Agenda and draft minutes

To receive and note apologies for absence.

Apologies had been received from Cllr Melly.

At this point in the meeting, Members and co-opted members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary interest, or other registerable interest, they might have in respect of business on this agenda, if they have not already done so in advance on the Register of Interests. The disclosure must include the nature of the interest.

An interest must also be disclosed in the meeting when it becomes apparent to the member during the meeting.

[Please see attached sheet for further guidance for Members]

At this point in the meeting, Members and co-opted members were asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary interest, or other registerable interest, they might have in respect of business on this agenda, if they have not already done so in advance on the Register of Interests.

None were declared.

To approve and sign the minutes of the meeting held on 12 August 2024.

Resolved:             That the minutes of the last meeting held on 12 August 2024 be approved as a correct record.

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It was reported that there had been no registrations to speak at the meeting under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme.

This report outlines the reasons for the call-in of the decision made by the Executive on 10 October 2024, in respect of the Community Contracts to support early intervention and prevention in Adult Social Care (ASC).

The report also sets out the powers and role of the Corporate Services, Climate Change and Scrutiny Management Committee (Calling-In) in dealing with the call-in.

Members considered a report which set out the reasons for the call-in of the decisions made by the Executive on 10 October 2024 in respect of the above matter, along with the committee’s remit and powers in relation to the call-in.

The decisions contained in the extract from the relevant Decision Sheet at Appendix 1 to the report had been called in by Cllrs Runciman, Vassie and Hollyer.  The original report and associated annexes were attached at Appendix 2.  The Monitoring Officer had determined that the call-in request, at Appendix 3, was partially valid and the following reasons for the call-in could be considered:

·       ASC (Adult Social Care) 05 saving agreed was “to remove duplication and to generate efficiencies in services” Agreements made are merely to end contracts that have reached the end of their commissioned period.  No evidence of duplication or efficiency.  For example, Independent Care Group funding unique service merely ended no duplicate provision and loss of service leads to further inefficiency in dealing with the care sector.

·       The paper has not set out all options and alternatives. Community Contracts total several million pounds and the saving agreed represents £275,000 this year.  The only option presented is to either retender one version of a scaled back set of community contracts or not retender and lose all the services. There was no consideration of applying a 10% reduction in all contracts, cutting others more than the ones highlighted for cutting or not making the cut at all. These options should have been fully considered within the paper and presented to the Executive for discussion.  Such decisions should have included an equality impact assessment of the effect of losing part of services or services in totality.

·       There was no reference in the paper to the totality of contracts within scope of the review.  There is no mention in the paper of the carers contract which was included in the scope of the review. There was no reference to the York Mind contract, the Yorkshire Housing Limited contract or Community Links (Northern) ltd contract in the paper the funding for which makes up the bulk of the saving. There was also no reference to the ASC 05 savings target which this paper is supposed to cover and the reason for the cuts to begin with. There is also no reference to the uplifts in the other contracts which some of the funding cut within the paper is being repurposed to fill those gaps in funding. There is also no reference to which ones of the community contracts will be extended beyond the March 2025 contract ends. Additionally, there is no mention within the paper what the breakdown of the costs of the short term contracted services (Advice, Information, shopping and befriending, and the Dementia Day Clubs) that have replaced the Age UK contract and whether or not the value of these are sufficiently covered by the funding approved.  There is no analysis of what the existing provision is and subsequent comparison  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15.