CORPORATE SERVICES LEAD MEMBER BRIEFING
4TH MAY, 2004.
PRESENT: Councillors Hinds and Murphy
K. Clare, A. Eastwood, A. Lobley, J. Spink,
M. Vickers and A. Westwood
A. Hill also attended
 Record of the meeting held on 26th April, 2004 – noted
 Storage and Handling – Alan Eastwood submitted details of draft
guidelines for staff on the storage and handling of personal data.
Agreed that Alan Eastwood prepare a one page list of bullet points
for Councillor Murphy to take the matter to Labour Group.
 Sickness Monitoring – Alison Hill submitted details of both long
and short term sickness levels within Corporate Services and
compared with the rest of the Authority. Comment was made that
in some instances stress was up to 50% of the sickness level.
Agreed that there was a need to be more proactive in dealing with
long term sickness, including dealing with signs that may lead to a
person going off sick, and that it would be advantageous if the time
before contact/action was reduced from 8 to 4 weeks
 Revenues Collection and Benefits Administration Performance
Indicators:o Report detailing Government determined indicators and
locally determined indicators.
o Agree to the targets for the next three years as identified in
the report, however will need to carefully monitor
performance as a result of the introduction of the Council
Tax and Benefits system.
o Future presentation required on data matching.
 Corporate Services Performance Indicators:o Report detailing Government determined indicators and
locally determined indicators
o Agree to the targets for the next the years with the exception
of BVPI 179 where the targets will be 99% in 2004/5, 99.5%
in 2005/6 and 100% in 2006/7
 Council Tax Capping – submitted for information a copy of the
statement made by the Minister of State for Local and Regional
Government on proposals to cap authorities that have set excessive
budgets for the current year
 Proposal for capital expenditure – APPROVAL to the central
heating replacement at Lower Kersal Primary School in the sum of
£155k, subject to the funding initiative (New Deal for Schools
Condition Funding 2002/03) still being available.
 Delivery of mail by the “Pony Express” – Martin Vickers reported
on a successful meeting which he had attended with Alan Heason
and representatives of the PCT to discuss a possible tie up in post
delivery services run by both the Council and the PCT. Agreed that
the matter be kept under review.
 LGIU Policy Briefing – Councillors’ Tax and Benefits 2004 –
Agreed that John Spink obtain sufficient copies of the above
publication to be circulated to all Members’ after the elections on
June 10th