Agenda and minutes

There were no apologies.

County Councillor P. Farley made a personal, non-prejudicial interest as one of the two elected members who attend the Monmouthshire CAB board meetings on behalf of the council.

Special Meeting 17^th May 2016.

The minutes of the Special Meeting of the Adults Select Committee held on 17^th May 2016 were agreed and signed as an accurate record and signed by the Chairman.

We welcomed Shirley Lightfoot and Darren Williams from Citizens Advice Bureau who presented their report to the Committee.

Citizens Advice Service

•       Nationally the service comprises of 316 local organisations delivering services across 2,600 locations, by telephone, web chat and face to face.

•       There is a consumer service, Pensionwise and Witness Service functions.

•       7000 staff (6500 in the network) and 21,600 volunteers.

•       Over 2.5 million clients are dealt with, directly helping with 6.2 million advice issues.

•       Four out of five clients state that the advice given improved their lives, including reducing stress and improving finances

Merged Service

•       The three offices in Abergavenny, Caldicot and Chepstow merged in September 2013 and commenced provision in Monmouth in July 2015.

•       There are a total of 9 paid staff and approximately 82 volunteers with a Trustee Board with 8 members who are also volunteers.

•       Along with Shirley Lightfoot, there is an office manager and 2 advice services manager, one north and one south, to manage the service with the other staff delivering the projects for specialist advice.

•       The specialist service includes in depth advice and support with applications for benefits, appeals against refusal and overpayments.  

Funding

•       The annual budget set for 2016/17 allows for income of approximately £180,000 with expenditure at around £195,000.

•       CAB are contracted to Monmouthshire County Council to provide advice services across the county for which we receive £57,000.

•       Each of the Town Councils give a grant and income is also gained from the community councils.

•       Payments are also made by Citizens Advice Cymru for the provision of the BABL project the funding for which comes from Welsh government.

•       Any remaining income comes from donations and fundraising.

Service Delivery

•       Services are provided at 4 sites across the county in Abergavenny, Caldicot, Chepstow and Monmouth.

•       Offices are open 4 days a week and the service is delivered 5 days a week in the north and the south of the county.

•       There is also a telephone advice service with access to appointments on tel. no. 03444 77 20 20 from 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday through Adviceline the Wales wide service.

•       Specialist advice through the Better Advice Better Lives project and the Frontline Advice project is available at main sites and at some outreach locations by appointment.

Statistical Information

•       In the financial year 2015/2016 the service saw a total of 2,747 unique clients.

            Total no of issues                    6,391

            Benefits                                   2,173

            Debt                                        1,389

            Housing                                   400

            Employment                           462

            Relationships & family            453

Outreach Locations

•       The BABL project operates outreach at the Adult Community Education centre in Abergavenny on Tuesday afternoons.

•       The BABH project operates outreach at Trellech doctor’s surgery and Chepstow Hospital.

•       They currently operate generalist advice from Usk and Wyesham (by appointment) for one half day a week each.

Training and Skills

•       All staff and volunteers are trained to generalist advice standard and receive regular up-dates on issues like benefits and changes  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Context:

We received a report from the CYP Finance Manager in order to consider the guidance for Scrutiny The purpose of this report is to provide Members with information on the forecast revenue outturn position of the Authority at the end of reporting period 4 which represents the financial outturn position for the 2015/16 financial year.

Key Issues:

This report is also to be considered by all Select Committees as part of their responsibility to,

 assess whether effective budget monitoring is taking place,

 monitor the extent to which budgets are spent in accordance with agreed budget and policy framework.

 Challenge the reasonableness of projected over or underspends, and

 monitor the achievement of predicted efficiency gains or progress in relation to savings proposals.

The Commissioner recognises that challenging financial times will present difficult decisions for Councils as to how to provide quality locally accessible services to communities and has produced guidance for local government scrutineers to assist them in their consideration of key decisions and policy affecting older people. The guidance advocates the need for careful consideration of the implications of decisions in order to protect society’s most vulnerable people.

The guidance provides a useful outline for scrutineers in terms of how to apply the principles of the ‘Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessments’ to decisions and policy affecting older people, given the increasing ageing population.

Scrutiny Members may wish to consider how they can embed such principles into their scrutiny approach; possibly through developing a questioning strategy to be applied to scrutiny of relevant subjects, or through considering the robustness of ‘Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessments’ together with the validity of evidence provided in such assessments to support decision-making.

Member Scrutiny:

A Member asked what is the commitment against the redundancy reserve for this year and are we paying statutory or enhanced redundancy payments. The finance Manager did not have the information to hand but assured the Committee that he would return with answers.

It was also asked regarding children’s legal costs and exploring fixed rates with Counsel, the Chair acknowledged this had been asked previously and stressed the importance of following this up. The Finance Manager confirmed that he would also look into to this suggestion and return to Committee with an update.

Recommendations proposed to Cabinet:

That Members consider a net revenue outturn underspend of £676,000, an improvement of £878,000 on quarter 3 outturn predictions.

Members consider a capital outturn spend of £18.3m against a revised budget of £18.8million, after proposed slippage of £43.7 million, resulting in a net underspend of £508k, of which circa £433k is available for recycling onto other projects/priorities which it is recommended will be held pending review of the additional pressures.

Consider and approve the £43.7m capital slippage recommended, paying attention to those schemes included in paragraph 3.5.4 where slippage has been requested by the service manager but is not being recommended to slip (£170k), and notes the significant level of slippage required at outturn not manifest earlier in the year highlighting  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Head of Officer for Social Care discussed recent Member Seminars, giving special praise to the Dementia Training, commenting on the powerful presentation.

The Chief Officer thanked Members as she felt their comments gave officers focus for action plans and helped drive issues forward.

Members expressed disappointment at the number of members who did not attend, as they felt the seminars were a valuable tool.

A Member suggested a day of mini presentations, giving edited highlights of the subject matter, leaving Members to revisit in more detail if they wished.

The Head of Officer for Social Care updated the Committee on the new duty of care, since April 2016 for our prison population. And it was felt that a visit to Usk Prison would be useful to provide relevant scrutiny.

It was suggested that, working with our partners in the prison service, that the committee visit the Prison late 2016/early 2017 and return to the Chamber for scrutiny.

A member of the committee was asked by a non-committee member to look at services for stroke sufferers. The Chair welcomed this and felt it was important to invite the Stroke Association and Leisure Services to a future meeting for a briefing. It was suggested that the briefing was titled ‘Life after stroke’ and focused on post stroke care and support.

We received the future work programme for Adults Select Committee.

12^th July 2016 at 10am.