Agenda item

To receive and consider report 135/05 of the Strategic Director. 

(Time: 3.50pm to 4.00pm)

The Executive received and considered report 135/05 of the Strategic Director requesting that a new post was established to co-ordinate work on the Uniform database.  This was the primary system for several services: Environmental Health, Planning, Building Control, Housing, Legal, Land Charges, Estates and Asset Management. 

There were two areas where support was needed to maintain and develop the Uniform system.  Firstly, in the Environmental Health service area there was no modular system administrator to provide expert advice on system development, report-writing, data retrieval, query resolution, best practice research and user group representation.  Secondly, there was no corporate resource across all the service areas to provide cross service area co-ordination, resolve system-wide problems and manage system-wide upgrades. 

The first of these areas was recognised in the Council's budget when a Contingency sum was earmarked for support in one of the service areas.  A recent corporate review had confirmed the continuing need for this additional resource as well as the corporate resource.  The report set out the business case for creating a new post of Database Co-ordinator.

The report set three options for the Executive to consider:

·         Option 1 - status quo: do not create a new post.  This would release Contingency budget for other work and not incur employee costs.  However the officers considered that this would lead to an increased risk of failure and was not sustainable.  The performance management and contract enforcement problems in Environmental Health would continue to escalate and corporate Uniform maintenance and development would be impeded

·         Option 2 - create more than one support post.  Each of the four service areas could possess their own support officer (although not necessarily full-time posts) to specialise in the system aspects relevant to their own module.  This would increase the costs.  As the exact resource had not yet been quantified this could actually lead to over-staffing

·         Option 3 - create a single full-time post initially to address immediate service needs and quantify the exact resource requirement

The Executive considered that option 3 should be chosen, creating a single post initially.  Although the postholder would reside in Environmental Health to provide immediate support to address the most pressing need, the post would also be made available to the other Uniform-using service areas whilst the Assistant Directors assessed whether the resource was sufficient.  The Executive considered that the impact of the new post should be reviewed within twelve months to ensure that the investment was cost-effective.  If it is not considered to be adequate any additional resource need will have to be demonstrated.  

It was likely that the new post would be Grade 5 – 6 (subject to job evaluation), total cost £25 - 35k including oncosts.  Part of this cost (£15k per annum) would be met from earmarked Contingency.  The remaining net cost after utilising the earmarked Contingency would be £10 - 20k per annum. 

It was hoped that this cost could be met from savings likely to result from the reorganisation of several vacant posts.  However, this could not be assured at present and the net cost would initially need funding from a supplementary estimate.

RESOLVED

(a)               that a new post of ‘Database Co-ordinator’ be created;

(b)               that the earmarked Contingency to part-fund the cost of the new post be released;

(c)               that a recurring supplementary estimate be approved to be met from Contingency to cover the remaining cost of the post; and

(d)               that the adequacy of the new arrangements in meeting the needs of co-ordinating the use of the Uniform database across the Council's services be assessed and subsequently reported to the Executive within twelve months.