hughes noted that the LGA was the national voice of local government and they aimed to influence and set the political agenda on the issues that matter to councils.  They have a sector led improvement offer that cover what councils do and as they were a demand led organisation they would work with them to deliver improvements. They have three types of offers to members; 1) a universal offer open to all their members; 2) a bespoke offer for councils that need more in-depth support; and 3) intensive offer, where they would help and support council that were working towards significant improvements. They would do this through a range of activities including mentoring, leadership development and peer challenge. They also use lessons learned by councils and share these experiences with other councils that need help. They do this by working with their peers, officers with officers and members to members and providing support and challenges to each council as a critical friend. He emphasised that they were not inspectors or assessors and did not give a score, it was all about support and improvement. The people doing your peer review know what it’s like working in local government now, not ten years ago but now. They would know the challenges that you face, the financial issues and demands made on you.

A peer challenge was voluntary, commissioned by a council to aid their improvement. It involves a small team of local government peers spending time in another council to challenge and share their learning to aid improvement. They would engage with a wide range of people connected with the council and work on triangulation, where if someone says something to them they note it, if two people say the same it becomes more interesting and if three people say the same they take it as evidence and investigate it further; three points of evidence. They would spend four days on site and on their final day their findings would be delivered verbally back to the council.

They would like a council to prepare a position statement for their team at the outset along with key documents that were normally produced by the council. Outcomes (the feedback and the report) from this review are for the council, but they would ask that these are also published

Mr Hughes noted that a start date of 27 January 2020 had been agreed upon and he would ask the council to develop an onsite timetable that also listed who to visit and a formal position statement. It should be open and honest and not stage managed. The council should think what it wanted from this challenge. Kelsey Taverner would be acting as the peer challenge co-ordinator and day to day contact.  On the final day there would be verbal feedback and after that they would provide a written report. Once the report had been agreed they would like it published on the website.

The meeting was then opened to questions from members.

Councillor Lion thanked him for his presentation and said he was all in favour of this as part of continuous improvement. He asked if this would provide a corporate score card. He was told that they did not use this, this was not for the ranking of performance by external bodies.

Councillor Patel welcomed this process of having a critical friend. The next step on from the review was what the council did with the feedback. He also wondered who, within the council, would agree the position statement and would we have sight of this before it went.  The question was also if we had the capacity to deliver on the key performance targets and how we serve our customers after undertaking transformation. The Chief Executive replied that a corporate team had already started work on the position statement. Once substantially completed it would be shared with the Cabinet. Mr Hughes added what you did with the recommendations made by the review team was the most important thing. As part of this they offer an opportunity for a follow up visit 12 to 18 months down the line to seen how you were getting on.

Councillor J H Whitehouse asked to what extent would opposition councillors be involved in this process, and how would we choose outside people (residents and external organisations) to interview. Mr Hughes said that they would encourage all councillor to participate. They would work with officers and councillors about who they would need to engage with. Feedback would be given to everyone that had participated.

The Leader thanked Mr Hughes for his presentation and responding to the questions raised and said that they would see him and his team on the 27^th January 2020.