The Community Development and Equalities Manager and the Chair of the Thurrock Fairness Commission Board introduced the report explaining that in April 2014 Cabinet agreed to establish a Fairness Commission for Thurrock as recommended by the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee Task and Finish Group. The Fairness in Thurrock Review made a number of recommendations to progress a Fairness Commission as the most relevant mechanism for progressing equalities in Thurrock. From its first meeting the Fairness Commission highlighted the need to understand more about local perceptions of fairness. The Commission undertook a ‘Summer of Listening’ from June – October 2015, capturing over 300 comments from events across the Borough, along with 200 responses to an on-line survey.

The Committee were informed that one resident representative left the Fairness Commission shortly after its first meeting. It was not possible to fill the post for a disability group representative, something the Commission had aimed to achieve. 

The Commission made a number of recommendations and would be formally requesting agencies working in Thurrock to respond. Thurrock Council endorsed the recommendations made by Thurrock’s Fairness Commission and the following initial response was likely to result in the following actions.

·                    Principles of Fairness - The Council will support by issuing press releases, publicising the principles and promoting the process to support residents who have reason to complain about something against the principles.

·                    Strengthening Communities - The Council will arrange a summit of partners to consider how best to design a campaign. This will include businesses and the potential for inward investment. It will also include Stronger Together a partnership supporting asset based community development of which the Council is a partner.

·                    Improved Communications - Thurrock Council will be developing a new Customer Service Strategy in 2016. The strategy will be informed by recommendation 1 and 3.

·                    Residents Survey - Thurrock Council agrees that a regular survey would support policy development and will be exploring the feasibility of this in the coming months.

·                    To provide feedback to those consulted – The Council will publish the report on the website.

·                    Review Thurrock’s Single Equality Scheme – The Council welcomes the observations provided by the Commission and will be reviewing the Single Equality Scheme accordingly.

Councillor Stewart queried whether the recommendations made by the Thurrock Fairness Commission board were seen as the Councils difficulties. The Community Development and Equalities Manager explained that the recommendations were formed on residents perception of the borough not just Council services, it was added that these perceptions were usually due to a lack of knowledge.

Councillor Liddiard agreed with the recommendations and proposed that if implemented the Council must ensure that different service areas emphasize fairness but avoid duplicating workloads.

Councillor Snell asked Chair of the Thurrock Fairness Commission Board to explain what fairness meant to the residents of Thurrock, It was explained to the committee that feedback from direct engagements was gathered together with survey results received during the course of the online consultation.  The key themes that emerged from the Summer of Listening campaign were:

·                                 The environment – the look and feel of the Borough

·                                 A growing population

·                                 Activities for children, young people and families

·                                 Public transport

The Committee commended the Thurrock Fairness Commission Board on their hard work.

The Committee felt that communication was a key issue between residents and the Council. The Chair of the Committee felt that the recommendations were something that the Council should already be adhering too, it was added that the residents of Thurrock should not need to complete a survey to enforce changes.

Councillor Stewart queried how confident departments were when looking to extend workloads to ensure that these recommendations were adhered to. All Senior Officers confirmed that these recommendations were already practiced in their workload but agreed that this was a helpful boost to emphasise fairness.

The Chair of the Committee felt cautious about setting objectives and priorities formed upon small percentage of data. Chair of the Thurrock Fairness Commission Board explained that the percentage of people who completed the survey at the event was very high it was added that it would be difficult to receive the opinion of the whole community. The Head of Strategy and Communications felt that this was reflected in the wording of the ‘Residents Survey’ recommendation which recognised that fairness was a borough wide issue for many which would require methodology and resources, it was added that the ‘Summer of Listening’ had given confidence in the quality of data due to the quantity of information collated in a small timeframe, which could be used to build upon questionnaires such as the residents survey.

Councillor Stewart questioned if the Council could look at complaints reviews to examine the difficulties and source where there had been a lack of communication. It was also questioned if the complaints coincided with the perceptions of the residents from the Fairness survey and whether this data could be used to broaden the survey to save expenditure on other surveys. The Head of HR, OD & Customer Strategy explained that there was already a complaints service review in place, but added that the Fairness Commission was looking for a broader approach of the borough rather than just residents who had experienced difficulties with the Council. The Committee were informed that the Council could look to integrate data from the Fairness Commission Survey in relation to complaints regarding poor communication and lack of response.

Councillor Liddiard suggested that a working report which presented methodology, expenditure and savings, would be helpful to Members.

Councillor Snell felt that there was greater need to focus on what the fairness commission was.

Members voted unanimously in favour of the recommendation, the following observations were agreed by the committee for Cabinet to consider;

·                    That the outreach of the Fairness Commission was just 0.18% of Thurrock residents, and therefore there are risks that it would be premature to adjust strategies and priorities for the council with limited data.

·                    Directors and Heads of Service confirmed that the findings that had been collated mimic existing council priorities and do not present a strategic direction change requirement for any Directorate.

·                    The intent behind the word “fairness” should be clarified, and be made contextual and relevant to a community before it can be expected that many residents would engage with a survey.

·                    The Committee felt that further work on this project is endorsed by Cabinet to allocate more resource to the project, the Committee questioned over what the Commission is seeking to achieve differently from what is in place now, given most of the work streams emerging are related to better outward communication and are, at this stage, only useful as an indicator that existing corporate priorities are aligned to what the data returns are telling the Council.

RESOLVED:

That the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee noted the contents of the report and gave consideration to how the Council responds to the recommendations detailed at 3.8 prior to the report being presented at Cabinet in February 2016.