CORPORATE SERVICES LEAD MEMBER BRIEFING
29TH OCTOBER, 2001.
Present:
Councillors Antrobus and Murphy
R. Bell, M. Brooks, K. Clare and A. Westwood
Councillor Merry and Charles Green also attended
 Previous meeting –matters arising: SPIGIT/SPIGOD agenda items: Progress on Pathfinder
 SOLAR/Network
 Members issues
 Alan Eastwood to prepare a report on facilities for Members
 NNDR Hardship case – amend to read refused and monitor sale
of the property
 Customer Contact Centre broken into twice last week 4 p.c.’s
taken. Maura to provide details of the cost of replacing all p.c’s /
hard drives as a result of break ins at Council property over the
last two months
 Despatch of committee papers etc. to continue to be by paper copy
until work on the Firewall is complete
 Corporate Services Revenue Budget – Monitoring Report: Slight improvement over recent months – confident that will keep
within budget
 Problems with Customer Services overspend/under resourced –
due to setting up cost in the first year and it not being possible
currently to identify commensurate savings within Revenues and
Benefits
 Additional problems have also been caused by greater demands
on the service as a result of changes in refuse collection and
cash collection, in addition there have been more reminder
notices sent out so far this year than in the whole of any other
previous year. Need to get resourcing right – most agency staff
already left.
 SLA’s to HRA and DSO’s using more of our services than they
are being charged for
 Following a meeting between Alan Eastwood and Ken Horton
and Oracle on 11th October, still waiting for proposals from
Oracle
 Mainframe – looking for an agency arrangement with another
organisation to run NNDR which is currently on the Mainframe
 Alan Westwood has a meeting on 5th November with ICL
 Bolton have signed up with CAPITA to develop their egovernment
 Survey conducted by DLTR indicates that phone contacts have
risen and face to face contacts have reduced – may have to look
carefully at one stop shops
 Maura Brooks and Mike Willetts had done a presentation at last
weeks Directors meeting and were to do a similar one this week
with the Peer Group present on the proposals for one stop shops
in Swinton and Eccles
 Following the revised arrangements for cash collection the
majority post offices had increased their business considerably,
some to such a degree that they were now opening at 7.30 a.m.
 Martin Vickers was currently investigating figures relating to the
number of payments made and the cash received
 Ceasing to pay more and more benefit cases as we work towards
the verification framework
 Boddan Lodge – was an item within the Environmental Services
savings proposals for 2001/02 – additional report on the matter
requested by Cabinet – so far not produced – Councillor Antrobus to
e-mail Councillor Lancaster on the matter.
 Committee Services – to be considered at a meeting to be held at 3.00
p.m. on 31st October
 Need to find out what Members want – need common agreement
 Best Value review to take place as soon as possible – to include
support to Members and the democratic process
 Commonwealth Games funding –
 Councillor Merry submitted a summary of the outline costs for the
Commonwealth Games
 The major amounts were £135k for Gateway scheme and £191K
for planting
 The Gateway funding would come out of the Development
Services maintenance budget.
 Councillor Lancaster to be invited to the next meeting when this
matter is considered to discuss the funding for planting
 Neighbourhood Renewal Fund – Charles Green reported that there
was no NRF funding identified for 2002/03 and 2003/04 in respect of
Local Authority Mainstream schemes which amounted to £1.7m per
year.
 Urgent work would have to be undertaken in-house to try and resolve
the situation with a further report being submitted in due course