Agenda item

8.8

The Big City Conversation informed the debate concerning governance, including how people felt informed and involved. It also had a wider remit to give insight to help shape the broader direction of the Council and its engagement with people. The work of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee was to develop a set of principles upon which proposals for a decision making model could be based.

8.9

In relation to local areas, there had been ward based conversations and discussions with community groups in different parts of the city to get a richer picture. Issues that were important to people were likely to be different in one area to another and that was something which would need to be reflected upon and form part of the thinking in relation to how engagement with local communities took place.

8.10

The other local authorities that were included in the Scrutiny Committee’s work on governance included Reading, which already had a committee system in place, Cheshire East, which was at present changing to a committee system, Rotherham, which included pre-decision scrutiny in its model; and Melton, which was changing from a committee to a Cabinet model. Other local authorities were approached as well. It was considered that the Scrutiny Committee had heard a range of views from places with a variety of different experiences.

8.11

A question had not been asked as part of the Big City Conversation survey as to whether those people had also signed the governance petition requesting a referendum on whether the Council should adopt a committee system. The Big City Conversation was engaging a range of people in different places to obtain a rich and representative picture of people’s views.

8.12

With regard to events as part of the Big City Conversation, a variety of locations had been selected and it had been decided to take a consultation and engagement approach based upon going to places where people already were, such as shopping areas, rather than expecting them to come to council meetings. In that way, it was hoped that a broad range of conversations could take place, including with individuals who might not feel confident in putting their points across in another type of forum. Whilst it might be difficult to say with certainty that this approach would engage a fully representative range of people, it was hoped that it would help in that regard. There was also a commitment to continue with the idea of a big city conversation and a recognition that this needed to be turned into broader conversations about the issues that were important to people, such as crime and public transport.

8.13

People had been asked about governance through the Big City Conversation, including their involvement in decision making and about how they feel they can get involved and how informed they feel about public services. The analysis would help to inform proposals relating to governance. In principle, the data from the Big City Conversation could be made available. However, advice would be sought as to any related data protection issues.

8.14

It was felt that the number of responses received so far was relatively good for a consultation of this type and there was more work yet to be done. It did represent a fairly substantial number of people in the city. There had been detailed and high quality conversations with people, which represented a strength in the approach that had been adopted. There had also been other forms of contact, including e-mails, which illustrated the level of interest and involvement.

8.15

Further analysis would be done such as to see the proportion of young people that had engaged with the process. There had been engagement with young people through the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee exercise. Some work was also being done with students from the University of Sheffield.

8.16

There was not an awareness of any evidence, including that submitted as part of the scrutiny exercise, that pointed to a correlation between the particular system of governance that is adopted by a council and voter turnout. From the evidence which the Committee heard, it was considered that there was no one perfect system.

8.17

The Council had sought to engage with as wide a range of the public as possible. It would also endeavour to make sure there was engagement with groups that may be under represented. The demographic profile was being looked at of those who had already responded, so as to understand any gaps in particular communities, age groups or other characteristics. Proactive steps would need to be taken during the remainder of the Big City Conversation to address any such gaps to obtain a representative range of views.

8.18

In relation to people feeling informed about decisions, the interim results were not out of line with other places as far as was known. The Council did take a number of steps to publicise what it was doing. However, the Scrutiny Committee was very clear that there was more that could be done and the Council would be seeking to do so. The Big City Conversation also gave a platform to build on some of the work that had been done and an opportunity to look at some of the issues that people said were most important to them.

8.19

The Scrutiny Committee had also said that, as part of a new governance system, it should be made very clear how decision making processes work and how people could get involved in those decision making processes and to make it as understandable as possible for people. The Council would need to be creative and imaginative about how that could be done as part of the next phase of work.

8.20

In the results seen so far, it was clear that people did want to get involved but they might want to use different mechanisms to those which the Council traditionally used. Public meetings would still be a good way of getting involved for some of the population. In addition, many more people wanted to use e-mail and online mechanisms and the Council would have to find ways of ensuring that those were just as easy for people to use.

8.21

It was also important to speak with people who were harder to hear, such as people with caring responsibilities. The Council had engaged with the voluntary sector to try to utilise things that were already in place. If there were groups already engaged with people with particular characteristics, the Council had tried to speak with them. As outlined above, further analysis would be done as to any such gaps in the people or groups who had responded to the Big City Conversation.

8.22

As part of the Big City Conversation, information was collected about the wards that people lived in by postcode. People had been asked for information about where they lived, their age and other aspects of their background. That information would now be analysed to identify and address any gaps in different characteristics. Analysis had not yet been done to be able to say what the specific things were that different groups of people had said.

8.23

It was also critical that the Council was able to show that it was responding to the issues people had raised. There was a need to understand what those issues were and how they differed between different groups.

8.24

The proposal for a committee system would need to be published by 11 March. The decision on the proposal itself was one for the Executive but there would be opportunities for Members to comment on the proposal.

8.25

In response to a question concerning devolving decision making to a local level, it was felt that an answer on that issue would be a political one, although it was clarified that decisions could be devolved in either a Leader and Cabinet or a committee system.

8.26

Committees had to be politically proportionate to the overall political makeup of the Council as a whole.

8.27

The legislation said that, once there had been a governance referendum, it would be ten years before a further referendum relating to a council’s governance arrangements could take place.

8.28

It was expected that performance measures would be developed to help to look at the governance model in the context of the governance principles proposed by the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee and that oversight could be provided by the Committee.

8.29

It had been made clear through the Big City Conversation that, if there were specific issues that people raised, such as complaints or concerns about individual cases, these would be dealt with as and when they arose.

8.30

One of the main messages from the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee listening to young people from the Youth Cabinet and the Young Advisors was about communication and putting information in places where people already accessed it and making it easilyavailable. They talked about getting out to harder to reach groups of young people and about voting age.

8.31

A question was asked about participation by other political groups in the development of the governance proposals and this was considered to be an issue which should be subject of a response by a Cabinet Member.

8.32

The Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee had been provided with information concerning the estimated cost of Democratic Services support to meetings. It was possible to then estimate the costs, depending on the model of decision making to be adopted and numbers of committees. There had not been any direct conversations with the other local authorities about how much systems of governance cost to run.

8.33

One of the principles that the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee outlined concerned the importance of people understanding the decision making process and decisions that were due to be taken and that information was provided to people about that. That was something which needed further thought, including imaginative ways in which it might be described.

8.34

In relation to accountability, reference was made to the report of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee, which recognised accountability as another key theme to emerge. The Big City Conversation survey had not included specific questions concerning accountability, although some such issues may have been explored in some of the discussions.

8.35

That councillors were elected to perform a function and make decisions came through quite clearly in some of the evidence heard by the Scrutiny Committee. A key finding of the scrutiny report was that there was not a perfect governance structure and there were advantages and disadvantages to different models.  It was the behaviours and the ways of operating within that system that ultimately determined how successful they were.

8.36

It was right to say that digital communication was increasingly popular and to recognise that there was a large number of people in the city for whom that was not an option, perhaps because of affordability or having the skills to be able to engage with it. Therefore, the Council had to ensure that there were other mechanisms to communicate with people as individuals.

8.37

Both the business community and voluntary sector had been involved in the process through the work of the Scrutiny Committee and in the Big City Conversation. The Council would seek to continue to involve partners in those two sectors and partners in the public sector as well.

8.38

Whichever model was adopted, the responsibility for taking decisions was with councillors and they were elected by the public. Decisions could also be delegated to Council officers. Involvement of the community before the Council made decisions was something which the Council could further consider and develop.

8.39

No follow up action from the Big City Conversation had been taken at this point because the process was ongoing. When it was completed, the results would be analysed and thought could be given to what needed to be done and to understand in more depth what was behind some of the issues.

8.40

The Scrutiny Committee report was clear that it was important that people were well informed about the decisions that the Council was taking.

8.41

The information from the Big City Conversation was also reflected nationally in that people generally wanted to get involved in the issues that matter to them and there were different mechanisms by which they might do so. It was also clear from the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee report that Members were elected with a mandate to implement a manifesto and they had a mandate to govern and to make the decisions. The findings of the Committee were that people wanted to have a say on those things but they expected elected Members to implement them.

8.42

Members of the Council then made comments relating to the issue of the Council’s governance and the report of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee.

8.43

RESOLVED: That this Council approves the recommendations made by the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee, that:-

(a)        the Council endorses the ambitions, governance principles and ways of working, as set out in its report, to shape future governance options;

(b)       work commences as soon as possible to implement the following:-

·         Strengthening Sheffield City Council’s approach to Scrutiny

·         A commitment to the highest ethical standards and ensuring that the Code of Conduct reflects this

·         Improving Sheffield City Council’s approach to communicating about how decision making works

·         Ensuring that a commitment to meaningful community engagement, involvement and consultation runs through the organisation

·         Improving the information that we provide about how decision making happens across the city as a whole, and how partnerships and boards interconnect; and

(c)        following the referendum, the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee provides cross party oversight of the development of the new governance arrangements prior to their implementation.