Agenda item

Interview with Paul Taylor, Mid Kent Services (MKS) Director

Report attached for consideration

The Committee considered the report of the new Mid Kent Services Director, Mr. Paul Taylor. Jane Clarke, the MKIP Programme Manager was also in attendance as a witness. 

Mr. Taylor gave a brief outline of his work programme for the next twelve months and provided further information on his role and responsibilities. 
In response to questions by Members, the Mid Kent Director informed the Committee that:-

·  In the past all partnership decisions had gone through Shared Cabinet Meetings. As part of that process Members of each Authority had the opportunity to call in decisions.  However, he suggested that it might be helpful for Members if details of the proposed partnerships would go to Scrutiny Committees for their input prior to that decision making process.  He drew comparisons with Tunbridge Wells where decisions would go to Cab Boards first, for their comments, before being fed into the Cabinet decision making process. 

·  In terms of developing a Communications and Engagement Strategy for Members, he had met with all three authorities and would be liaising with Communications Teams from each of the Authorities and hoped to put together a Communications and Engagement Strategy that would satisfy all stakeholders.  He stated that all mediums would be used to ensure there was a continued communication link.

·  In responding to a question on what partnerships were being implemented, he advised that these would be Planning Support and Environmental Health Services.  These services would go through the implementation stage and a Project Team would be set up and if successful, it would then be decided by the Mid-Kent Partnership whether they should be included in the Mid-Kent Services.

·  In terms of commercialisation, he stated that he classified Legal, Audit and Revenues and Benefits as mature partnerships that had the fundamental building blocks to look further afield from their existing partnerships.  Mr. Taylor mentioned that Rich Clarke, the Partnership Manager for Audit would be looking at opportunities to sell services to other Kent districts and to other agencies such as the NHS.

Mr. Taylor also advised that Dawn Hudd, Head of Commercial and Economic Development and her team had been working on a commercialisation agenda for Maidstone.  He intended to work with them to see if this could be developed for all Partnership Managers.

·  With regard to whether he felt it would be a challenge where each authority had different governance arrangements, he advised that the Director of Regeneration and Communities was in the process of setting up criteria for the authorities involved which would include Service Level Agreements and Shared Risk Registers and that he would report back to the MKIP Board when this work had been completed.

·  With regard to how the success of the partnerships would be measured over the three authorities, he advised that one of the reasons why it had worked so well was because there had been a great deal of respect for others’ differences. 

·  It would make sense for a core set of indicators to be developed for all authorities, but different local authorities may want different weights attached to them in order to judge how Partnership Managers were performing for their respective boroughs.

It was noted that the Chairman and Vice-Chairman were to meet with Members from Tunbridge Wells on 7 May 2014 to discuss possible areas for joint scrutiny.  The Committee requested that Swale be kept informed of the outcome of the meeting and that any minutes from the meeting should be circulated to all three authorities.  This was agreed by the Chairman and Vice Chairman.  It was also suggested that there should be cross party representation at any future meetings.

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.