Agenda and minutes

At this point Members are asked to declare any personal or prejudicial interests they may have in the business on this agenda.

At this point in the meeting, Members are asked to declare any personal or prejudicial interests they may have in the business on the agenda.

Councillor Hyman declared a personal non prejudicial interest as his wife works in Adult Education.

Councillor D’Agorne declared a personal non prejudicial interest due to his role as Careers Co-ordinator at York College.

Councillor Boyce declared a personal non-prejudicial interest due to her employment at York College.

To approve and sign the minutes of the meeting held on Wednesday 28 April 2010.

RESOLVED:             That the minutes of the last meeting held on Wednesday 28 April 2010 be signed as a correct record by the Chair.

At this point in the meeting, members of the public who have registered their wish to speak regarding an item on the agenda or an issue within the Committee’s remit can do so. The deadline for registering is Tuesday 11 May 2010 at 5pm.

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

This report presents the Council’s draft Workforce Plan for 2010-12 together with a presentation from the Head of Human Resources and Organisation Development.

Members considered a report, together with a presentation, which introduced to them the Council’s draft Workforce Plan for 2010-2012. It was presented to them in support of the work of the Committee on their review of City of York Council Apprenticeships. Members were asked to comment on the draft plan so their comments could be fed into the consultation process.

The Head of Human Resources presented the Workforce Plan to the Committee and advised that it is the first such plan that City of York Council have developed and that she anticipated that future versions would not be as lengthy. The conclusions contained within it had been drawn from available data and were not based on presumptions.

Members were happy with the Workforce plan, but made the following general comments:

• The priorities of the plan and queried why ‘Customers’ were detailed as the fourth priority and not the first.
• The Action Plan at Annex A2 of the Workforce plan is too long.
• Some Members asked specifically about how the recruitment of disabled people is monitored, and the barriers as mentioned in the ‘Diversity’ presentation slide.

In relation to concluding the scrutiny review, Members felt that they were still lacking some basic information and evidence on what the Council currently provides in individual directorates and requested that such further basic information on apprenticeships be brought to the next meeting.

Members briefly considered some conclusions for the review and had the following ideas, especially in relation to the third objective of identifying a structure to measure the effectiveness and outturn of apprenticeships, as follows:

• How data on apprentices who are employed by the Council could be gathered.
• How an apprentice scheme would be co-ordinated.
• A system to monitor what happens to apprentices once they have completed their apprenticeship, and a way of monitoring if the Council retains its apprentices.
• Whether the Committee could receive reports on a regular basis to monitor the progress of apprenticeships at the Council i.e. take up and outturn.
• Whether this Committee could monitor the new Workforce plan.

RESOLVED: (i)         That Members noted the contents of the report.

(ii)               That Members commented on the draft Work Force plan as above.

(iii)             That Members requested further information in respect of the review, as stated above, for the meeting on 24^th May.

(iv)              That Members wish to assess the information available to them at the meeting on the 24^th May before deciding whether they are able to conclude the review.

REASON:      To progress the review in line with Scrutiny procedures and protocols.