Agenda and minutes

To note the attendance at this meeting of any duly appointed Reserve Members.

Reserve Members may attend meetings:-

(i)                 to take the place of an ordinary Member for whom they are a reserve;

(ii)               where the ordinary Member will be absent for the whole of the meeting; and

(iii)             the meeting notes at the start of the meeting at the item ‘Reserves’ that the Reserve Member is or will be attending as a reserve;

(iv)              if a Reserve Member whose intention to attend has been noted arrives after the commencement of the meeting, then that Reserve Member can only act as a Member from the start of the next item of business on the agenda after his/her arrival.

RESOLVED:  To note the attendance at this meeting of the following duly appointed Reserve Members:-

To receive declarations of disclosable pecuniary or non pecuniary interests, arising from business to be transacted at this meeting, from:

(a)               all Members of the Panel;

(b)               all other Members present.

RESOLVED:  To note that there were no declarations of interests made by Members.

RESOLVED:  That Councillor Janet Mote be appointed Vice-Chairman of the Panel for the 2013/14 Municipal Year.

That the minutes of the meeting held on 10 April 2013 be taken as read and signed as a correct record.

RESOLVED:  That the minutes of the meeting held on 10 April 2013 be taken as read and signed as a correct record.

To receive questions (if any) from local residents or organisations under the provisions of Executive Procedure Rule 50 (Part 4D of the Constitution).

RESOLVED: To note that no public questions, petitions or deputations were received at this meeting.

Report of the Divisional Director of Human Resources and Development & Shared Services.

The Panel received a report of the Divisional Director Human Resources and Development and Shared Services, which provided an update on the Member Development Programme of Events that had taken place since the last meeting of the Panel. 

The Divisional Director made the following points about Members’ attendance and feedback regarding recent Member Development training events:

·                    most training sessions had been reasonably well attended;

·                    feedback provided on the evaluation forms for these sessions had been largely positive, and Members had requested further training on most of the topics covered;

·                    Members had found the joint training event at Brent Civic Centre, which had been attended by 9 Councillors from Harrow, interesting, but felt that the event could have been more robustly facilitated.

Members made the following comments:

·                    Children’s Services had arranged training regarding fostering without involvement from the Member Development team and the Panel were of the view that Directorates should be reminded that Member training events should be co-ordinated via the Member Development team;

·                    all Members should be encouraged to attend the forthcoming Safeguarding Adults training, as Members needed to be made aware of their role in this area.  Additionally, the Care Quality Commission, would take Member attendance at Safeguarding training into consideration when carrying out audits;

·                    the 23 December training date, though very close to the holiday period, should not be cancelled.  This session should be used to provide IT training and Members should be canvassed as to what topics they would like to see covered;

·                    the May 2014 training date should be used to feedback and road test the planned programme of Member Induction following the elections in May.

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.

Report of the Divisional Director of Human Resources and Development & Shared Services.

The Panel received a report of the Divisional Director Human Resources and Development and Shared Services, which set out plans to roll out the MyLearning self-service portal to Members.

The Divisional Director stated that the advantages of rolling out the portal to Members would be as follows:

·                    it would enable Members to book themselves on Member Development training/briefing sessions and, where appropriate, on training sessions offered as part of the staff Corporate Development programme;

·                    it would allow Members to access forthcoming Member training sessions, view information about the trainer(s) and the aims, outcomes and target audience for each training session;

·                    each training session could have minimum number of participants assigned to it and the session could be cancelled 5 days before the scheduled date if the minimum enrolment number was not met;

·                    the portal was simple to use and could be accessed via the Council’s Hub or remotely from home;

·                    it would make the Member training programme more cost effective, easier to manage and would enable Members to plan ahead and track their training for the entire year;

·                    Members would be able to print off certificates of attendance and complete evaluation forms online.

Members made the following comments:

·                    this was an excellent proposal, however, it should be noted that several Members continued to experience difficulty in accessing their harrow.gov accounts and this need to be resolved before the portal was rolled out to Members;

·                    MyLearning should be demonstrated at the February 2014 Quarterly Briefing before being rolled out after May 2014, in order to resolve any issues that might arise.

RESOLVED:  That the report be noted.

Report of the Divisional Director of Human Resources and Development & Shared Services.

The Panel received a report of the Divisional Director of Human Resources and Development and Shared Services, which set out proposals for the Members’ Welcome Evening, Members’ Handbook and the Member Induction Programme for 2014.

The Divisional Director advised that the proposals incorporated suggestions from the Corporate Strategy Board.  He added that, in the interest of keeping down costs, it was proposed that:

·                    the Members Welcome Evening, which was planned for Thursday 29 May 2014, should follow the same format as in 2010;

·                    a virtual borough tour of key locations, available on disk, would replace the actual borough tour;

·                    the Members’ Handbook would be a slimmed down version of the one produced in 2010.  The handbook would be available both as a hard copy and electronically, with any updates to the handbook provided electronically.

Members expressed the following views:

·                    the information evening for prospective Councillors was an excellent new initiative that would give prospective candidates a flavour of the roles and responsibilities of a Councillor;

·                    the filming of a Council meeting, inclusive of a roll-call, would be helpful to newly-elected Members and added that a Cabinet meeting could also be filmed;

·                    the Harrow Youth Parliament had the requisite technical skills and hardware to undertake the filming projects.  If they were unable to take these on, then students at Stanmore College or at the University of Westminster could be approached;

·                    the proposed increased use of electronic media in providing information to Members as part of the induction process would be facilitated by the use of iPads, however, the IT issues referred to earlier in the meeting would need to be resolved in order to make this a viable option.

The Divisional Director advised that the filming of Council and Cabinet would be subject to agreement by the Mayor and the Leader, respectively.  He added that the recent iPad trials had, on the whole, been successful and encouraged Members to report any ongoing IT issues to the Capita help desk.  The draft handbook and detailed plans for Member Induction 2014 would be provided to the Panel at a future meeting.

Following a query from the Chairman, the Divisional Director confirmed that a report regarding formal accreditation of Members’ Learning would be presented at the next Panel meeting.  Members were of the view that any accreditation process should be based on Members’ training needs analyses and focus on pathways.

RESOLVED:  That the report be noted.

4 February 2014.