Agenda and minutes

Councillor Neal  -  other Council business

None.

Last meeting held on 13 September 2022 (for confirmation)

The Committee agree the minutes of the meeting held on 13 September 2022 as a correct record and they were signed by the Chair.

Report of Corporate Director of Growth and City Development

Councillor Longford, Portfolio Holder for Energy, Environment and Waste Services introduced the report.

Dave Nicoll, CRES Customer Service and Transformation Manager, and Wayne Bexton, Director for Carbon Reduction, Energy and Sustainability, presented the report and highlighted the following:

(a)  EE Monitor Manufacture, Supply and Development

·  Nottingham City Council (NCC) owns and operates the largest district heating network in the UK. The network serves around 5,000 domestic properties and 120 commercial properties. 95% of the domestic properties on the network currently have an outdated prepayment solution installed, which is over 18 years old. Parts to repair the systems are now obsolete and the software is no longer supported. Customers only have a small number of shops in the area at which they can top up, and this is leading to them having to travel some distance to top up their prepayment device;

·  a decision by the Executive Board to bring Enviroenergy Ltd in to the Council recognised a requirement to upgrade this domestic metering and billing system, and funding was allocated within the Council’s capital programme, enabling commencement in 2022/23 to deliver this transition;

·  NCC has worked with a supplier to develop a prepayment metering solution for heat networks - this solution is called the EE Monitor, and has successfully helped other local authorities and housing associations across the UK to purchase and install the EE Monitor solution into properties they are the supplier of heat for;

·  the EE Monitor has become a commercial success since its inception, being fitted in 3,000 homes across the UK at present. As the demand for more heat networks across the UK grows, so does the opportunity for NCC to provide billing services alongside monitoring, utilising the expert teams within the Enviroenergy department. The EE Monitor is currently installed at Bentinck, Manvers and Kingston Courts in Nottingham and has proved a success;

·  there is now a need for NCC to procure the manufacturer, supplier and developer of the EE Monitor product on a long-term contract basis of 10 years, also enabling the roll out across the district heating estate within Nottingham (approximately 5,000 properties);

·  the existing prepayment metering system on Nottingham Estate is outdated and provides no control to us in managing debt and customer accounts;

·  benefits that the installation of an EE Monitor will have for our citizens and services are:

o  full control over customers’ heating accounts, enabling NCC to clawback existing debt and reduce the number of tenants who can get into debt;

o  better top up options;

o  tenants who require an engineer to manually top up their meter by £250 in order for them to not be allowed to get into debt should no longer require a visit from an engineer every few months;

o  Nottingham One and Victoria Centre have dedicated top up machines which are out of use and cannot be fixed due to requiring obsolete parts;

o  the EE Monitor device will offer all the options you expect to see in 2022, such as direct debit, online,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31.

Report of Corporate Director of Resident Services

Jane Lewis, Community Safety Strategy Manager, presented the report, and stated the following:

·  it was proposed that Nottingham City Council (NCC) commissions a framework of providers through a tender process to deliver provision for domestic and sexual violence and abuse (DSVA) and violence against women and girls (VAWG) (the DSVA / VAWG Framework) on behalf of the Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse Joint Commissioning Group (DSVA JCG);

·  the JCG comprises of the NCC Crime and Drugs Partnership and Public Health, the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, the Violence Reduction Unit, the Integrated Care Board, Changing Futures and Nottinghamshire County Council;

·  the JCG delivers the commissioning element of the ‘Domestic Abuse Act 2021, Part 4’ statutory duty for NCC and reports to the Local Partnership Board for DVA, which is the Crime and Drugs Partnership (CDP) Board;

·  the development of a Public Contract Regulations 2015 regulation 33 framework is recommended in order to ensure that Nottingham City Council is able to select organisations that have been able to demonstrate their qualification to provide specialist DSVA/VAWG services to deliver these services in Nottingham;

·  a framework will also ensure NCC achieve best value (in quality and price) and are compliant with procurement legislation and the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules;

·  the DSVA/VAWG Framework will enable NCC CDP, as lead commissioner within the DVSA Joint Commissioning Group, to jointly commission DSVA and VAWG services for citizens, the funding for which is provided by NCC Public Health and General Funds, the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) and Integrated Care Board (ICB) secured under a Partnership Agreement between NCC, OPCC and ICB;

·  currently, OPCC and NCC/Public Health each contribute approximately £1m per year. Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities New Burdens Funding to support NCC compliance with its statutory duty fluctuates, but is between £800-900k per year, and other national funding to support provision of DVSA services may become available each year of the framework from government and other sources;

·  in the last 4 years, the proposed life of the Framework, NCC received approximately £4m to commission and grant aid domestic and sexual violence and abuse support services. However, the partnership received a greater amount over this time. NCC has a partnership agreement with OPCC and ICB;

·  it is anticipated that the ICB will review its position on funding for DSVA/VAWG services during the lifetime of the framework, and the Partnership Agreement between NCC, OPCC and ICB will enable ICB funding to be incorporated into the framework;

·  it is anticipated that the DSVA/VAWG Framework will be for a maximum term of 4 years, during which time contracts will be awarded by way of call-off for services required. The Lots for the framework are outlined in appendix 1 to the report.

Resolved

(1)  to approve

(i)  the procurement of a 4-year DSVA/VAWG Multi-Supplier Framework of providers of specialist services to ensure compliant future contracting of these services, at a maximum cost of £5m per year  ...  view the full minutes text for item 32.

Report of Director of Commissioning and Procurement

Councillor Woodings, Portfolio Holder for Adult Social Care and Health, introduced the report.

Prior to discussion, it was stated that the report incorrectly named the responsible Director as ‘Katy Ball - Director of Commissioning and Procurement’, when it should state responsibility laid with ‘Sara Storey - Director for Adult Health Social Care’.

As Ms Storey was not in attendance, Ms Ball presented the report and stated the following:

·  it was proposed to apply a further temporary increase to the rates paid for adult social care services in 2022-2023, effective from 1 October 2022.

·  this was in response to the current impact of inflationary pressures upon these services and the adult social care market overall.

·  a cost of care exercise was currently underway, with the aim of establishing a sustainable position for the funding of this market for the longer term and the proposed increases would be paid, in part, from the Market Sustainability Funding allocated to Nottingham City Council by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Resolved

(1)  to agree temporary increases to the rates paid for all commissioned adult social care services in 2022-23 of up to 4.25% for residential and nursing care services and 2.99% for community services, backdated to take effect from 1 October 2022;

(2)  to approve expenditure of up to £2.33m on the proposed increases in resolution (1) above, funded in part from the Department of Health and Social Care Market Sustainability Fund allocation to Nottingham City Council.

Reasons for recommendations

Nottingham City Council is obliged to consider the fee rates it pays for its commissioned social care services, and in doing so to take into account a number of factors, within the context of the wider financial position of the Council.  Section 5 of the Care Act 2014 obliges Local Authorities to promote the efficient and effective operation of the market for adult social care as a whole. They must have regard to the need for sufficient services to be available in the area and the importance of sustainability in this market.

The pricing of all adult social care services for 2022-23 was set in March 2022 based on proposals developed during the autumn 2021. These rates were based upon inflationary pressures in November 2021 and therefore did not provide for the significant inflationary increase now being experienced. General inflation is currently having a significant impact upon the care sector, causing providers to struggle to meet costs.

To develop a detailed understanding of the impact of inflation on this market, specific elements of the Consumer Price Index have been applied to the pricing tools that were previously developed to calculate annual inflationary increases. The biggest impact is from energy and fuel, with inflation on these items running at between 17 and 80%. Food inflation is also high at 8.6%. Wage inflation is likely to impact on the longer term National Living Wage (NLW) set annually by government, with wage inflation currently at over 7% in the private sector.

These inflationary pressures mean that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 33.