A maximum of 15 minutes will be allocated to public questions submitted in writing to Democratic Services (democratic.services@trafford.gov.uk) by 4 p.m. on the working day prior to the meeting. Questions must be relevant to items appearing on the agenda and will be submitted at the meeting in the order in which they were received.

No questions were received.

Members to give notice of any interest and the nature of that interest relating to any item on the agenda in accordance with the adopted Code of Conduct.

No additional interest were declared.

To receive a report of the Committee Task and Finish Group.

The Chair gave a brief introduction of the report to the Committee. He went over the details, the type of contract, and the main contract details. The Chair thanked the Members who had been involved in the task and finish group for their input. The Chair then gave a short summary of the approach that the group had taken starting with the first meeting in June 2018 and culminating in the last group meeting held on the 22 January to review the report and discuss recommendations.  The Committee were informed that the group had met with a number of stakeholders including Trafford Officers, Amey Senior Management, and Trade Union Representatives. The report summarised the information that had been gathered from all of these meetings. The Chair stated that the group had been made aware of poor performance across a number of areas and poor morale amongst the staff across all services covered by the Contract.

Following the introduction by the Chair Members were given the opportunity to raise questions and put forward their views on the report and its recommendations. One Member stated that they that they could not support the recommendation that option one was the Committee’s preferred choice. This was because it had not been shown that Trafford would be able to find another provider who could do better and that the Council could not afford to bring the services back in house. The Councillor stated that they thought option 3 was the best option given the financial position that the Council was in. The Chair responded that the contract had been running for three years and no one questioned that the provider had failed to meet the targets of the contract over those years. No one was questioning the validity of the information but rather the financial position of the council and the costs of the options put forward within the recommendations. The Chair reminded the Committee Members that it was not for the Committee to decide which of the options the Council could afford to take and that was for the Executive to decide.

The Committee discussed the recommendations within section nine of the report at length. It was agreed that some action needed to be taken and that the three options listed covered a broad spectrum of actions. The issue that a number of Councillors had was that the report stated that if all of the options were viable that the Committee’s preferred option was option one. It was suggested that this be changed to if all options were feasible that the Committee preferred option one. The report was then agreed by the Committee to be referred to the executive once the recommendations had been amended. 

RESOLVED:

1)    That the word viable be replaced with the word feasible within recommendations in section nine of the report.

2)    That, following the above amendment, the Committee agree the report to be submitted to the Executive.