Councillor Phil Davies introduced a report and appendices that set out the scrutiny response to two outline business cases relating to proposed new service delivery models within the Council Transformation Programme, specifically:

·  Creating a commissioning hub to jointly commission services with Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG)

·  Creating integrated community care teams with Wirral Community NHS Trust to deliver services to older people.

The scrutiny response was included in the report to the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 8 September 2016 and was appended to the report. This approach had been adopted to enable Elected Members to be engaged in reviewing transformation proposals as they were being developed.

The Cabinet noted that the report supported the enabling work being undertaken to support delivery of the Wirral Plan. 

New business models were being developed for Council Services to deliver Wirral’s 20 pledges, respond to stakeholder views and support the delivery of the financial savings required.

A briefing session on alternative delivery models and the Council’s emerging transformation programme had been provided for Members on 20 July 2016.

The Cabinet Member for Transformation, Leisure and Culture was keen to ensure there was pre-decision scrutiny of the proposed new delivery arrangements. This was to enable Members to engage in reviewing transformation proposals in line with the need for Council to radically change the way services were delivered to secure better outcomes for residents.

The Cabinet was asked to review the comments of Elected Members in respect of the two outline business cases and include these considerations when reviewing the progress of the proposals to the stage of full business case.

Councillor Phil Davies invited Councillor Moira McLaughlin, Chair of the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee, who was in attendance at the meeting, to present her Committee’s report on Transforming Wirral – DASS Business cases.

Councillor Moira McLaughlin informed that the report was the result of the first of, what would be a serious of workshops which gave Overview and Scrutiny Members the opportunity to examine, in some detail, the business cases for changing the way some services were currently provided, to work with partners and to deliver on the pledges of the Wirral Plan.

In this case the proposal was to take another step towards integrating health and social care by bringing together community nurses and social workers into integrated teams based in four hubs, one located in each constituency.

At the Workshop, the Director of Adult Social Services had explained the rationale for the proposal and the mechanics of implementing it.  Then Members had asked questions and comments which were incorporated into the report that had first been considered and approved by the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

Councillor Moira McLaughlin informed that she was pleased that the session had been well attended and Members had participated in the discussion, asking questions and making comments on a range of issues, including staffing and HR matters, finance, governance and risk, user experience and quality assurance, as well as performance monitoring and Officers had supplied additional information as requested.  The points raised and responses provided were all set out in the report.

At the conclusion of the Workshop, Members had agreed that the plan was a further move in the right direction, though they were keen to see that measures were put in place to provide rigorous monitoring of quality and robust governance arrangements with clear accountability.

Councillor Moira McLaughlin reported that, although it was acknowledged that to take the next step in this process, required a further decision to be made by the Cabinet, it did contain an element of pre-decision scrutiny, a process that had been underway incrementally for some time.

Finally, Councillor Moira McLaughlin informed that her Committee had wanted the whole process to be an exercise in true pre-decision scrutiny, so she had met with the Senior Manager – Transformation and Improvement to establish the timeframe for further proposals coming forward so that the Workshops required could be accommodated within the Committee’s Work Programme and to also determine, at what stage in the process of considering options, the Committee could expect to be involved.

Councillor Ann McLachlan responded informing that it was part of the Council’s Transformation agenda to consider new business models to meet both 20/20 and budgetary challenges and she was keen to ensure recommendations, particularly those around staffing, funding, vanguard issues and governance issues etc. were implemented.  Councillor McLachlan considered this to be a good example of work completed by the Overview and Scrutiny Committees.  There was a further opportunity for this work to be considered by the Cabinet, as the outline business case, which would include these recommendations. She considered the wider Member engagement to be very important.

RESOLVED:

That the Cabinet notes the comments of Elected Members as set out in the report and will include these as part of its considerations when the full business case is presented to it.