To consider a report by the Managing Director, Communities, Partnerships and Projects.
Minutes:
(Councillor B S Chapman, Executive Councillor for Customer Services was in attendance for this item).
With the assistance of a report by the Managing Director, Communities, Partnerships and Projects (a copy of which is appended in the annex to the Minute Book) the Panel considered a range of options for the future location of the District Council’s Call Centre. In so doing, the Panel was informed that the report had been prepared by the Council’s Head of Paid Service and, therefore, did not reflect the views of any Executive Councillor.
By way of introduction, the Managing Director, Communities, Partnerships and Projects drew attention to the key developments which had taken place since the Panel’s previous deliberations on this subject in September 2011. Members were pleased to note that as part of the Making Assets Count Project, the Council had reached a licence agreement to let part of the Civic Suite to another public sector organisation which enabled the Council to meet one of the targets in the Medium Term Plan.
Attention having been drawn to the work which had been undertaken to establish whether there could be any benefits achieved from co-locating the District Council’s Call Centre with the Customer Service Centre, Members were advised of the conclusions which had been reached. However, Members questioned the validity of the comparison and suggested that other co-located facilities might have been found that would have better facilitated this decision. Comment was also made that it was difficult to determine whether savings might be achieved by co-locating services when the option of multi-skilling existing employees had not been included in Section 5.2 of the report. Members were advised that significant savings had already been achieved from combining the management arrangements for the existing facilities.
On the subject of the partnership arrangements which were in operation with the County Council, Members were advised that the District Council was working in partnership to establish a new Countywide network which would be used to support the Call Centre.
Having noted that the retention of the Call Centre facility at Speke House offered the Council significant business continuity resilience, Members endorsed the decision to prioritise the improvement of the Council’s resilience generally. As a professional exercise had established the necessity to have disaster recovery arrangements located in a separate urban area, Members were of the view that this should include improving resilience at Pathfinder House. In this respect, the Panel received an update on the work which was being undertaken to review the existing Business Continuity Strategy which was expected to conclude in August 2012. Councillor T V Rogers undertook to discuss with the Chairman of the Corporate Governance Panel the best way for the Panel to contribute to the review.
At the conclusion of the discussion on this item, the Panel congratulated the Head of Customer Services on the recent achievement of a Customer Services Excellence Award. As the Call Centre currently worked well and there were no apparent advantages to changing the current arrangements, it was
RESOLVED
that the Cabinet be recommended to seek to negotiate a new lease for Speke House for up to 5 years with a break after 3 years.