SPA CHIEF EXECUTIVE’S REPORT

Members considered the report which detailed activities involving SPA corporate staff since the previous Authority Meeting. Lynn Brown (LBrown) highlighted a number of key points as detailed in the paper and shared a number of key outcomes from the recent SPA staff survey: improvements across all 8 headings compared with the last survey, 95% overall return rate, 90% agreeing SPA was a good place to work, and 100% had discussed the skills required for their job. The only reduction was good work/life balance which had reduced to 87% and can be attributed in part to carrying vacancies across the org. The surveys have taken place for the last three years so there is now data available which identifies improvements. SPA will look to benchmark against its results against other organisations.

In discussion the following matters were raised:
• Mary Pitcaithly, Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee Chair, noted that the statutory responsibility for Best Value lies with CCFarrell and SPA’s role is to oversee it through the Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee. The last Committee expressed concern on the time taken to build resource to deal with the area, and the Committee intends to monitor this to ensure it becomes properly resourced to allow CCFarrell to fulfil her statutory responsibility.
• In relation to the HMICS Review, LBrown advised there was only one recommendation, to monitor progress on areas for development, and progress will be scrutinised through the Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee.

The Authority RESOLVED to:
• NOTE the report.