Agenda item – Motion: Actions to provide the strong, united and informed managerial and political leadership

EDDC council meeting 6.00 pm, Wednesday 19th July

Another week another interesting debate. – Owl

democracy.eastdevon.gov.uk

Council believes that the start of a four-year term with a controlling partnership of councillors with an increased mandate from the people of East Devon provides the opportunity to refresh the whole council both in terms of its priorities and the way it assembles all its resources to deal with the complex issues faced by its residents in challenging times.

To that end council commits to the following actions to provide the strong, united and informed managerial and political leadership that is required:

In the short term, to work with Local Government Association and other parts of the local government family to:

1. Undertake a skills and knowledge audit of all Cabinet Members and key councillors to ensure that they are fully equipped to undertake their roles in the challenging times in which we find ourselves. This will lead to individual support for those members including specific mentoring and placement on appropriate courses and conferences; and

2. Work to bring together the Cabinet and Senior Management to become a unified team which, whilst respecting the different roles of officers and members, can move forward as one body in dealing with the issues faced by the council and its partners. In the first instance this would involve a facilitated Cabinet/SLT awayday and such work as may flow from that.

In the medium term, to:

3. Ask the LGA to undertake a Corporate Peer Challenge in September using leading and respected officers and members from other councils to look at the core of the council and recommend ways forward with a particular emphasis on:

i) Reviewing the member/officer protocol.

ii) Reviewing the Council’s communications strategy in the light of experiences gained with Covid.

iii) Reviewing the procedural standing orders as part of a constitutional review and make all parts of the constitution become clearer, both to the public and members, and encourage more members to participate in discussions & decisions around both the development, and the scrutiny, of those strategies.

iv) Reviewing all safeguarding strategies to ensure the continued protection of our vulnerable residents.

v) Reviewing the relationships between the District Council, the County Council and town & parish councils to ensure appropriate place-based working and the joining up of the public sector and partners to deliver cost-effective and locally relevant services.

4. Ask the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny to conduct, as soon as is practicable, a review of the scrutiny processes to ensure that:

i) The Cabinet and Officers continue to cooperate in the preparation of strategies to ensure that the undoubted professionalism of our staff is supported by the undoubted skills and knowledge of all local councillors from across the political spectrum in the development of those strategies from the outset.

ii) A suite of performance indicators are put in place to ensure that service delivery can be scrutinised by both Councillors and the public and to ensure that modifications can made to service delivery by a due process of review.

5. Ask SW Employers to undertake a review of the training and support needs of the SLT and the methodologies by which the SLT functions as a coherent team.

6. Ask the Council’s S151 officer, in conjunction with the Cabinet Member for Finance and Assets, to prepare a report outlining the likely costs to the Council of these recommendations  and to ascertain any risks associated with them, both financially and reputationally.

7. Establish a working Group (composed of the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Council, the Chair of the Council and other Group Leaders) to support this programme of action and to monitor it and move the improvement agenda forward within the Council in cooperation with the Council’s SMT.

Proposed by Councillor Paul Hayward

Seconded by Councillor Todd Olive

Supported by Councillors John Health, Paul Arnott, Tim Dumper and Geoff Jung