Agenda and minutes

Resolved: that the minutes of the meeting held on 14 May 2015 be agreed as an accurate record.

Councillor Eliot – non-prejudicial – Council Appointee to the Lewisham Disability Coalition.

Councillor Upex – non-prejudicial – Member of Voluntary Services Lewisham and Member of the Greenwich Cooperative Development Agency.

Councillor Raven – non-prejudicial – Member of the Lewisham Disability Coalition.

Councillor Morrison – non-prejudicial – Member of the Board of the Ackroyd Community Association.

Councillor Michael – non-prejudicial – Supporter of the Citizens Advice Bureau; Member of the Stronger Communities Partnership Board; Patron of the Marsha Phoenix Trust.

3.1    James Lee (Head of Cultural and Community Development) introduced the report; the following key points were noted:

·         The action plan was developed with partners in 2011-12 with the objective of running for five years; however the environment in which the strategy was operating had changed.

·         Lewisham and its partners had delivered a number of successful initiatives through the strategy.

·         Looking forwards, Lewisham and its partners would be looking to build on the successes of the strategy, as well as developing new initiatives and making the best use of new technology.

3.2    Kay Kelleher (Director, Volunteer Services Lewisham) addressed the Committee; the following key points were noted:

·         Volunteer centre Lewisham had worked with local assemblies, registered social landlords, schools, faith groups and many others to support volunteering.

·         The climate for volunteering had changed over the time the strategy had been in operation.

·         The increased focus on delivery of core public services and the provision of information online had changed the way people engaged with volunteering.

·         Volunteer Centre Lewisham was working to develop a new web platform for volunteering opportunities in the borough. This platform ‘VC connect’ had been used successfully by a number of other local authorities and would provide new functionality for the coordination of volunteering opportunities in the borough.

·         It was recognised that face to face work would still be needed in the provision of advice and brokering.

·         Face to face meetings with potential volunteers resulted in 60% of contacts being transferred into active placements, which contrasted with 12% of contacts which were transferred to placements online.

·         The ambition in the strategy was to make it as easy as possible to volunteer.

3.3    Kay Kelleher (Director, Voluntary Action Lewisham) responded to questions from the Committee, the following key points were noted:

·         There were a number of safeguards in place to protect volunteers and people who worked with volunteers.

·         Volunteer Centre Lewisham was clear that volunteering should not be used for job substitution, or as a replacement for cuts.

·         The Centre was keen to work with partners to ensure that volunteering could be used as a pathway to employment, where this was appropriate.

·         Partners in Lewisham were part of the ‘keep volunteering voluntary’ campaign to ensure that volunteering was not used as a punitive measure.

·         The Centre worked with organisations requesting volunteers to develop their role descriptions and ensure that the relevant safeguarding processes and procedures were in place for volunteers.

·         There were 27 thousand people on the Volunteer Centre Lewisham database as potential volunteers.

·         The ‘volunteer journey’ was becoming more tailored to the ways in which people accessed services.

·         The online platform ‘VC connect’ would enable new functionality for potential volunteers to find the right opportunities.

·         The Centre did not have authority over the organisations it worked with and could not insist that they acted in any particular way.

·         However, the Centre could advise organisations on best practice. It was also looking to become a ‘disclosure and barring centre’ in order to support the checking of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

4.1    Liz Dart (Head of Culture and Community Development) introduced the report; the following key points were noted:

·         The report was still in draft and officers intended that it would be sent out with a ‘draft’ watermark.

·         The report would be changed before consideration at Mayor and Cabinet to include a recommendation for further consultation to take place.

·         There would be more consultation with organisations over the summer, which would follow from the previous discussions about the framework.

·         The intention was to ask the Mayor and Cabinet for ratification of proposals following the consultation over the summer.

·         The plan covered a period of three years; there would be further consultation throughout.

·         The negotiation of leases would be on-going.

·         Plans were for two community hubs in the borough, one at the Mulberry Centre and the other at the Leemore.

·         Work would also be carried out with Phoenix Housing to build on the offer provided at the Green Man and in the developing plans for the Fellowship Inn.

·         Organisations were being asked to be pragmatic about their use of space. There were lots of opportunities to bring partners together to work better.

·         Community centres would provide neighbourhood services focused on a smaller network of centres.

·         Of the current establishment of 23 buildings seven would be retained; six would be offered to registered social landlord partners; two would be reallocated as nurseries and seven were proposed for closure.

·         It was proposed to either keep community space on the site of the Goldsmiths Community Centre either in the current building or as part of a redevelopment with housing subject to further surveys, consultation and options appraisal.

·         Facilities being offered at full market rates would be likely to stay in that category. Organisations which did not wish to remain in commercially rented spaces could opt to relocate to the community hubs.

·         There would continue to be engagement with partners in the community and voluntary sector, as well as joint working with premises management organisations and colleagues in strategic housing to look at the most efficient use of assets.

·         Any organisation facing significant change would be given at least three months’ notice of the proposed change.

·         A change was also proposed to the community asset transfer framework to enable the Council to use community asset transfer, where it was appropriate.

·         This would mean that priority uses and services would be safeguarded and that viability, sustainability and value for money would have to be clearly demonstrated.

·         The equalities analysis assessment of the proposals highlighted the impact on older and younger users. It also indicated that as the hub model of working developed it would mitigate the impact through the re-provision of services.

4.2    Liz Dart (Head of Culture and Community Development) responded to questions from the Committee; the following key points were noted:

·         A mapping exercise had been carried out; the results of which were in the appendix to the report. This exercise indicated the locations of all the other facilities in the borough and enabled a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Andreas Ghosh (Head of Human Resources) introduced the report and a presentation; the following key points were noted:

·         The Council developed an employment profile each year. It aimed to ensure there was rigor in the monitoring of staff and the tracking of data.

·         Lewisham was a pioneer in terms of its development and publication of the profile.

·         The profile was also part of the Council’s commitment to be a good employer.

·         Overall numbers of staff had been reduced in line with the Council’s requirement to make major savings from its budget.

·         There were currently 2800 individual members of staff (fewer full time equivalents); there were 70 redundancies in 2014/15 and 350 in 2013/14. It was anticipated that there would be more redundancies next year.

·         There had also been a reduction in the numbers of agency staff.

·         Numbers of staff in schools had increased each year in the past ten years – this was accounted for almost entirely by non-teaching staff.

·         The Council was still recruiting, as part of the process of on-going reorganisations.

·         Half of all appointments in the past year were filled by internal applicants.

·         This was positive for employees of the Council but it did not allow for sufficient refresh of staff to significantly change the employment profile.

·         Staff referred to in the monitoring as ‘casual’ and ‘claims’ might be lecturers, tutors or elections staff who were paid on an irregular basis.

·         The Council directly engaged 3435 people in some way, it also had arms-length responsibility for schools staff.

·         400 staff had applied for voluntary severance a quarter had been accepted.

·         There were slightly more acceptances from older staff.

·         The programme was broadly proportionate in terms of its acceptances of black and minority ethnic employees.

·         There was generally a low rate of return from individual staff members in response to questions about equalities monitoring.

·         The returns were particularly low in terms of religion, marital status and sexual orientation.

·         Each round of redundancies had a disproportionate impact on either BME or white staff.

·         There were high numbers of BME applicants for jobs at the Council, which indicated that it was an attractive place to work.

·         Changes to the youth service in the early round of reorganisations had a disproportionate impact on BME staff because of the composition of the staff working in youth services.

·         There was good distribution of gay and lesbian people at senior grades and there were a higher rate of acceptances from applications and interview of people from the LGB&T community.

·         Women were well represented at all grades in the Council, including at the senior level; a new female Executive Director had just been appointed for the Children and Young People directorate.

·         The age profile of the Council had not changed significantly. The Council was not an aging workforce; it was, on average, an older workforce.

·         Work was taking place to attract younger people to the workforce, including through the apprenticeship programme.

·         Agency workers were more representative of the local workforce than the permanent staffing  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Timothy Andrew (Scrutiny Manager) introduced the report.

6.2    The Committee discussed the work programme and requested that the item on the main grants programme scheduled for September include information about equalities monitoring. The Committee also agreed to move the item on local assemblies from January to November. Members indicated that they were particularly interested in the 24k discretionary funding which had been allocated previously for the assemblies programme; the item on provision for the LGBT community was moved to the end of the work programme to make space for other agenda items; and it was agreed that the voluntary sector accommodation implementation plan would be added to the meeting on 16 September. It was also agreed to add an item to the work programme for 19 January from the Lewisham Disability Coalition’s work on hate crime reporting.

6.3    It was agreed that the poverty review would be based on the information in the indices of multiple deprivation.

Resolved: to agree the changes to the Committee’s work programme, as discussed.

There were none.