To consider the strategy.

Daniel Brookman, Head of Transformation, highlighted what had happened to the strategy since it had been signed off. Transformation was everyone’s role, the pandemic had a significant impact but changes at RBWM had been made. An update would be going to the Cabinet Transformation Sub Committee the following evening, on 30^th November 2021. A huge amount of transformation had been delivered at speed and was done in a number of ways. Individual actions were things that people knew how to do themselves to make their work more efficient. Service actions involved working with communities on what they needed and ensuring that the council was able to deliver this support. Toolkits had been created which could assist and there would be support from the transformation team. Finally, there were council wide programmes and projects that covered a number of service areas.

There were a number of key focuses over the next 12 months. Engagement HQ was a new platform which had been recently set up and was called RBWM Together. This platform allowed for collaboration between teams, particularly when working remotely. It provided a space for staff to air views and new ideas, for example through surveys and quick polls. Considering adult social care transformation, MySense was a predictive system which allowed staff to react to any health issues before they happened. ‘Brain in Hand’ was a programme that had been developed to allow people to live independent lives by creating schedules for their day. As an organisation, RBWM had collected a significant amount of data and it was important that it was ethically stored. There were plans for a Corporate Data Strategy to be developed to further utilise and safeguard the use of this data.

The system used by staff in adult social care, Paris, was becoming outdated and the transformation team had undertaken work on a new system. The system would allow data to be shared, promoting multi agency working and providing long term financial viability. The website had been upgraded too and was now powered by Drupal, which was an open source software and had gone live in July 2020. There had been around 1,600 web pages and 300 forms which had been transferred to the new site. The number of daily visits to the RBWM website had been around 5,000, this had dropped to around 1,500 but this was due to the change in cookies settings which meant that residents could choose not to be tracked and therefore they would not show up in the figures. Accessibility requirements had also now come in, which meant that all documents on the website needed to be accessible. The website was audited by the government in August 2021 and was found to be partially compliant, the issues which had come out of the audit had now been actioned. A number of PDFs would be revisited, with about 250 still outstanding. The new search function was live and was an improvement on the original search function. A feedback loop had also now been completed.

Daniel Brookman moved on to discuss community working, in particular the work with volunteers who helped those residents that had been shielding during the course of the pandemic. The Embedding Community Response Project had also been a recent ongoing success and Daniel Brookman outlined some examples of the work that the project had been involved in.

Councillor Werner said that the budget was about managing cuts and he believed that cuts were leading the transformation programme. He felt that the budget showed where services would be cut and then the transformation team would then work to cover it.

Daniel Brookman said that language was key, he did not believe that cuts were leading the transformation. Transformation was about doing things differently and was not about making cuts or removing staff.

Adele Taylor, Executive Director of Resources, explained that if there was a budget saving which had come from the work of the transformation team, then this would be included within the budget. It was focused on the transformation of services, rather than seeing where cuts could be made.

Councillor Hilton, Cabinet Member for Finance and Ascot, said that if the council reduced resources in some areas this could then be used in other areas. Its priority was to make the lives of residents better, RBWM needed to consider how services could be provided that improved the experience of residents.

Councillor L Jones commented on the savings tracker which outlined in 2021/22 there would be £1.2 million worth of savings. The transformation had not yet been delivered but there was already a target on savings from the transformation programme. Councillor L Jones felt that savings should not be part of the budget and they should be made in year, she could see where Councillor Werner was coming from.

The Chairman asked for clarification on what the concern about the savings was.

Councillor Werner said that there should not be a savings target in the budget. He argued that the transformation projects should be delivered and then any savings could then be realised. Transforming services was supposed to be for the benefit of residents, but Councillor Werner said that cuts were leading the transformation. He wanted to send a message to the Cabinet Transformation Sub Committee that the savings proposals and transformation programme were being carried out incorrectly.

Councillor Sharpe said that it was important that RBWM did not ‘put the cart before the horse’. Advances in technology had given the council new ways of working and doing things, whilst providing the same service to residents. Money was not the key driver and RBWM should be able to provide better services to residents through its transformation programme.

Adele Taylor said that if there was a reduction included in the budget, then officers believed that it would be delivered. Not all of the action plan would be delivered on day one, if a service was being cut it would be clear. The purpose of transformation was to deliver things in different way which would save money.

Councillor L Jones said that it was a leap to estimate transformation savings when the transformation had not been completed and therefore officers did not know for sure what would work. She pointed to a previous example where it was estimated that the transformation of a service would lead to cost benefits but it did not. RBWM should therefore be careful about estimating savings whilst the transformation was taking place.

Councillor Sharpe noted the comments on the financial side of transformation but wanted to speak about the transformation plan. The transformation of some council services was crucial and Councillor Sharpe felt that RBWM was going down the right path.

Councillor L Jones picked up on digital access and responsiveness to residents to improve access to services. She asked if RBWM had the capability to allow residents to use smart phones to access services. On volunteering, Councillor L Jones had noted that there had been volunteer fatigue in her community. She asked how that could affect the transformation of some services.

Councillor Werner said that there needed to be a motivator for the transformation programme, he wanted to see savings being realised at the end of the process.

Adele Taylor explained that everything included in the budget was targets that officers believed could be achieved. She had not given any team a savings target, teams would make proposals which would be included in the budget. The transformation team had put together a business case, with proposals coming forward from a strong evidence base.

Daniel Brookman, responding to Councillor L Jones questions, said that smart phone access was now possible through the Drupal platform. On volunteering, Daniel Brookman understood the point being made. There had been a huge number of volunteers at the start of the pandemic but this had reduced over the past year. The transformation team continued to work with various volunteer groups, there were 150 community champions delivering key messages, for example. Engagement HQ showed where residents were working with RBWM on projects that could be delivered.

Councillor Hilton said that business cases were put forward and RBWM needed to consider how staff resource could be used effectively. The council helped residents and he thought that they would expect investment to be made in services in the budget.

Councillor Baldwin believed that opportunity cost was the next best use of resources. It was focused on savings and therefore the transformation team could only be about savings and how to achieve them. Capital receipts could only be used when savings had been made. Councillor Baldwin felt that it was a dead end, the council had to use transformation to gain traction and deliver service improvements because there was no room in the revenue budget.

In response, Adele Taylor confirmed that capital receipts were only one method of funding transformation. In terms of revenue savings, all it meant was that the budget required was reduced. A lot of transformation did not cost anything, it was looking at the best way of delivering services and projects differently.

Councillor Baldwin asked when additional money had been spent, had anything other than capital receipts been used to fund this expense.

Daniel Brookman used the example of the new case management system which had been built by the team. This project did come out of a small budget for transformation but the team had received funding from a grant from Local Digital which would allow the team to enhance the system over the coming months. The team always looked externally to fund some projects before investigating whether there was the budget internally.

Councillor Baldwin had an additional question, he was advised by the Chairman to discuss this after the meeting with officers if required.

Councillor Werner said that the ‘MySense’ system was like a ‘spy in the home’. A lot of people would have access to the data which would be collected by the device and Councillor Werner was concerned about the privacy of this data, was the data anonymised and how easy was it to access and see the data.

Daniel Brookman said that the device was not spying on residents who were using the service. It was about health data and those that were part of the service had given their consent to who could access the data. The data could be shared with family and adult social care if required, the data was very secure and did not go anywhere without the participants consent.

Councillor Werner asked what happened to those participants that refused to consent and would they therefore not receive the same support as those that had consented. He also asked if the privacy security and data were independently reviewed.

Daniel Brookman said that the solution was not fit for purpose for all, some people did not want the device. Those that were not part of the programme still received the same service, it was just delivered in different ways. The privacy of the data was reviewed internally, by a third party and was signed off by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Councillor Sharpe asked which residents were part of this programme.

Daniel Brookman responded that there was a set criteria that potential participants would be assessed against, predominantly it was usually those living alone. It could assess the health conditions of the participant and help the team flag up any issues before they happened. The data could be sent to family and the council so that they were alerted as soon as possible.

The Chairman commented on the vision of the Corporate Transformation Strategy, which had been titled ‘building a community centric borough of opportunity and innovation’. After the Panel’s work on the scrutiny of the Corporate Plan, they had recommended to Cabinet that the word ‘sustainable’ was included. The Chairman proposed that this was also added to the Corporate Transformation Strategy.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Panel recommended that the word ‘sustainable’ be added to the title of the vision of the strategy, to read: ‘building a community centric sustainable borough of opportunity and innovation’.

Councillor Werner proposed that the Panel recommended that transformation should not be led by the savings and to ensure that this was the case. The Chairman said that officers had already given assurances at the meeting that this was not the case, this was therefore recorded as a minority comment.

Councillor L Jones requested that her comment on volunteer fatigue was noted, she felt that any transformation involving volunteers could be difficult to achieve. She said that volunteer transformation needed to be sustainable.

The Chairman agreed and said that it was incredibly hard to get right.

Councillor Werner said it was easy to monitor volunteering wellbeing, things like retention rates, volunteer surveys and speaking to volunteers could help organisations understand what staff wellbeing was like.