Cabinet Member Delegated
elegated Decision
Decision Due: 17 April 2014
Cooperative Youth and Play Provider Selection, Phase 2
Wards: All
Report Authorised by: Chief Executive: Derrick Anderson
Portfolio: Cabinet Member Children and Families:
Families Councillor Rachel Heywood
Contact for enquiries:
[email protected]
Victor Ruskin, Procurement Lead Officer for Children Services,, 020 7926 9726
Report summary
Lambeth is working towards becoming a Cooperative Council. It begins to do things with local
citizens instead of doing things to them, in the belief that when you give residents more power,
the community will become stronger. The January 2010 Co-operative
Co
Council Cabinet report
made it clear that being a co-operative
operative borough can incorporate different models of service
delivery. The report also identified a number of projects including services in Children and
Young People’s Service (CYPS) as Early Adopters to trial this approach.
In developing a response to the Cooperative Council vision, Children
hildren and Young People
Services focused on giving people more involvement and control
control of the services they use and
as such the Cooperative Youth and Play Programme Phase 2 has focused on developing
de
new
delivery and ownership models for:
•
•
•
Five Adventure Playgrounds (APGs)
Five Stay and Play One O’clock Clubs (OOCC)
One Youth Centre
se new delivery and ownership models will be the greater involvement of
The benefits to these
local communities; the continuation and expansion off services in a period of significant resource
reduction and the co-production
production of new delivery models.
Finance summary
The budget to fund these services will be found from four existing budgets within the Early
Years, Youth and Co-operative business unit. The budgets for 2014/15 are as follows:
Oracle Code
Description
460.4601
Early Adopters Programme 2
101,000
460.4602
One O'clock Clubs
467,000
460.4603
Adventure Playgrounds
524,000
460.4604
Youth Centres
Total
Budget £
2014/15
1,030,000
2,122,000
There is adequate budget to meet Phase 1 costs, retained service provision and the
commitments under Phase 2, covered by this report. The budgets will reduce by 10% year-onyear which is reflected in the recommended grant awards.
Recommendations
(1)
To approve the grant award to the selected providers and the respective grants as
specified in the Table below (see para. 2.2) for the total amount of £1,371,187
(2)
To retain Max Roach Adventure Playground and Vauxhall One O’clock Club as an
in-house services and undertake Phase 3 selection process during year 2014.
(3)
To defer a decision on Dexters Adventure Playground awaiting confirmation of the
full safeguarding audit.
Reasons for Exemption from Disclosure
The accompanying part II report is exempt from disclosure by virtue of the following paragraph
of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972;
Paragraph 3. Information relation to the financial or business affairs of a particular person
(Including the authority holding that information)
1.
Context
1.1
Phase 1 update
The first phase has been successfully completed with grant awards for:
•
•
•
Seven Adventure Playgrounds (APGs)
Thirteen Stay and Play One O’clock Clubs (OOCC)
and Five Youth Centres
The annual grants that have been awarded during Phase 1 total £1,506,562.
This allocation sits within departmental cash limit for these services. This funding
was ring fenced for three (3) years from April 2012 to March 2015, with the
grants reducing by 10% year on year. However delays to the programme, and
the staggered award process which is still to be finalised means that the
agreements were signed from December 2012 to date. This means that funding
for the groups which have yet to commence activities will cover the period
2014/15 through to 2016/17. This is beyond the three year period over which
savings were planned as part of the 2012/13 Service and Financial Planning
Process. As such the Outcome Based Budgeting process for 2015/16 and
2016/17 will need to reflect the 10% year-on-year reductions in funding.
1.2
Phase 2 has involved working in coproduction and collaborative working with service
users, local residents and providers to develop new service delivery models for these
services. A systematic step-by-step selection process was followed. It incorporated the
following key activities:
•
Information Sharing and Stakeholder Engagement - discussions were held with
a range of stakeholders: organisations and individuals who currently provide
services at the different sites; Organisations who were interested in taking on
the sites; staff engagement sessions; articles in the Lambeth weekender and
Lambeth Talk as well as at events such as the Lambeth Country Show.
•
Expression of Interest – this included the placement of adverts in local papers
in April 2013 as well as emails and letters to stakeholders, local organisations
and residents, seeking expressions of interest in being involved in the delivery
of these services. The Expressions of Interest have been evaluated to better
understand the technical capacity of the potential bidders. Key elements of the
assessment included community engagement, inclusiveness of the offer and
collaboration with other providers, users and key stakeholders.
•
Capacity Building - a number of workshops were organised in
October/November 2013 to build the technical and organisational capacity of
potential providers prior to requesting them to submit their final Business Plans.
Workshops covering Governance, Social Value, Fundraising and Business
Planning were organised with input from both external and internal experts.
•
Submission of Business plans – Detailed proposals submitted by organisations
or individuals, making it clear how they would deliver a sustainable service
provision.
•
Evaluation and Selection - This involved a robust selection process which
required the organisations to present their proposals to users of the specific
sites and to respond to questions raised. These site specific presentations
together with a summary of the written proposals were evaluated by the users
and key stakeholders. This community evaluation, including postal votes
accounted for 30% of the overall score of the provider’s submitted bid. The
second phase was the evaluation by the Panel comprising of advisors and
panel members, including a Young Lambeth Cooperative representative. This
panel conducted a more technical assessment and looked at Finance; Human
Resources; Safeguarding; Property Management; Equalities; Service
Expertise; Community Engagement and Collaboration. The detailed Evaluation
Criteria is provided as an appendix to the report.
We received 29 proposals for the 11 sites, from 13 different organisations, with
some organisations bidding for more than one site/service. Every site had at
least one bidder Bidders were predominantly Lambeth based organisations,
usually already operating at or close to the site.
The second part of the evaluation process was undertaken by an Evaluation
Panel, comprising of Lambeth officers and a YLC representative, some of them
performing advisory roles whilst others were the actual Panel members scoring.
•
Debrief - All successful providers will be given a letter with their scores and a
notification of the key matters that need to be addressed prior to the grant
award. The unsuccessful providers will also be issued with a letter outlining
their scores, the scores of the winning provider at that site as well as summary
of the key points that led to the difference in the scores. They will also be
invited to feedback meetings where they were provided with detailed
information on where their bid was good and where it could have been better.
1.3
Although the funding method is grant based, there was a grant bidding process using the
Council’s procurement process, including initial assessment, selection and award in
order to ensure fairness, openness and transparency. The traditional Business
Questionnaire for supplier capability selection was not used; the Business Plan process
was used to lower the barriers of entry - re experience and historical financial records.
This allowed for greater access to the funds involving smaller and medium sized
organisations as well as an emerging staff mutual. The Council used the principles of
coproduction which allowed providers and the Council to work together enabling
organisations to apply for the funding.
1.4
The leases are being granted for seven years at nil rent, as long as the key service
outcomes are being achieved and the organisations fulfil their obligations under the
Lease. Along with the Leases the organisations will receive a Letter of Comfort that
indicates the rental value for the properties and grants a waiver of this cost as long as
the service outcomes are being achieved. The Lease provides for the ongoing
monitoring of the outcomes after the end of the Grant Agreement. The Leases are
internal repairing leases and Property Services have provided a detailed condition
survey for each site and this is being attached to each lease.
1.5
The process is now at the final stage and the Grant Funding Agreements and Leases
can be finalised and signed. All the key commercial terms have been discussed with
organisations and although there are points of clarification including the fine tuning of the
service delivery plans for certain providers, these will be progressed as part of
implementation and mobilisation plans prior to the activity commencement date and so
do not delay the award decision in respect of these sites, although the actual signing will
not occur until the issues are resolved.
2.
Proposal and Reasons
2.1
The proposal is for the Cabinet Member to approve the grants to the preferred providers
identified below. These providers had the highest overall scores at the respective sites.
The accompanying exempt from disclosure report provides details of the comparative
scores at each site, followed by summaries of the key factors that contributed to these
scores.
2.2
The grants to be approved are:
Organisation
Grant
Year 1
Grant
Year 3
Total per
site
New Initiatives (the Village)
206,186 180,412
162,371
548,969
Willington Rd APG
New Initiatives (the Village)
40,410
35,359
31,823
107,592
Kennington APG
UNICAP
40,410
35,359
31,823
107,592
Dexters APG
Lambeth Play Association
40,410
35,359
31,823
107,592
Streatham APG
Streatham Youth
65,745
57,527
51,774
175,046
Kennington OOCC
UNICAP
30,460
26,652
23,987
81,099
Streatham OOCC
Streatham Youth
30,460
26,652
23,987
81,099
Norwood OOCC
Kingswood
30,460
26,652
23,987
81,099
Slade Gardens OOCC
Slade Community Play
30,460
26,652
23,987
81,099
Total:
515,001 450,624
405,562
1,371,187
Site
Grant
Year 2
Youth Club
Willington Rd YC
Adventure Playgrounds
One O'clock Clubs
3.
Finance
3.1
The project is funded from the revenue budget and will represent a number of grants
over the initial 3-year period. The grants will be paid in tranches and will be linked with
providers satisfactory performance reviews. No new resources outside of the currently
available budget are sought as part of the process.
The following table show the savings identified against the 4 budgets used to
commission these services for the first year of operations.:
Oracle
Description
Code
Budget
Savings £
Budget
£ 2013/14
£ 2014/15
460.4601
Early Adopters Programme 2
100,400
600
101,000
460.4602
One O'clock Clubs
514,000
-47,000
467,000
460.4603
Adventure Playgrounds
577,000
-53,000
524,000
460.4604
Youth Centres
1,133,121
-103,121
1,030,000
2,324,521
-202,521
2,122,000
Total
With a total budget evelope for 2014/15 of £2,122,000 the entire early adopters programme,
phase 1 and 2, is affordable as per the following table of commitments:
Service description
Phase 1 commitments
£
1,506,562
Phase 2 grants awarded
515,001
Phase 2 services retained (Max Roach APG and Vauxhaul OOCC)
100,000
Total commitment (full year effect)
2,121,563
In terms of future budgets, for years 2 and 3, i.e. 2015/16 and 2016/17 further reductions of 10%
each year are expected and will be managed via the councils’ outcome based budgeting
exercise. Furthermore the grant awarding process also reduces budgets by 10% each
year across the period so the commitments will reduce in tandem with the budgets thus
making the programmes affordable.
In some cases delays are expected in phase 2 which could mean slippage within year one
(2014/15). With a three year grant award there will be a need for budget provision at the
end of the cycle to meet costs falling in 2017/18. This will need to be considered as part
of the Outcomes Based Budgeting process.
3.2
Under Phase 1 of the Programme, it was agreed that the Council would underwrite
pension liabilities of staff transferring under TUPE arrangements as part of a separate
Officers Delegated Decision Report. It is envisaged that similar arrangements will be put
in place once details of any transferees are available in respect of Phase 2..
4.
Legal and Democracy
4.1
The Council is proposing to grant fund the successful Organisations as set out in Table 1
below. The award of grants fall outside the procurement regime set out in the Public
Contract Regulations 2006 as they are not public contracts. However, the Council is
bound to consider other regulations such as State Aid, primarily article 107 of the Treaty
on the Functioning of the European Union and general public law controls relating to
fiduciary duty and proper spending of public money. It is unlikely that the arrangements
proposed would be likely to affect trade between Member States of the EU. The parties
will also need to discuss any potential implications arising out of providers seeking
admitted body status under the Local Government Pension Scheme and any cost to the
Council fully considered before the grant funding agreements are signed.
4.2
The approval of the Cabinet Member is being sought to nine grants totalling £1.371m.
This proposed key decision is entered in the Forward Plan and the necessary 28 clear
days notice has been given. In addition, the Council’s Constitution requires the report to
be published on the website for five clear days before the proposed decision is approved
by the Cabinet Member. Any representations received during this period must be
considered by the decision-maker before the decision is taken. A further period of five
clear days - the call-in period – must then elapse before the decision is enacted. If the
decision is called-in during this period, it cannot be enacted until the call-in has been
considered and resolved.
5.
Consultation and co-production
5.1
In making decisions and co-producing services, engagement is key. Comprehensive
community engagement has been incorporated into the project at various stages. Formal
consultation with internal and external stakeholders has been undertaken as part of the
decision-making process.
5.2
Ward Councillors of relevant wards were invited to on-site events for active participation
in the co-production process.
6.
Risk management
6.1
The risk register for Phase 2 has been maintained to address the risks during the
selection process and is available in the Project Plan document.
6.2
The main risk associated with handing over the sites to new community providers is that
they may not be able to achieve financial sustainability during the first 3-year period.
Therefore, this has been a strong focus during the evaluation process. Additionally,
robust monitoring arrangements will be put in place to ensure that this risk is mitigated.
Further support and capacity building will also take place during the post-selection stage,
the Authority will aim to spread opportunities for success and good practice across the
range of existing providers.
6.3
Safeguarding. All potential providers have been evaluated in relation to their
safeguarding policies. All providers were requested to complete Section 11 selfassessment document. Additional robust audit will be undertaken for providers where
concerns were identified. As a result, action plan will be created and implemented prior
to the grant award.
6.4
More detailed information on risk management is provided in the accompanying exempt
form disclosure.
7.
Equalities impact assessment
7.1
A detailed Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) has been completed for the overall
programme. This has been reviewed by both departmental and corporate Equalities
teams. In their business cases each of the potential providers evidenced how they would
meet the equalities issues related to the services they bid for. All successful providers
offered solutions on how they would handle issues associated with equalities. During
the bidding process each provider consulted widely with their relevant stakeholders and
used this information to inform their final business cases.
7.2
The initial 90 day performance monitoring and the quarterly ongoing monitoring form;
both include sections for the supplier to update current position on equalities issues.
Where any equalities concerns or issues have been raised during service delivery, an
improvement plan will be developed and agreed between the provider and the Council.
Below is an extract form the Equalities section of the Monitoring schedule:
A. What are (or what were) the main issues relating to equality (race, gender, disability,
sexual orientation, age, incidents of hate crime) and diversity within this service?
B. How have you dealt with these issues? Were these handled by your firm or have you
worked with the Council, other partners or colleagues? Please provide details in the
space below:
C. In the period since the last review, has there been an improvement regarding the
take-up and usage of the service by different equalities groups? Yes No. Please
provide details in the space below:
D. Describe how you have engaged with key stakeholders, end users and customers
whilst delivering the services. How have you obtained their views on how efficient
and effective service delivery is and how well it is meeting the needs of all equalities
groups? Please provide details and actions that were taken in the space below:
7.3
This EIA is supported by the EIA for the CYPS reshaping which dealt with the staffing
issues. The proposals in this report do not give rise to compulsory redundancies.
8.
Community safety
8.1
Effective use of available community resources, such as Youth Centres, One O’Clock
Clubs and Adventure Playgrounds provides positive impact on local community,
including reducing the risk of children getting involved in anti-social behaviour and
provides positive learning experience.
8.2
The Council takes it role of safeguarding in the widest sense very seriously. Whilst the
proposed decision is for new providers to run parts of Children’s services moving forward
the Council does or will not relinquish its role or responsibility to maintain safeguarding
standards. The grant agreements contain those robust clauses to provide the LA with the
ability to audit and inspect these aspects in the future. These powers continue after the
end of the grant funding as they are also enshrined in the lease agreements, which
continues after the grant funding ends
9.
Organisational implications
9.1
Environmental
All site buildings remain within the Council’s ownership and will be managed by an
approved sub-contractor during the lease period. There are no direct environmental
implications that need to be considered outside of Lambeth existing policies.
9.2
Staffing and accommodation
This decision means that services currently provided in house will now be provided by
external organisations. The Council is proceeding on the basis that the Transfer of
Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (“TUPE”) will apply where
employees will transfer to external providers. Staff will transfer on their existing terms
and conditions and with a requirement that the new providers will provide comparable
pension arrangements to those provided by the Council. The Council will comply with its
obligations under TUPE to inform and consult with employees and the Council’s
recognised Trade Unions.
In some instances, the new providers are community schools and in these cases the
Council will continue to be the employer of the staff transferring, but their line
management arrangements change. The Council is working with providers to ensure
that staff will continue to be employed on their existing terms and conditions including
their current contractual hours of work.
Part 2 of the report provides additional information on this issue.
9.3
Procurement
Although grant awards are not dealt with in the procurement regulations, the process
adopted for the Youth and Play Programme has followed the rules of fairness and
transparency which incorporated seeking expression of interest, initial assessment,
invitation to submit final proposals, evaluation based on an evaluation criteria that was
available to all interested parties, the selection and now this final award decision.
Following on Phase 1 selection process and lessons learned, this time community
involvement has been additionally enhanced by the postal vote process. This ensured
stronger, more qualitative impact from community members and service users. New
formula for social value/ additional community benefits have been used. This particular
aspect of organisations’ proposals have been evaluated by local community vote only,
without relying on traditional panel evaluation. Young Lambeth Council representative
has been included in the professional panel evaluation process to enhance the panel
evaluation.
Ward Councillors and members of the local community have also been invited to take
part in the on-site evaluation events with organisations presentations thereby capturing
the synergy between robust, risk focused professional evaluation and democratic
process with wide community engagement.
9.4
Health
Activities on sites aim to provide positive impact on children’s health and wellbeing.
Safeguarding is robustly evaluated as part of the selection process. The selected
providers demonstrated requisite knowledge and expertise in managing services on site.
The service meets the priorities of the health and wellbeing strategy by allowing children
to play in a safe environment.
Any Other Implications
9.5
Insurance - the buildings will stay within the Council’s corporate insurance and the
premiums will be deducted at source before the grants are paid to the organisations. The
Head of Insurance has issued detailed insurance guidelines and policy documents which
have been reviewed by the organisations. The insurance guidelines made it clear that
organisations are responsible for ensuring all other insurance provisions (such as
employer’s liability) are in place. The Implementation Plan requires all organisations to
participate in a training session which will include a section on insurance and the Head of
Insurance will assist in the sign off process for organisations to progress from the signing
of the agreements to Activity Commencement.
9.6 Facilities management - the organisations will use the corporate facilities contracts and the
costs will be deducted at source. The Head of Facilities Management has prepared a
Facilities Management welcome pack for each organisation and these will be issued during
implementation. Facilities Management is included as a section on the training session
mentioned above.
9.7 Ongoing Monitoring: • There will be an ongoing monitoring system and this is detailed in the Grant
Funding agreement. The first formal monitoring will take place 90 days after Activity
Commencement date and will include inter alia, Health & Safety checks;
Safeguarding review; financial reviews; Service Delivery review; and a review of the
Governance and reference group arrangements.
• During the first 90 days the service providers will receive tailored transitional
support. The first review will be done in conjunction with the Commissioning Team.
Specialist areas, such as Health & safety, safeguarding will involve the relevant
specialist areas within the Council either corporately or at a departmental level.
• Organisations have been issued with the Quarterly Monitoring Schedule to make it
clear from the onset, the level of rigor that will be included in this process. Where
the monitoring shows areas of weaknesses or concerns a rectification plan will be
developed and agreed. Organisations will be given time to remedy the issue, as
the grant payments are subject to results of the monitoring and the subsequent
actions taken to resolve the issues. It is to be noted that the Grant agreement does
outline that Fundamental breaches will give rise to immediate termination of the
agreement and the accompanying lease.
10.
Timetable for implementation
10.1
It is envisaged that agreements will be signed with all providers by 31 May 2014.
10.2
Performance will be monitored quarterly with formal performance review process
focusing on the service outcomes.
Audit trail
Consultation
Name/Position
Sandra Morrison,
Cooperative Transitions
Director
Maria Millwood,
Commissioning Director
Jonh Chance, Account
Manager
Andrew Pavlou
Legal Services
Tim Stephens
Democratic Services
Rachel Willsher
Frank Higgins
Councillor Rachel Heywood
Lambeth
cluster/division or
partner
Co-operative Business
Development
Date Sent
Date
Received
04/04/14
08/04/14
Commissioning
08/04/14
09/04/14
Business Partnering
04/04/14
08/04/14
Para 3.0
Governance and
Democracy
Governance and
Democracy
Procurement
Strategic Finance
Cabinet Member:
Children and Families
08/04/14
08/04/14
Para 4.1
08/04/14
08/04/14
Throughout
31/01/14
09/04/14
08/04/14
31/01/14
09/04/14
08/04/14
Throughout
Throughout
Report history
Original discussion with Cabinet Member
Report deadline
Date final report sent
Report no.
Part II Exempt from Disclosure/confidential
accompanying report?
Key decision report
Date first appeared on forward plan
Key decision reasons
Background information
Comments in
para:
27.01.14
n/a
n/a
n/a
Yes
Yes
17.01.13
2. Expenditure, income or savings in excess of
£500,000
3. Meets community impact test
None
Appendices
None
APPROVAL BY OFFICER OR CABINET MEMBER IN ACCORDANCE WITH SCHEME OF
DELEGATION
I confirm I have been consulted on this report:
Signature ______________________________________ Date ________________
Sandra Morrision, Director of Cooperative Transitions
I confirm I have consulted the relevant Cabinet Members, including the Leader of the
Council (if required), and approve the above recommendations:
Signature ______________________________________ Date ________________
Cllr Rachel Heywood, Cabinet Member for Children and Families
Any declarations of interest (or exemptions granted):
Issue
Interest declared