Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Andrew Gomm and Jo Randall.  There were no notifications of substitutes.

In accordance with the local Code of Conduct, a councillor is required to disclose at the meeting any Disclosable Pecuniary Interest (DPI) that they may have in respect of any matter for consideration on this agenda.  Any councillor with a DPI must not participate in any discussion or vote regarding that matter and they must withdraw from the meeting immediately before consideration of the matter.

If that DPI has not been registered, the councillor must notify the Monitoring Officer of the details of the DPI within 28 days of the date of the meeting.

Councillors are further invited to disclose any non-pecuniary interest which may be relevant to any matter on this agenda, in the interests of transparency, and to confirm that it will not affect their objectivity in relation to that matter.

There were no declarations of disclosable pecuniary or non-pecuniary interests.

To confirm the minutes of the Executive Advisory Board meeting held on 13 January 2022.

The minutes of the meeting of the Service Delivery Executive Advisory Board (EAB) held on 13 January 2022 were confirmed as a correct record, and would be signed by the Chairman at the earliest opportunity.

The Executive Advisory Board (EAB) was invited to consider the mandate in respect of the Careline service.  The mandate addressed the following areas:

·             Introduction

·             Strategy

·             Options Evaluation

·             Considerations

·             Resources, including potential costs to proceed to the next stageto develop the Strategic Outline Case

·             Issues, Assumptions and Risks

·             Dependencies, Constraints and Opportunities

·             Reviewer List

·             Next Steps

The mandate set out five potential strategic options to deliver a solution.  The Options consisted of (1) Do nothing, (2a) Do something, (2b) Do something, (2c) Do something or (3) Do most.  Having considered the mandate at its meeting held on 2 March 2022, the Executive / Management Team Liaison Group recommended that Options (2a) to outsource the entire service to a private external operator or (2b) to outsource to another Council provider, should be pursued.  Local authorities currently providing this service to other councils were Mole Valley and Runnymede.

The Head of Community Services gave an introductory presentation in respect of the mandate which explained that Careline was a 24-hour emergency call system to assist vulnerable people in the Borough to live independently in their own home.  There were two aspects to the service.  The first aspect, operated by the Council’s in-house Community Services Careline team, involved the installation, updating, maintenance and management of people’s accounts to have a Lifeline trigger pendant to wear or a smoke alarm fitted into their property.  The second aspect featured a 24-hour call centre, operated under contract by PPP Taking Care, which responded to emergency calls from clients for assistance.  The Careline service included the sheltered housing schemes in the Borough.

The reason for pursuing the mandate at present was that the current contract with PPP Taking Care was due to expire in May 2022 and significant investment in technology and equipment would be required to enable the service to continue as communication providers were transforming the telecommunications network in the UK from the traditional hard wired telephone lines to a digital system.  The current contractor estimated that the cost of the digital upgrade to cater for the number of people in the Council’s scheme was approximately £350,000.

The imminent end of the contract with PPP Taking Care to provide the Council’s call centre offered an opportunity to outsource the entire Careline service to an external provider under one contract to provide the most cost efficient and effective service to the most vulnerable residents in the best manner whilst ensuring the risk in respect of the digital transfer was minimised.  A six month extension of the contract with PPP Taking Care was being sought to enable the Council to undertake the procurement process leading to the award of a new Careline contract.

The following points arose from related questions, comments and discussion for forwarding to the Executive:

1.           Waverley Borough Council (WBC) provided an identical Careline service to this Council utilising the same call centre provider, PPP Taking Care, although its contract was not due for renewal for some time and it was therefore not  ...  view the full minutes text for item SD57

The Executive Forward Plan was noted without comment.

To consider and approve the EAB’s work programme with reference to the above Executive Forward Plan.

The Chairman advised the EAB of two forthcoming meetings of relevance.  The first meeting, being held the following week between with the Chairman and Director of Service Delivery, would seek to identify possible areas of work which could be brought forward for the EAB to consider in the future.  The second meeting, an O&S / EAB Work Programming session organised for 16 March 2022, would co-ordinate work programming in a wider context across both EABs and the O&S Committee.

As the EAB’s work programme had been updated since the agenda for this meeting had been published, a late sheet providing the most up to date version had been circulated.