Agenda item

Consideration was given to the Unity Partnership Limited Annual Report for 2019/20. 

Unity Partnership (the Company) was a separately legal entity that was governed under the regulations laid down in the Companies Act and within the Articles of Association for the Company.  There were regular updates on service delivery, financial reporting and performance provided to the directors of the company at Board meetings and periodically to the Shareholder Committee, which also considered matters and decision that were reserved to the Shareholders.

There was a requirement to deliver a summary of Company key activity and performance to Shareholders following the end of the year.  This was separate to the formal Annual Return and Full Company Accounts for a Limited Company which was required to be sent to Companies House as directed under the Companies Act 2006.

A consolidated End of Year Annual Report has now been produced for the full 2019/20 period which had been considered and approved by the  Board of Directors and shared with the Shareholder Committee. 

The following was highlighted to members:

·         2019/20 had been a successful year with a change in culture from profit driven to service delivery;

·         In financial terms, a dividend of £1.35m had been generated; in addition to a saving of £250k;

·         Highways Design, Engineering and Traffic Network had a very large capital programme;

·         Response to service requests had fallen due to the impact of COVID but was now back up to 90%;

·         Property management were designing strategy to rationalise assets and delivery major schemes;

·         Council tax and business rate collection was below target, extra resources had been brought in.  COVID had made collection more challenging and would be a major focus;

·         A new payroll system was due to come int services, the implementation had been delayed due to COVID but should be in place in November;

·         IT had been delivered and included deployment of new pcs and Office 365 which had enabled home working; and

·         Unity had employed 19 apprentices and 17 work experience placements which had been successful.

COVID-19 had impacted on a few projects which had been put on hold and affected income.  The year had set a strong foundation for future delivery with most performance objectives achieved with exceptions.

Members asked about the implementation of the new payroll system and the costs incurred in terms of the previous A1 system.  The information was not available.  The biggest issue was the transfer of data between systems. There would be two parallel runs before going live in November.  If the run in October did not work, this would be re-evaluated.  Until there was a successful run, the new system would not go live.  Members questioned if all payroll would be transferred at the same time and it was clarified that the Council and teaching payroll would go live together.  MioCare and Unity may be postponed.

Members asked about the significant rise in sickness due to mental health and stress and the possible cause.  Members were informed that health and wellbeing was promoted.  The particular reason was not known, but there was a lot of face-to-face contact and training had been introduced on the protection of staff.  This had changed since COVID with remote.  The sickness issue was being reviewed.

Members sought and received clarification on the purchase of Unity.

Members congratulated Unity on the quality of services addressing flooding and highways.

Members sought information on the collection of debts and how this was being addressed.  Members were informed that reminders were currently being sent.  Enforcement services were not currently taking place.  Unity was ensuring that resources were available to ensure that benefit changes were processed quickly.  The Council were working with Unity to address the issue of collection rates which was in a challenging position as the normal process could not be pursued.  There was an initiative to be proactive in text messaging with reminders to pay.  There was a payment holiday if needed in April, May and June but payments recommenced in July and reminders were being sent.  In overall terms, performance on collection was not one of the highest and did require a lot of effort to work collaboratively to put improvements in place.  It was noted that there were more people entitled to benefits and the amount of council tax to be collected reduced.

RESOLVED that the Unity Partnership Limited End of Year Reports including the summary of performance be noted.