Agenda item

5.1

The Committee received four public questions from Ruth Hubbard prior to the meeting. Due to the questioner not being present at the meeting, the Chair read the questions and gave responses as follows.

5.2

Ruth Hubbard

In its meeting on July 20th this Committee committed to writing to those involved in the original roundtable discussions held by Involve with an update and apology for the near two-year delay in feeding anything back to them (and given the commitment made to circulate the final draft report for comments prior to publication).  No such letter appears to have gone out (and nor has the final draft been circulated as promised).  This is despite the report itself emphasising the importance of feedback loops several times.  I'm sure almost all of those who attended the roundtables will not realise the report is even finally out.  Why didn't the letter go out that this committee committed to in July and what will be done to rectify this and the broken commitment to circulate the final draft for comment? 

The Chair explained that the Committee did agree to do this and apologised that this has not happened.  It was not intentional, and we recognised that in building trust and involving communities, we have to do the things that we say we are going to do, especially where citizens have given their time to contribute to important work like this. As we have found through the work on Public Questions, we need a better approach in place for tracking both the responses to questions and any actions agreed. We wanted to get the draft version of the report into the public domain given the amount of time that as passed so that it can provide a platform to set the direction that we need to take as a council. If the Committee supported the recommendations in the report, the final draft of the report will go to a future S&R (Strategy & Resources Policy Committee) meeting.  Ahead of that, we will write to participants and contributors (includes citizens, stakeholders and SCC staff), inviting comments and thoughts which will then form part of the S&R report.  

The original amount budgeted for the Involve?work was in the region of £80k and presumably all, or a fair bit of this, was spent.? Given the in-Sheffield expertise and knowledge in this area and across a whole range of groups and organisations I regret that considerable monies have been spent that could have benefitted Sheffield groups or organisations and that would have resulted in similar or, I believe, better and more tailored, work. But what the use of an outside organisation also contributes to is a longstanding situation where citizens and stakeholders continue to get nowhere near helping shape key governance strategies and approaches that affect them - this is simply blocked or deflected and the council and this committee continues to do its own thing.? Does this all change now in light of what this report says about how things should proceed - both in terms of vision and strategy development, and in terms of ensuring that participation must be demonstrated to have impact and influence in decision-making (and that some of us have been saying for many years)? 

The Chair explained that the draft report and the insight that Involve and contributors have provided has been important in starting the shape the direction that we need to take as an organisation. The recommendations are authoritative, resonate with other independent reviews (eg. LGA Peer Challenge; Lowcock Report) but provide practical steps which we have already started using the content with staff on the development of our Future Sheffield programme. There is a real opportunity to use the weight of insight and expertise in the report to shape the work we need to do with citizens and stakeholders to transform our approach.  As we have seen from the work that the Sheffield Oversight and Scrutiny group have undertaken to complement the work of Governance Committee on public questions, we have some real expertise within Sheffield which can make a positive contribution to improving local democracy and citizen participation. Pending the support of this Committee, the next phases of this work will be led by S&R. While that might need the commissioning of external support, we are open to that support coming from within the city and I am personally very open to involving external partners in both the commissioning and the design of the next phase of work.  

There’s a clear steer in the Involve report that external partners don’t just want to contribute to the Council’s agenda, but to influence and set agendas and if we want to become a community-powered Council we should welcome that. 

In referring on to Strategy and Resources Policy Committee will the Governance Committee request that both appropriate constitutional additions or amendments, as well as suitable performance indicators towards clear outcomes, are developed at the appropriate time?  This will help ensure that participation and its impact is visible and embedded in underpinning council governance arrangements and operationalised in approaches and procedures, as well as ensuring that improvements and progress can be demonstrated?

The Chair welcomed the suggested approaches and Governance Committee may want to comment and consider these as part of the recommendations to S&R Committee. 

For me, the report lacks some clarity in a whole range of areas and this is perhaps indicative of a lot of things, not least that it is laying out a lot of territory.? But this also suggests a fair bit of thinking and development work needs undertaking over time,?albeit long overdue.? When interested parties and stakeholders become aware of the report is there anything the Governance Committee thinks they might usefully look to do? 

The Chair agreed that there were lots to do, some of it practical, particularly increasing the skills and capabilities of our teams, supporting the learning and development of Members, taking opportunities to trial and pilot new approaches and importantly, working with citizens to build an ambitious vision for where we want to be. Internally, we’re already taking some steps – eg. creating a Community of Practice to develop and share practice expertise across our teams, learning from and using new approaches (eg. All Age Autism work, City Goals). But we need to make this part of our strategic direction as a council and that is the rationale for the recommendation to S&R Committee and as part of that, Governance Committee may wish to encourage S&R Committee to involve citizens and stakeholders in taking forward the Involve recommendations.