Agenda and minutes

County Councillor D. Blakebrough declared a personal, non-prejudicial interest pursuant to the Members’ Code of Conduct in respect of agenda item 5 – ICT in Schools Project Update, as she is a governor of Monmouth Comprehensive School.

County Councillor D.L.S. Dovey declared a personal, non-prejudicial interest pursuant to the Members’ Code of Conduct in respect of agenda item 5 – ICT in Schools Project Update, as he is a governor of Chepstow Comprehensive School and a former Chair of Governors at Mounton House School.

County Councillor P. Pavia declared a personal, non-prejudicial interest pursuant to the Members’ Code of Conduct in respect of agenda item 5 – ICT in Schools Project Update, as he is a governor of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School.

County Councillor V. Smith declared a personal, non-prejudicial interest pursuant to the Members’ Code of Conduct in respect of agenda item 5 – ICT in Schools Project Update, as she is a governor of Usk Primary School and has grandchildren attending Goytre Fawr Primary School.

There were no members of the public present.

The minutes of the Economy and Development Select Committee meeting dated 13^th June 2017 were confirmed and signed by the Chair.

Context:

To provide a progress update on the investment programme for ICT in schools. This programme involved the upgrade and renewal of the ICT infrastructure in schools, providing a common platform and standard in line with Welsh Government and 21^st Century Schools’ aspirations.

Key Issues:

The investment programme is predicted to finish on time, within budget and to the required standard and specification. It is expected that all work will be fully completed over the summer period, with a post project review in September 2017 to address any residual issues. Schools are already reporting an overall increase in performance of the infrastructure upgrade and the level of technician support within the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Member Scrutiny:

·         With regard to moving schools to the Shared Resource Service (SRS) Infrastructure, this is a dedicated education infrastructure so it is not shared with the corporate infrastructure.

·         All of the machines within the schools are connected to this programme providing access to internet sources, printing windows devices and I pads, for example. If a school requests something new, then this is looked at with a view to providing it to all schools, i.e., doing it once for all schools.

·         Schools have the option to use the Cloud and some are doing this via the Hwb platform and google apps. Schools are being urged to use the Hwb, as it is a platform for Wales.

·         A centralised network is being provided in which schools can connect their devices to. Machines are virus protected and are up to date.

·         Capacity is regularly monitored and increased when required. More capacity is now available. This is funded and provided separately from the corporate network.

·         Under the SLA arrangement there are 4 levels, namely, Comprehensive and the Group A, B & C primary schools.

·         It is paramount that each school maintains the level of equipment to ensure that the service being provided by the SRS can be sustainable. Schools will be required to update their equipment on a routine basis. An audit will be undertaken every year and SRS will rate equipment accordingly.  This will help schools to manage their ICT budgets.

·         The £885,000 had been costed out.  A large part of the budget went on employing the four technicians to undertake the work required and upgrading the broadband lines to 100mb.  Welsh Government has looked at what has been done with regard to increasing broadband lines to 100mb and is looking to fund 100mb provision across all schools in Wales.

·         In response to a question raised regarding bandwidth and whether the system was adequate to support the present and future infrastructure, service provider constraints and whether capacity could be sold back to the open market, it was noted that officers would investigate the matter regarding selling back capacity. Bandwidth will be monitored with a view to ensuring that adequate capacity was available. The infrastructure itself is fully resilient and will create minimal disruption to schools should a server fail. New storage has been purchased and opportunities to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Context:

To scrutinise the 2016/17 performance information under the remit of the Economy and Development Select Committee. This includes:

·                Reporting back on how well the Authority performed against the objectives which the previous Council set for 2016/17.

·                Information on how the Authority performed against a range of nationally set measures used by all councils in Wales.

Key Issues:

The Council currently has an established performance framework, this is the way in which the Authority translates its vision - building sustainable and resilient communities - into action and ensures that everyone is pulling in the same direction to deliver real and tangible outcomes. 

Over the coming years the shape of public services in Wales is likely to change significantly influenced by two very significant pieces of Welsh legislation, The Well-being of Future Generations Act and The Social Services and Well-being Act, as well as financial pressures, demographic changes, changes in customer needs and expectations and regulatory and policy changes. Services need to continue to think more about the long-term, work better with people and communities, look to prevent problems before they arise and take a more joined-up approach.

The Council has recently completed two substantial assessments of need as a result of this legislation. This information has provided a much deeper evidence base of well-being in the County and, as required by the Future Generations Act, this has been used to produce the Council’s well-being objectives and statement 2017.

The shift in focus in the well-being objectives means that activities will need to be focused on longer term challenges at a community level rather than some of the internal process issues and outputs that could sometimes be found in its predecessor, The Improvement Plan. When dealing with more complex societal challenges it will take longer for measurable change to come about and longer still to be able to evidence those changes in a meaningful way. In the short-term there will continue to be milestones that can be used to track the Authority’s improvement journey. This will be supported by a range of performance reports select committee can request as part of its work programme and the structure of performance reports received by committee will be revised to reflect this emphasis.

Appendix 2 of the report sets out performance achieved in 2016/17 against the actions and performance measures approved by Council in May 2016 as part of its Improvement Plan. As well as being presented to select committees, the objectives will be included alongside a further evaluation of performance in 2016/17 that will be reported to Council and published by October 2017. The Welsh Government has recently consulted on plans to repeal the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2009 which means this is likely to be the final plan and report in this format. 

Appendix 3 of the report sets out further key performance indicators from the national set that are under the committee’s remit. Benchmarking data compared to other Council’s in Wales will be published in September 2017.

Activity that contributes to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Context:

A ‘planned approach’ to Scrutiny Forward Work Programming is required in order to maximise the effectiveness and added value of scrutiny activity, ensuring focus upon topics of the highest priority for the Council and those which reflect the public interest.

Key Issues:

Work programme discussion meetings have taken place between the new Chair of the Select Committee and the former chair. Chief Officers provided an overview of the Enterprise Directorate at the June 2017 Select Committee meeting, highlighting the following topics for consideration for future scrutiny:

·         Broadband, Infrastructure and connectivity.

·         Employability Grant.

·         Rural Development Programme Update.

·         Agri Urban Update.

·         Impact of the Severn Bridge Toll Reduction ~ South East Monmouthshire Future Economies Analysis.

·         Rights of Way Improvement Plan ~ suggested joint scrutiny with Strong Communities Select Committee.

·         Affordable Housing.

·         Cardiff Capital Region City Deal.

·         Local Development Plan.

·         Tourism and the Destination Management Plan.

·         Events Strategy and return on investment.

·         Cycling and Walking Product.

·         Outdoor Education Review.

·         Alternative Service Delivery Model.

·         Health and well-being goals (leisure provision, agreements with schools).

Member Scrutiny:

Having considered the report the following points were noted.  Also, the following topics were identified by Select Committee Members for scrutiny:

·         In addition to the topics outlined in the report it was agreed that an additional three or four topics should be agreed by the Select Committee to be added to the topics already identified.

·         Some of the topics identified could potentially be merged and considered as one topic.

·         In response to a Select Committee Member’s question regarding bringing in academic opinion into a select committee meeting, it was noted that this would depend on the topic.  The Scrutiny Manager would extend an invitation to the relevant people / organisation to attend such a meeting.

·         Planning sessions can be arranged for Members to prepare and identify questions in advance of meetings with representatives from organisations that have been invited to attend a select committee meeting. This will depend on the topic.

·         Cross border issues should be added to the work programme with a view to working with local authorities that border Monmouthshire to scrutinise issues that affect all authorities.

·         Outside of the select committee meetings members could meet with the public and talk about specific issues that are relevant to local people.

·         The Future Monmouthshire agenda needs to be added to the work programme as an item for scrutiny.  In time, topics such as affordable housing, could be added to an overarching theme that is Future Monmouthshire. Additional topics could also be considered under this overarching theme in which the Select Committee could scrutinise and make a difference.

·         It was noted that Business Improvement for small businesses had been scrutinised by the Economy and Development Select Committee from the previous administration.  The Scrutiny Manager considered that it might be useful for the Select Committee to have sight of this document and she would email it to Members for context.

·         The following topics were suggested to be added to the Work Programme:

-       Impact of the Severn Bridge tolls.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

We noted the list of actions arising from the previous meeting.

We resolved to receive and note the Economy and Development Select Committee Forward Work Programme.

We resolved to receive and note the Council and Cabinet Business Forward Plan.

Thursday 7^th September 2017 at 10.00am.

The next meeting of the Economy and Development Select Committee will be held on Thursday 7^th September 2017 at 10.00am.