Executive Member Report to the Council

6b BLACKPOOL COUNCIL

EXECUTIVE MEMBER REPORT TO THE COUNCIL

Report of the Cabinet Member for: Business Services at the Council meeting held on: 16th June 2010

This report updates the Council on actions within my portfolio that have delivered towards the Goals and Objectives of the Council’s Corporate Plan that will make Blackpool “A great place to visit, an even better place to live”.

Goal 1: Improve Blackpool’s Economic Prosperity – creating local jobs and opportunities for local people

Objective 6:Improve infrastructure and promote sustainable transport and increase accessibility The Council's tramway maintenance section is undertaking a tram pole replacement scheme as part of the tramway infrastructure upgrade/renewal work programme. The works are being undertaken between Thornton Gate and Fleetwood ferry. Completion of the scheme will be in June/ early July 2010 and include the replacement of the tramway overhead electric cable with these works being undertaken by Blackpool Transport.

Goal 2: Develop a Safe, Clean and Pleasant Place to Live, Work and Visit

Objective 3: Create a cleaner and greener Blackpool The revolutionary Thornton Waste Plant facility opened this month that will divert over 80 per cent of their household rubbish from landfill.

A ribbon was cut as the first load of black-bin waste arrived at Thornton Waste Recovery Park, near Blackpool, a landmark for Lancashire County Council and Blackpool Council's commitment to achieve new Government targets to recover waste and radically reduce landfill rates.

The facility has created 160 jobs for local people and brings together two state-of-the-art waste treatment technologies used at only one other location in the world.

The facility at Thornton is one of two waste processing facilities being developed by Global Renewables Lancashire Limited (GRLL) to recover and process municipal waste over the next 25 years under a £2bn contract, which remains one of the largest investments of its kind in the UK.

Goal 3: Improve Skill Levels and Educational Achievement

Objective 1: Improve educational achievement and raise the aspirations of all Blackpool’s children and young people Skills for Life training has been made available to teaching Assistants to further skill them so that they can provide increased support to children and young people. Recruitment processes in schools are being strengthened by widening the talent search by participating in the Department for Children, Schools and Families School Recruitment Service pilot scheme. 6b

Objective 2: Improve basic literacy and Numeracy across the population The Human Resources and Organisational Development team continues to support Skills for Life aimed at improving basic skills through engaging with employers and to date have supported 402 employees to receive a Level 2 accreditation.

Objective 3: Foster a workforce with the vocational skills to meet the needs of Blackpool’s economy The Building Cleaning Section is expanding their training facility. A new purpose built training centre is currently being constructed to enable the service to provide Healthcare clinical cleaning training for internal and external clients. The qualification gained is the BICS Healthcare Proficiency certificate.

They also work with Children, Adult and Family Services Directorate to offer the Food safety in catering certificate for anyone who wants to work in food preparation and must have before they start work.

The Building Cleaning Section is working in partnership with Blackpool and the Fylde College and the local job centres to train locally unemployed people to enable them to get back into work. They also offer this training to local schools, internal staff and external clients.

Goal 4: Improve the Health and Well-Being of the Population

Objective 2: Safeguard our children and adults at risk of harm A robust approach to safeguarding within recruitment and training has been taken and this has been recognised by Ofsted and the Human Resources and Organisational Development team has in place an action plan to implement the new Vetting and Barring arrangements, which come into force in July 2010.

Objective 3: Encourage healthy lifestyles and emotional wellbeing across the whole population Another successful employee health event was held in a high school in March 2010. A joint health event for Blackpool Council and NHS Blackpool employees is being held this month. This event ties in with Men’s Health Week, which we are in the middle of now and the focus is on physical activity. The venue for the event is Blackpool Sports Centre when tours of the gymnasium, facilities and physical activities will be available. Health checks and health information will also be available.

A new page on the intranet has been developed entitled “Occupational health and employee well being”. Information regarding health topics and services available to employees is available through this site.

A “Drop-in Stop Smoking Clinic” has commenced at Progress House once a week for employees and The Mindful Employer Charter was launched in May to tie in with MIND week and the new intranet site. Blackpool Council has agreed to undergo the “Healthy workplace accreditation scheme” being run by NHS Blackpool.

Objective 5: Improve sexual health and avoid teenage pregnancy Working with Teenage Pregnancy partnership, online training has been developed and rolled out on a multi agency basis and face-to-face courses are also supported and are included in our Integrated working learning pathway programme. 6b

Goal 5: Ensure Blackpool Council is an efficient and high performing organisation

Objective 1: Be an effective community leader The new town wide Disability Partnership has agreed to work together with Wyre Council, and other key partners to establish an annual Disability Independence Day on Saturday 4th September in Blackpool Sports Centre.

Objective 2: Provide value for money through quality, citizen focussed and accessible services During the summer, the Council will be conducting an Equality Audit of street scene services. Following the successful pilot exercise within the Customer First service, this process involves utilising volunteers from community equality groups to identify issues and cost effective improvements to help make Council services accessible to all.

Council Tax in year collection stood at 94.31% at the end of the financial year, which is slightly below the figure for the previous year, but is in part attributable to the introduction of more flexible payment arrangements to help customers through the recession. Over £2 million of previous years’ arrears have also been collected. Business Rate collection stood at 95% at year-end, which is 2% lower than at the same time in the previous year. This is in part due to the help offered within the recession response action plan and the Business Rates Deferral Scheme. The time taken to process benefits claims and changes of circumstance is 15 days. In those cases where we have direct contact with the customer and not involving Job Centre Plus, the figure is less than eight days. There has been an increase of over 17% in the Benefits caseload compared to February 2008, one of the highest increases in the Northwest. The percentage of households claiming is 37% - the highest proportion within the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities benchmarking group. Work has now commenced on the project to replace the Revenues and Benefits computer system. Training, data mapping and interface design are all currently underway with the view to going live in October this year.

Since the last Council meeting, the Democratic Services Unit has been supporting the running of the General Election. Over 300 members of staff from across the Council have worked on the elections. The turnout was 62% in Blackpool North and Cleveleys and 56% for Blackpool South. Out of over 35,000 postal votes issued covering both constituencies, 77% were returned. My personal thanks go to all staff who worked on the election.

The Internal Audit team will deliver a programme of value for money reviews in 2010/11. The programme will follow-up recommendations from work carried out by the Performance Review Team, continue collaborative work with Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and undertake new value for money studies including Insurances, Asset Disposal and Recycling, Mail Arrangements and Postage Costs and Land/Property Sales and Acquisitions.

The Council has now introduced an Electronic Tendering System for corporate contracts. This provides a number of benefits including reduction in the cost of the tendering process and increased transparency by way of audit trail.

The Council continues to take a lead role in the Regional Efficiency and Improvement Partnership (RIEP) helping to drive the adoption of best practice and the harmonisation of procurement process and documentation across the region. The work of this group has already gained national recognition. 6b A key achievement has been the introduction of a regional Internet supplier registration/ Portal (“the chest”), which allows equal and easy access to tendering opportunities to all sectors, including Small and Medium Enterprises and Social Enterprises. This ‘supplier portal’ provides a single point of entry for suppliers and a common E-Tendering platform. It is now being rolled out across the North West’s 46 Councils following Blackpool’s early adoption.

The Council has also developed a Register of Contracts and a Contract Management system which continues to expand and attract wider interest in the region. Discussions are taking place to adapt this system for roll out across the North West.

Blackpool is one of the first Councils in the country to procure energy using ‘flexible’ commodity’ buying techniques, which have resulted in considerable cost savings to the Authority.

Blackpool’s bid to become a “Tell Us Once” early adopter has been successful. This means that the Council will be able to build on its existing “Tell Us Once” service by enabling Central Government services such as the Information and Passport Service, DVLA and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Collections to be informed automatically when births or deaths are reported in Blackpool. A project team from Customer First will begin implementing the process in partnership with the Department for Works and Pensions in the next few months. It is likely that the new service will go live in July.

ICT Services has started an open dialogue with services to understand their needs and requirements for a “fit for purpose” ICT service. This will help to form the basis for a Corporate ICT Strategy that will be provide a clear and structured approach to maximising the effectiveness of ICT within the Council and the Town. ICT Services has also supported the development and the launch of the Council’s new Intranet site.

Working with colleagues from the Cycle Demonstration Town team, Customer First and Leisure Services will be taking calls for the new “Hire A Bike” service. Customers will be able to hire bikes at various locations throughout the town and bookings will be taken from 8am until 10pm.

The Building Cleaning Section is looking at their operational activities to see whether they can offer daytime cleaning by mobile teams. The advantage of this is that the Council buildings will have a day time cleaning presence and will be able to offer a much more flexible service

Property Services currently has 30 projects running concurrently, from small refurbishments within schools, to project design for private clients. Examples of this work are Holy Family School where we have designed a full re-wire for the school including the fire and security alarms.

Corporate Print Services has again been officially recognised for its professionalism and creativity by the Association of Print and Communication Managers whose annual conference and awards ceremony was held in Blackpool. The team took three of the ten awards. They were the awards for the Best in House Promotion Piece, the Best use of Digital Photography and the award for the Best Creative Graphic Design. Daryl Brown was also recognised as the runner up in the Trainee of the Year category.

Objective 3: Develop our workforce and be recognised as a leading employer Now that the Equality Bill has passed into UK law, the Council is in the advanced stages of developing its’ Single Equality Scheme. The Scheme will provide an overall strategic framework for our equality and diversity responsibilities as both an employer and key public service provider over the next three years. 6b

The centralisation of Employee Development across the Council has begun and this will maximise learning opportunities for all employees. Work has commenced on the Corporate employee development programme for 2010/ 2011. This will include bespoke support for employees on pay protection.

Recruitment and retention in social care is good, unlike the National picture, due to excellent learning and development programmes and a grow your own social work programme and the Council has just been short listed for an Municipal Journal Award in the People and Workforce Development category

In terms of Health and Safety, guidance notes were issued on the recently introduced medical ‘Fit-Note’ that now replaces the Sick-Note. In addition, guidance was also provided about the health and safety role in Pre Qualification Questionnaires when tendering work. The team has reviewed and re-issued three Fire Safety Arrangements, Fire Risk Assessment, Fire Safety and Emergency Evacuation

Building Services has been appointed as Principal Contractor at Kincraig Primary School for a £300,000 refurbishment project including infrastructure for the first 4 D classroom in Blackpool. The work will be completed during the summer months ready for the new intake of children in September.

Thank you Mr Mayor, I will be pleased to invite any questions or comments from Councillors in relation to the Business Services portfolio.