Agenda item

To receive and consider the attached report of the Chief Customer Services Officer

The Board received and considered a report submitted by the Chief Customer Services Officer, updating the Board regarding progress in implementing the recommendations arising from the 2006 Inquiry carried out by the former Transforming Services Scrutiny Board.

In attendance at the meeting, and responding to Members’ queries and comments, were :-

Paddy Clarke, Chief Customer Services Officer

Susan Murray, Head of Face to Face Contact

Jayne Grant, Head of the Central Interpretation and Translation Unit (CITU)

In brief summary, the main areas of discussion were :-

• Budget – Concern was expressed that, following a substantial budget overspend, the centralised, service-specific budget established as a result of the previous Inquiry had now, in effect, been de-centralised again, with individual Departments responsible for deciding the level of service they required, or could afford, from CITU , and paying for this from their Departmental budgets.

It was explained that the annual budget for the service was £70,000, but in 2008/09 over £300,000 had actually been spent, due to the demand for the service from Departments. The CITU still had this £70,000 budget, and this had been used to fund the service for the first quarter of the current financial year. However, it had been agreed with Departments that from quarter 2 onwards, it would be the responsibility of individual Departments to request and pay for the service on a case by case basis, to avoid the previous overspend.

Members questioned whether this approach was fundamentally flawed. The previous Inquiry had identified the importance of the Council providing and funding this service to an adequate and appropriate level, and the principle of establishing an adequate central budget, controlled by the CITU , was to re-inforce the need for, and importance of, this service, and not to leave it to the discretion of individual Departments or officers whether or not to provide this facility based purely on cost considerations. The danger of reverting to relying on Departmental budgets was that cost considerations might outweigh other factors, service provision may be restricted due to this, and Departments might once again seek to use customers’ relatives to provide interpretation. This was the very situation the previous Inquiry had sought to address.

It was reported that the use of the service would be closely monitored by CITU to ensure that the service was used effectively and appropriately at all times. CITU would undertake regular independent checks to ensure that the service was not compromised by budgetary considerations, and would feed back regularly to Departments to ensure that the service continued to be used responsibly;

• In terms of encouraging residents to learn English, where customers presented at Council premises and were assisted in their primary language, then they were given information cards encouraging them to learn English and informing them of assistance available in this regard. Of course, there was no element of compulsion, and services would not be denied if the applicant could not speak English, or did not want to avail themselves of the opportunity to learn English;
• The costs of implementing Recommendation (f) of the previous Board, which related to video conferencing and access to a British Sign Language interpreter, had been found to be prohibitive. A national video conferencing service was available via a centre in London, at a fee, and need was assessed on a case by case basis. Currently, the Council, the Police and the local NHS were jointly trying to address the issue of the provision of a sign language interpretation service which all local public services could utilise.

RESOLVED – (a) That subject to the above comments and concerns, the update report be noted;

  (b) That a further update report be submitted to the Board in six months time, which includes reference to the issues referred to above.

(N.B. Councillor Bale joined the meeting at 10.20am, during the consideration of this item).