Agenda item

The Management Committee considered a joint report of the Consortium Secretary and the Consortium Treasurer on the final draft of the Programme Initiation Document (PID) which set out the scope, approach and delivery plan for the implementation of the ESPO Change Programme, for approval, and presented an appraisal from the Legal and Governance Workstream that examined alternative legal structures for ESPO and sought approval for its recommendations therein. A copy of the report, marked ‘C’, is filed with these minutes.

Arising from discussion, the following points were noted:

i)        Whilst a budget had been set aside of £400,000 for implementation of ESPO’s Change Programme, to date all work had been undertaken by officers within the Consortium Authorities and no budget spend had been required. Where possible this would continue, although there could be instances where use of external resources would be required;

ii)      A Programme Manager had been appointed on an interim basis to launch the Change Programme but it was felt the Workstream Leads were now making good progress within their allocated areas and so the position was no longer required on a more permanent basis, though project support would still be provided as necessary;

iii)    Both the Consortium Secretary and Consortium Treasurer were happy with the management capacity that had been put in place by the Interim Director in order to be able to deliver the objectives of the Change Programme;

iv)    In future, it was considered that the monthly Change Management Progress Reports issued to members should include more detailed updates on the delivery of products, timescales and costs including, for example, progress being made in the forming of both a new partnership agreement and a new constitution;

v)      With reference to the contents of the Programme Initiation Document (attached as Appendix 1 to the report) members requested that the following specific amendments should be made:

·        On page 6, bullet point 3, the Category Management Approach should only apply to agreed categories rather than every category and so the explanatory wording should be deleted and replaced with ‘A common framework for implementing joint procurement of agreed categories of spend, drawing on the lessons learnt from the HR category pilot.”

·        On page 17, for Risk Number 034 the residual score should be amended and further explanatory text provided;

·        On page 21, for both 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 within Quality Assurance a “sense check” should also be undertaken by an external insurance firm;

·        On page 22, for both 9.24 and 9.25 within Quality Assurance, Consortium Authorities’ Heads of Procurements should also be included.

vi)    It was considered that in order to allow for a period of stability for the Consortium, the revised joint committee model (as detailed in Appendix 3 to the report) should be adopted, noting that the Legal and Governance Workstream Group would continue to meet every six months to keep the alternative corporate model under review and that a ‘light touch’ review should be undertaken in 18 months before a fuller review after a period of 3 years;

vii)  The proposal (contained in Appendix 3) for a reduction in the size of the Management Committee from 21 to 14 was accepted although it was considered that the suggested requirement that one of the designated Councillors from each Consortium Authority should be drawn from each Authority’s Executive could be restrictive and so should be removed.

RESOLVED:

a)           That the Programme Initiation Document for the ESPO Change Programme (attached as Appendix 1 to this report) be approved, subject to inclusion of the minor revisions requested above;

b)           That the outcome of the review of alternative legal structures for ESPO by the Legal and Governance Workstream (attached as Appendix 2 to this report) be noted;

c)            That the recommendations from the Business Strategy Review to request each Member Authority to identify two Councillors (who may or may not be from its Executive) to become members of the revised ESPO Management Committee from 4 March 2012 be approved;

d)           That consequently a revised Joint Committee governance model for ESPO [attached as Appendix 3 to this report) be approved, subject to a light touch review in 18 months followed by a fuller review after a period of three years;

e)           That the recruitment of a new Director of ESPO be approved, in order to continue the delivery of this programme of step change, through the establishment of an Appointment Subcommittee;

f)              That consequently each Member Authority be requested to identify one Councillor to serve on the Appointment Subcommittee.