Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies were received from Mrs M A Rayner and Mr R M Udall.

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Members of the public wishing to take part should notify the Head of Legal and Democratic Services  in writing or by e-mail indicating the nature and content of their proposed participation no later than 9.00am on the working day before the meeting (in this case 22 October 2018).  Enquiries can be made through the telephone number/e-mail address below.

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The Minutes of the Meeting held on 23 July 2018 were agreed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

The Director of Commercial and Commissioning (the Director) provided an overview of the key themes of the Report which were:

• Clarification on what was meant by commissioning
• Details of the Council's Operating Model and the Commissioning process
• Details of the Council's largest contracts
• An update on commissioning issues arising from recent audits considered by the Audit and Governance Committee.

The Panel was reminded that the stages in the commissioning process were:

·       assessment of needs and desired outcomes

·       design of the service, which involved an exploration of the possible alternative models which could meet the desired outcomes

·       sourcing of a provider in line with the recommended delivery model; and

·       the proactive management and review of the contract and the provider to ensure that the performance and savings outcomes were being achieved.

The Council had approximately 1500 contracts with suppliers, with a commercial spend of £494m in 2017/18 which included capital, revenue and pooled spending. The three largest contracts were Worcestershire NHS Health and Care Trust, Ringway Infrastructure Services and Mercia Waste amounting to over £100m between them. It was noted that at the other end of the scale, there were 2-3,000 individual care package contracts.

The Director referred to the recent external audit carried out by Grant Thornton and the management action that had taken place since, to ensure that effective Value for Money (VFM) arrangements were in place. This had included the establishment of a Commercial and Commissioning Board to oversee all of the arrangements including a thorough review of the larger contracts. The Panel was reassured that lessons were being learnt.

The Panel was informed that there was extensive detailed data available on many of the contracts, particularly for the more recent ones and that a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) could be analysed in more depth if the Panel wished.

Main points of discussion

·     A question was asked about the high number of small contracts in place and whether there should be a rationalisation process to improve efficiency. The Director explained that there was a dynamic purchasing system in place and that each contract was competed for on the basis of price. There were also tools to assist with this process, including a system of category management which looked at what the Council wanted to buy and aggregated the spend to ensure that better VFM was achieved.

·     In terms of the rationale for bringing IT Services back in-house, the Director explained that it was a well performing contract, which had benefitted from significant private investment. It had, however, recently been decided there was capability to support this service in-house and that it would be more cost effective to do so. The CMR added that best value was the key factor and that whichever option provided the right outcome for the right price was the best decision to ensure VFM.  It was noted that the IT drop-in service was well received by staff and it was proposed to expand the service to other locations across the County Council.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 232.