Agenda and minutes

County Councillor S. Jones was elected as Chair

There were no declarations of interest made by Members.

There were no items for the public open forum.

The minutes of the Public Service Board Select Committee meeting held on 11th October 2016 were confirmed as an accurate record and signed by the Chair. 

We heard that, as discussed, the Well-being Commissioner had been invited but was unable to attend.  It was hoped she would attend a future meeting.

Councillor Taylor reiterated the request that the Public Service Board provide a current list of actions.

Context:

The Policy and Performance Manager presented a report to provide members with an opportunity to consider the draft well-being assessment ahead of its approval by the Public Service Board at the end of March.

Key Issues:

1.   The Well-being of Future Generations Act should ensure that public bodies think more about the long term, work better with people and communities and each other, look to prevent problems and take a more joined-up approach. It sets out in law a definition of sustainable development.

2.   The sustainable development principle incorporates five ways of working that we are required to take into account. These are: Looking to the long term so that we do not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs; Taking an integrated approach so that public bodies look at all the well-being goals in deciding on their well-being objectives; Involving a diversity of the population in the decisions that affect them; Working with others in a collaborative way to find shared sustainable solutions; Understanding the root causes of issues to prevent them from occurring.

3.   The production of a well-being assessment is a key part of identifying the priorities for the area. The assessment is evidence based and draws on a range of sources, in particular: data; the views of local people; information about future trends and academic research.

4.   Public Service Boards should expect to be scrutinised on the process of how they agreed their priorities. To ensure objectivity and robustness of their decisions it is essential to that the process involved the collection and analysis good evidence to ensure that priorities accurately reflect the diversity and variety of issues in the area.

5.   The statutory guidance states that a deeper examination of the information and data from sources like those in the diagram above will help the PSB prepare a more rigorous assessment. The PSB will have to look at the long term, consider what the evidence tells members about how to prevent problems from happening or getting worse, and involve other people with an interest in the well-being of the area. Collecting and analysing good evidence is integral to this process. Appendix one draws out some key points from the guidance and could be used to help the committee frame questions as it scrutinises the process of producing the assessment.

6.   Members were e-mailed a link to the assessment in early February. The summary assessment is included with the agenda while an extended version can be found at www.monmouthshire.gov.uk/ourmonmouthshire.

Member Scrutiny:

During discussion following the presentation the following points were noted:

The Chair recognised the huge piece of engagement, thanked officers for the work undertaken, and commended the document presented in terms of the level of content.

Members sought reassurance that members of the board are fully participatory, rather than this being a Local Authority report and questioned the engagement of other partners.  To reassure Members, the Policy and Performance Manager explained that a Gwent group had been formed to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Committee agreed that, as the report was to be presented to Full Council on understood that the report 20th March 2017, the next meeting be moved to 14th March 2017 at 10.00am.