Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Helen Rowbottom.

If a Councillor has a disclosable pecuniary interest in a particular item, whether or not it is entered in the Authority’s register of interests, or any other significant interest which they consider should be declared in the public interest, they should declare the existence and, unless it is a sensitive interest as defined in the Member Code of Conduct, the nature of the interest at the commencement of the consideration of that item or as soon as it becomes apparent.

At meetings where members of the public are allowed to be in attendance and speak, any Councillor with a disclosable pecuniary interest or other significant interest may also make representations, give evidence or answer questions about the matter. The Councillor must then withdraw immediately from the meeting before the matter is discussed and any vote taken.

Where Members of the public are not allowed to be in attendance and speak, then the Councillor with a disclosable pecuniary interest should withdraw from the meeting whilst the matter is under consideration. Councillors who have declared other significant interests should also withdraw from the meeting if they consider their continued participation in the matter would not be reasonable in the circumstances and may give rise to a perception of a conflict of interest.

Councillors are not obliged to withdraw from the meeting where a dispensation to that effect has been obtained from the Standards Committee.

There were no declarations of interest.

To approve the minutes of the previous meeting as an accurate record and note any outstanding actions.

RESOLVED

The minutes of the meeting held on 29 April 2024 were agreed as an accurate record.

This briefing paper provides a summary of the resident experience when accessing services at H&F. It provides an overview of:

• Customer access journey
• Resident Experience Access Programme original aims and objectives
• REAP Refresh
• Digital Inclusion Strategy current position
• Resident experience culture change work
• Co-production work

Nicola Ellis (Director, Chief Operating Officer, Corporate Services) and Yvonne Hadlames (Assistant Director, Contact Services) presented the item and gave a presentation covering the following areas:

• Customer access to Council services
• The Resident Experience Access Programme (REAP)
• The Digital Inclusion Strategy, which the Board helped to co-produce
• Resident experience culture change
• Co-production

The Chair asked how the delivery of this work had progressed since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nicola Ellis said there had been a focus on high priority areas like housing repairs which have made good progress, but there were other contact centres with opportunities to improve. The goal was to have consistently high performance across all service areas. The programme ‘REAP Reignite’ was looking at consolidating contact centres and using data to drive continuous improvement.

Councillor Victoria Brocklebank-Fowler asked how many contact centre staff worked in the borough and how many worked from home. Nicola Ellis said corporate contact centre staff worked on a rota system working some days in the office and some from home. Other contact centres had different arrangements – for example, the housing repairs team were all office based. Councillor Brocklebank Fowler asked for figures breaking down how many contact centre staff were office based and how many were working from home.

ACTION: Yvonne Hadlames

Councillor Brocklebank-Fowler noted that 46% of contacts were by telephone and suggested the reason was that people used the website for simple actions but called if they had complaints which were more complicated. Nicola Ellis said not all calls were complaints. She explained that a number of services were not available online, so users needed to call. But she agreed that ideally, when all services were available digitally, then only the most complex queries or those that required an assisted service would need to call.

Councillor Brocklebank-Fowler asked if officers had data on customer satisfaction from previous years. Nicola Ellis said up until recently there had only been ad hoc customer satisfaction surveys. Now they were working on a more consistent approach.

Councillor Brocklebank-Fowler noted that a resident she knew had tried to contact the council tax office by phone and had to wait for over 30 mins on two separate occasions. She asked if a callback option was available. Yvonne Hadlames said the telephony system did have a callback option so users didn’t have to wait on the phone. She noted that the system currently gave users their number in the queue, but they were looking to move to an estimated wait time system.

Councillor Brocklebank-Fowler said she was shocked by the chart on page 33 of the agenda showing 42.3% of submitted reports on the Love Clean Streets app were for fly-tipping and suggested it was due to the Council doubling the bulky waste collection charge. Officers noted the data was from the app and did not represent the percentages for all complaints. Members asked for a breakdown of these complaints across all channels.

ACTION: Yvonne Hadlames

The Chair asked if officers tracked the percentage  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

This report updates the Board on the implementation of Elections Act 2022, including the imminent review of voting and candidacy entitlements for European Union citizens resident in the borough, and the results of changes to absent voting and voter ID rules at the recent elections.

Zoe Wilkins (Electoral Services Manager) presented the report which updated the Board on the implementation of Elections Act 2022, including a review of voting and candidacy entitlements for European Union citizens resident in the borough, and the results of changes to absent voting and voter ID rules at the recent elections.

The Chair noted that some people said they didn’t vote in the recent general election because they didn’t have ID and weren’t aware of Voter Authority Certificates (VACs). She noted there had been a communications campaign to increase awareness but asked what more the Council could do in future to improve. Zoe Wilkins said the Electoral Commission had just released their report on Voter ID and it noted that the take up of VACs was low. She suggested the message could be reinforced at subsequent elections through communications campaigns and putting information with poll cards. She also noted the new Government may want to look at the ID that could be used.

Councillor Victoria Brocklebank-Fowler congratulated the Elections team for running two elections this year. She said the report showed how much work the team did and how well it worked. She was particularly impressed that there had been a drop in the number of people turning up without valid ID between the two elections despite them only being six weeks apart.

Councillor Brocklebank-Fowler asked for clarification about why the funding from central government for elections was not ring fenced. Zoe Wilkins said the grant from central government had come to her service and would be used for elections work, but technically it could be used for other purposes.

Councillor Rory Vaughan asked how the Council was doing reaching EU voters regarding the changes highlighted in the report. Zoe Wilkins said the law stated there were two paths for EU nationals. The first group were those who were eligible to vote or had registered to vote before December 2020 and they would receive a letter explaining the changes and that they didn’t need to take any further action to keep their right to vote. The second group would be informed that they needed to respond to the Council to confirm their right to vote via their right to remain in the UK. To assist with this the Council was doing additional communications and working with local groups like the Polish Social and Cultural Association, following guidance from the Electoral Commission. Councillor Vaughan said he was interested in how successful the campaign would be.

Councillor Vaughan asked how the data on how many people were initially turned away but then returned to vote was recorded – and what advice those voters were given on the day. Zoe Wilkins explained that all polling stations had a form from the Electoral Commission to record anyone who either had no ID or the wrong kind of ID, and whether they returned later. Polling station teams were given a list of acceptable ID that they could give to voters and they all had a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

For the Board to discuss future items for inclusion in the work programme.

The Chair highlighted the ‘Greening the Grey’ workshop held on 5 September and noted that it would come to the Board to develop policy in this area.

RESOLVED

1. The Board noted the draft work programme for 2024.

To note the following dates of future meetings:

·       25 November 2024

·       5 February 2025

·       6 May 2025

The following dates of future meetings were noted:

• 25 November 2024
• 5 February 2025
• 6 May 2025