Issue - meetings
Corporate Review of Service Level Agreements
Meeting: 15/02/2011 - Cabinet (Item 106)
106 Corporate Review of Service Level Agreements 
PDF 95 KB
Report of the Head of Community Engagement
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Cabinet received a report from the Head of Community Engagement which provided an update and findings on a review into SLA’s (Service Level Agreements). The report recommended some short term actions to improve management arrangements and also the principles of an overall approach to the council’s future arrangements for the efficient management of it’s investment and support for external organisations, in order to maximise impact.
The options, options analysis, including risk assessment and officer preferred option, were set out in the report as follows:
|
|
Option 1: Agree Recommendations |
Option 2: Do Nothing |
|
Advantages |
Potential for a much higher impact as a result of the council’s investment. Opportunity for possible savings in the future without loss of services. Efficiency achieved as a result of more consistent corporate management arrangements. Increased impact and efficiency achieved by potential joint investment and shared management arrangements. |
Will not require significant investment in officer time. |
|
Disadvantages |
Development of a consortium approach by sector will require significant investment of officer time in the early stages although has the potential to create efficiency later. |
The council could fail to maximise its investment in VCFS and other external organisations and there is continuing inefficiency and duplication in both funding and administration. |
|
Risks |
New ways of working may take some time to develop and partners may need some support to build capacity given that not all organisations are at the same level of maturity. Collaborative working arrangements may be difficult to achieve in some cases. Officer time spent on development of proposals is not available for other activities. |
The council could appear inconsistent in the manner in which it provides support to VCFS and other external organisations. |
The officer preferred option is Option 1. The review of SLA’s highlighted a number of issues as detailed in this report. However, there is no doubt that many of the services currently funded by the council via its SLA’s are valuable and have an impact on our local communities. Whilst this report suggests some immediate actions that can lead to fairly quick overall improvements, there is an opportunity to look further ahead and to prepare for some more significant changes in the medium term future. This work will take longer to develop but could allow the council to be better placed in the future to achieve more from its investments, to have the management tools necessary to support key services through a commissioning framework and to be able to support external partners to develop the collaborative approaches they will need in the years to come. The report therefore recommended that the current investment in SLA’s was maintained whilst the work required to develop the medium term proposals was undertaken. Future reports to Cabinet will provide further information on the proposed approaches.
Councillor Whitelegg proposed, seconded by Councillor Langhorn:-
“That the recommendations, as set out in the report, be approved.”
By way of amendment Councillor Robinson proposed:
“That recommendation (1) be amended with the words ‘and give notice ... view the full minutes text for item 106