Agenda item

6.1  Cllr Taylor revisited the objectives of this review which considered a thematic area (e.g. health, housing, mental health) in order to understand the extent to which the local authority and national authorities are working together.

Questions and discussion

6.2  Members commented that some of the answers are vague and it is not clear what additional work would be done. For example the response to recommendation four just describes what is already being delivered.

Cllr Taylor accepted this point but asked what more we could do, as the Council was not mandated to deliver employment support and any savings from efforts would positively impact the Department for Work and Pension’s budget rather than the Council’s.

6.3  Members reminded the Commission that the idea was to look at different ways of working for example looking at early intervention and how we could work with other agencies, for example health services and DWP. The Executive response could have at least set out what we wanted to do even if we could not say commit to it. The response should have been setting the agenda for the future as well as focusing on change management. 

Ian Williams referred to the new approach to oversight of economic development and community development as a way that this work could be progressed. A culture change programme, Hackney a Change for Everyone has also been launched to prepare the workforce to meet the challenges the Council would be facing in the next few years.

6.4  Given Hackney’s high rate of mental health cases, Members asked what collaboration was going on between the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and the Health and Wellbeing Board.

Ian Williams noted that collaboration between the Council and City and Hackney CCG worked well. There would be close working on the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) as part of Hackney’s Health and Wellbeing devolution pilot, although STP areas did not align with other administrative geographies.

6.5  As a follow up Members asked if the sole focus of the pilot was on commissioning.

The response was that the pilot was also about working together on assets management. However government needed to hold onto NHS assets to calibrate health budget deficits.

6.6  Members asked if individuals were to be further empowered to fully support clients, and if so, what oversight there would be of this new approach, and whether this was something that could be measured. 

Ian Williams responded that frontline workers were already very empowered, much more so than the private sector, for example.

6.7  The Vice Chair reminded Members that the Chief Executive would be attending the next Commission meeting and would be asked how the new corporate structure would facilitate joint up working. She asked if the section from Ways into Work could be strengthened without extending the process for sign off at full Council. Members were keen to take forward the recommendation that this was presented to senior management team and asked if this could be actioned via the Overview and Scrutiny Team.

6.8  Members asked if one of the reasons the response was weak was because of resource implications.

Cllr Taylor did not think this was the reason. It was more that this was not a straightforward report. Addressing the issues raised in the report will require cultural change, budget change and governance change and these issues cannot be resolved in a single response. The themes will continue to be revisited as we look at public service as a whole, look at how we work more closely together across boundaries.