Agenda item
Council Restructure Update
Minutes:
6.1 The Chair welcomed Tim Shields the Chief Executive from London Borough of Hackney.
6.2 The Commission invited the Chief Executive to provide an update on the progress of the Council’s restructure and implementation of joint working across services.
6.3 The Commission received a verbal update. The main points from the update were:
6.3.1 The Chief Executive issued the restructure on 27th November 2015. The restructure moved to implementation in December 2015. This is the first restructure since 2010.
6.3.2 The restructure deleted 5 director posts and reduced the top tier of senior management to 3.
6.3.3 The restructure also recommended a reduction to the 2nd tier of management from 15 posts down to 8 posts.
6.3.4 The organisation now has a corporate management team of four 1st tier management including the Chief Executive and 21 2nd tier management.
6.3.5 The new directorates have been completed and the new structure is in place. All group director appointment made except for the post of Children, Adults & Community Health. There is currently an interim Group Director in place and the recruitment is expected to be completed by December 2016.
6.3.6 In the 2nd tier the last director post for adult social care was appointed and the officer joined the organisation this week.
6.3.7 The remaining part of the restructure to conclude is the posts earmarked for deletion. The Director of Procurement post is scheduled to be deleted in April 2017.
6.3.8 There are 2 posts within the Chief Executive Directorate that are earmarked for deletion in March 2017. The Assistant Director of Human Resources and Assistant Chief Executive. These posts are being reviewed and will be completed by March 2017.
6.3.9 The restructure has been completed except for the post mentioned in the above points.
6.3.10 In response to the success of the restructure. The Chief Executive pointed out the organisation has attracted new people bring new energy, created joint working across directorates and incorporated Hackney Homes back into the organisation under the Neighbourhoods and Housing directorate.
6.3.11 The Council is now moving forward with big pieces of cross cutting work like the enforcement review and this has progressed to the stage of issuing a delegated powers report. There will also be changes in relation to regeneration and public health within the organisation.
6.3.12 In terms of administration support to senior management, this was restricted too. This has been reduced from 33 posts to 14 posts. The team is bedding in with 1/2 posts pending recruitment.
6.4 Discussion, Questions and Answers
(i) In response to Members enquiry about how the smaller senior management structure fits with an expanded Cabinet structure.
The Chief Executive explained the political structure for the Council changed over the summer (expansion of Cabinet Members and Advisors). This has added complexity and a challenge to how they work – some Group Directors are supporting 3 Cabinet Members and in some instances a Cabinet Advisor too. In response to this the officers are using a mix of 221 or 321 meetings and in some cases setting up Boards. The meetings / Boards are used to cover cross cutting issues like sustainability/ health/public realm. An example of this is a new Economic and Community Development Board has been set up. This Board has 2 Cabinet Members and the Mayor. The move has been towards looking at cross cutting issues rather than individual pieces of work.
(ii) Members queried how officers were responding to the new Mayor’s priorities. Members assumed the changes had resulted in a cost to the organisation. Members enquired if the Council has ceased some activities previously carried out? In addition Members asked for tangible examples that demonstrated the new co-ordinated way of working for the organisation.
The Chief Executive explained the challenge for all parties has been working at a different level. All management teams need to be more strategic and less operational. The new roles bring more accountability and responsibility and are slowly bedding in.
For the organisation this means officers are working harder, having to work longer hours and much smarter. The changes to the support structure have provided staff with the right skills to enable mangers to use technology more to aid a manager’s daily work. Managers are doing more self-maintenance which requires them to stay on top of emails, respond quicker and use performance management information more. There will be a number of processes that require change and the organisation will be reviewing processes to remove those that are not efficient or effective.
The negatives have been having to respond to an unforeseen change (that happened over the summer) with a reduced workforce which put pressure on the organisation.
Tangible examples of the new joint working arrangements are the enforcement review and the creation of a growth team. The Growth team has the planning and regeneration team working together on the Employment and Opportunities cross cutting work programme. The new support structure for the senior management team is a demonstration of the new working arrangements. The whole support team can view all diaries and can pick up work across the team, so if an officer is off sick the work can be picked up.
The positives from the restructure have been new energy, new ways of working – joined up working, stopping unproductive processes and a new structure e.g. the enforcement structure which has removed inefficiencies. The organisation is using information differently and does not produce multi levels of information. Instead a smaller number of briefings are produced that can be used in different forums by officers.
It was pointed out the organisation has experienced changes in staffing levels through voluntary redundancies and management. Therefore the organisation is much smaller and leaner.
(iii) Members enquired if the financial savings from the Council restructure have been achieved.
The Chief Executive informed the Commission the new structure proposed savings of £1.3million through the restructure of the top 2 tiers of management and their support staff. It was confirmed by March 2017 all the proposed savings from the restructured would have been delivered.
(iv) Members enquired about the organisation’s limit in relation to the reduction of staff and the expectations from officers with reduced resources.
The Chief Executive advised the limit for an organisation is reached when it starts to see a rise in sickness, poor performance and response rates from officers. Currently this organisation is still seeing a largely responsive workforce and the organisation is not showing these signs at the moment. The most challenging area for the organisation is housing services. Officers are running day to day operations and carrying out a service transformation simultaneously. In this instance a transformation team has been created to support the service with the transformation changes.
(v) Members commented the new structure appeared to have a heavy reliance on good joint projects. Members requested for an update on these in 6 months to review their progress. Members suggested seeing a report about the areas the Chief Executive uses to monitor the health of the organisation.
The Chief Executive informed the Commission he monitors and regularly reviews the organisations: sickness rates, staff turnover, stress related illnesses and would look for signs of poor performance and slower response times from officers.
The biggest pieces of work over the next 6 months for the organisation will be the enforcement review, public realm review and the bedding in of the new support staff arrangements.
One of the key comments from residents in the ‘Hackney a Place for Everyone’ consultation was scepticism about the economic growth benefiting local people. In relation to the economic regeneration work for town centres and linking the jobs to local economic growth. The Council has refocused the team’s priorities on ensuring the local growth benefits local people.
Members asked for an update on the cross cutting projects and information about how jobs for local people are being measured.
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ACTION |
Overview and Scrutiny Officer to schedule in the work programme an update on the cross cutting projects and information about how jobs for local people are being measured in the G&R work programme. |
Supporting documents:
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