On 12th May, UNISON gave it's formal response to proposals to restructure the County Council. We have now received a response from Roger Latham, the Chief Executive, dated 6th June and this is set out below.
Dear Jill,
Restructuring proposals
I refer to your response to the restructuring proposals that were presented to County Council on the 18 May 2006. Your response raises a number of concerns about the proposals and my comments on those concerns are set out in the following paragraphs:
Chief Officers and Senior Managers have and will continue to keep staff involved and informed about the proposals, recognising that this is importanto staff morale. A number of workshops and briefing events on the structures have been held to ensure that staff are fully involved in the final proposals.
There is still a strong commitment to direct delivery of services as long as the quality, value and efficiency are comparable with other providers and that we are therefore able to demonstrate to the Council Tax payers that they are receiving good value. It is also important, that you recognise the Council is committed to delivering the Government's agenda, which involves greater community engagement and more provision of public services in partnership. The Council is moving towards a community leadership role as well as retaining a strong base of directly delivered services.
The structure for the senior managers has been agreed and was formally signed off by the Chief Executive on 26 May 2006. The report supporting the decision record sets out the changes which have taken place as part of the consultation exercise and the rationale for the decision.
The shortfall in the necessary savings for 2006/7 will be managed through the contingency monies that have been made available, to help with this and other budget reductions. lt is anticipated, therefore, that this shortfall can be met in 2006/7 without further budget reductions.
I note your concerns about the job descriptions for the senior management posts. However, they are generic job descriptions which will be supplemented by individual duties and responsibilities and person specifications before they are finalised. I will keep your concerns under review and will look to reduce any areas lacking clarity. Any additional reward will be matched by clearer and additional accountabilities and job size. All jobs will be independently evaluated by Hay.
The Council has not abandoned equality as a principle and is applying it to get the best available people for the Chief Officer posts. To this end, the Strategic Directors of Children's and Adult's posts have both been advertised nationally and are subject to a competitive appointment process. That process is based entirely on merit and not gender or ethnicity.
Turning to the departmental issues that you have raised, I would make the following comments:
Adult Social Services - this is a very good point and the final structure has been amended to take account of your comment regarding the independence of the Welfare Rights Service.
Resources - I have already addressed the general issue of direct service delivery and privatisation is not currently on the Council's agenda for Resources functions. Elected members are confident that, working together with the Trade Unions and staff, the service can be changed to reduce costs, whilst still meeting the Council's needs.
Human Resources - the duties of the Heads of Service have been revised following the consultation period. The idea of having HRLG collectively responsible for a number of strands may blur accountability and we must bear in mind that HRLG has no decision making powers, it merely advises the Service Director HR. I do not think this would be an appropriate reporting line.
Property - I agree that there are still some boundary issues to be discussed around the service demands such as supply of school places and the property solutions which rest with Strategic Property. lt is intended through the job descriptions and business plans that the lines of responsibility will be clearly defined.
Communities:
Education Client Services: These sit within Children and Young People and not within Communities Department. Whilst Communities will continue to work closely with Education, it has been considered better to keep the trading services separate from the responsibility for policy and finance. The same approach will be applied in due course to the Nottinghamshire Integrated Transport project proposals with Education taking responsibility for the budget for school transport as well as taking decisions regarding policy and changes to service requirements.
Conservation/Country Parks: This is an issue which has given rise to a good deal of comment from within the Department which have welcomed the proposal to better integrate work on Country Parks with the Council's wider countryside agenda which currently sits within the Environment Department. Proposals have been considered at CMB who made a recommendation to me that the Conservation Section, currently within Environment, should be transferred in total into the new Culture Services of the Communities Department where it will sit within an integrated service area with Country Parks and related activities. This, I believe, will ensure that our work on countryside related activities is managed in an integrated manner. There will still be the need for the Conservation Team to work across the organisation, making essential inputs to the development of new strategic projects and continuing to provide advice through to the planning service.
Strategic and Environmental Services: You are right in identifying that there is an option here that could see these additional Property related services move to the Resources Department. However, in the early reports to Council it has been proposed that some further work will be undertaken to examine the best ways of managing trading services provided by the Council for the future and ahead of that Review it is considered better to maintain the services in their current location. This decision would also make the existing task of integrating the other resource services more manageable and could, if necessary, be considered as a second phase.
Highways: The Nottinghamshire Integrated Transport Centre proposals do suggest that Fleet Management in particular could be better provided through this new arrangement and the report to Cabinet in July will make reference to that. In relation to Workshops, whilst there is an important connection here, there are other factors which govern the future location of Workshops and this will require some second phase work to determine the preferred location.
Other comments - I agree that we must ensure workloads are manageable within the new structure. I have already commissioned Hay to do some work on the top level structure and they have provided their commentary and risk analysis taking account of the experience in other local authorities. I have also agreed that we will review the structure within a twelve month period which should also include a review of workloads.
I understand your concerns about the proposed tier by tier approach making it difficult to comment on the structure as a whole. However, it is a pragmatic solution to ensuring that there are sufficient senior managers in post to define the rest of the structure to meet the Council's needs.
I hope, over the next few months, we will be in a position to finalise the rest of the structure so that you will be able to comment on the proposals in more detail. I also trust that we will continue to work constructively together using the enabling process, the vacancy protocol and the redeployment process to minimise the uncertainties the disruption and the number of redundancies required.
Yours sincerely
Roger Latham
Chief Executive
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