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Agenda item

New Officer Scheme of Delegation (Information Only)

Minutes:

Gareth Price – Head of Law and Standards

Elizabeth Bryant – Assistant Head of Legal Services

 

The Head of Service provided a brief overview to the Committee and reiterated that the new Officer Scheme of Delegation is a work in progress where they will look to refine and finalise. It was noted that there were no substantive changes to the current delegation but specific function were re-allocated to the new Heads of Service, following the senior management restructure and the re-alignment of services.

 

For example, public protection previously came under Law and Standards and taxi/licensing and all of the environmental health sections were under Head of Law and Standards, but these functions were transferring to the new Head of Environment & Public Protection. It would ensure that the right officer delegation sits within the right service area and advised that it is a lot more complicated than it seems because the council are having to disaggregate some of the services. The Head of Law and Standards paid credit to the Assistant Head of Legal Services, Elizabeth Bryant who undertook a lot of work on that.

 

The Members were informed that it is a work in progress and the intention would be to finish between the current time and May for the Members to sign off on 17 May.

 

The officers welcomed any queries from the Committee.

 

Committee raised the following points:

·       Councillor Watkins queried how the scheme of delegation would affect the scrutiny committees.

 

The Head of Law and Standards advised that the officer scheme delegation is purely about decisions made at officer level. In relation to the scrutiny committees; the majority of that would depend on what the make-up will be of the newly elected council.

 Currently, there were two Performance Scrutiny Committees that scrutinised service plans and they were based on the old People and Place/Corporate Directorates. Members were informed that there are currently four corporate directorates and the grouping of services is different. In addition, there would be a new performance self-assessment process that the Head of People, Policy and Transformation was developing.

Members were advised that the officers would need to look at that with the chairs of scrutiny; which would be a bigger piece of work in terms of new performance.

 

·       The Chair referred to the points three and seven in the Responsibility of Regeneration section to make bids for European funding, and asked if that would is now a thing of the past.

 

The Head of Law and Standards advised they could omit the reference to ‘European’. As the council still would receive external grant funding, levelling up funding and internal grant funding. The Member was advised that they could pick that up as part of the refinement.

 

The Lead Officer also mentioned that the Heads of Services were fine tuning other things such as the planning process; where currently the planning applications go the committee because property assets and the corporate assets currently sit with the same Head of Service.. The officer highlighted the conflict which is under the delegation, of determining their own planning applications. As a result of property and assets moving to People, Policy & Transformation, the officers need to tweak that delegation so it can sit with a different area of service for a better purpose.

 

·       Councillor Hourahine mentioned that to his understanding that scientific and academic areas are still applicable for European funding and noted that he was unsure on how that would affect the council but made the suggestion of new wording within the document instead of completely withdrawing it.

 

In response, the Head of Service advised that with the scheme of delegation, it would be inappropriate to withdraw all reference to European as that is to do with the external grant funding; that might have covered the EU, but did advise that other grants could filter through.

 

 

Supporting documents: