Issue - meetings

Purpose: To receive new items and agree and prioritise the work programme of the Commission for the remainder of 2015/16.

(Councillor Richard Somner declared a personal and prejudicial interest by virtue of the fact that he was an employee of The Royal Berkshire Hospital (RBH). As his interest was personal and prejudicial he advised that he would leave the meeting and not take part in the debate if the topic specifically included points regarding RBH).

The Commission considered its work programme 2015/16.

Councillor Alan Macro asked whether a task group had been established to agree the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for 2015/16. David Lowe advised that the group usually met in April to review targets for the forthcoming year. However, the measures had not been finalised yet and as a result the task group meeting had been postponed. Members were requested to inform David Lowe if they would like to take part in the KPI review task group.

Newer Members of the Commission requested an overview of OSMC 15/163 (Hildens Drive) as it was notably the first Councillor Call for Action presented to the Commission for a considerable time. Councillor Emma Webster stated that Hildens Drive was an area which attracted anti-social behaviour and was susceptible to fly tipping. Members heard that the area was neglected and subsequently it attracted a significant amount of time and resources from agencies to address ongoing issues. Councillor Webster had presented the Councillor Call for Action at the last meeting to request a review of the options available to the Council in order to eradicate the longstanding problems.

Councillor Webster informed Members that the layout of the work programme had been amended to include a 6 monthly review of previously concluded topics. It was suggested that a regular progress review could help ensure that the recommendations presented by the Commission were followed through by service areas to a satisfactory level and within reasonable timescales.

Members considered the suggested topic for scrutiny: Delayed Transfers of Care. The topic had been accepted during previous meetings however, it was agreed that the scope would be reconsidered before the item was progressed. Councillor James Fredrickson asked why Officers were not confident that the statistics surrounding the reasons for DTOC reflected the reality – as had been suggested on page 23 of the agenda. Rachael Wardell advised that the statistics produced by the Hospital, in terms of who a case of DTOC had been attributed to, differed to those produced by the Local Authority.

Rachael Wardell advised that West Berkshire had been listed in the bottom ten performing Local Authorities in a report submitted in 2011/12. However, this was in part due to the government’s decision to focus on a measure of delays which was outside the Adult Social Care Outcome Framework and therefore not a measure that we had been monitoring closely. Subsequent to this the Council had been subjected to a significant amount of pressure from the Government to improve the Social Care response to delayed transfers of care. It was noted that West Berkshire Council was last reported in the 2^nd quartile of Local Authorities  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7