Agenda item

L Roberts introduced the report and advised that they did start to see the impact of Covid-19 towards the end of March. She said they continued to monitor and address issues around sickness through the scrutiny panel. She advised that a Health and Wellbeing Questionnaire was circulated to all staff to understand how they’re feeling and the responses were due to be analysed. The response rate was 47%.

With regards to ICT and digital services, she said we were very dependent on them at the moment and the use of Microsoft Teams had been very successful. She advised that our website user statistics were similar to the previous quarter but they expected that to increase with the offices being closed.

The Chairman asked if we had confirmed Covid-19 cases in DBC. L Roberts replied she couldn’t be sure but if we did have confirmed cases it would have only been a couple.

Councillor Tindall said he understood we had recruited a Climate Emergency Officer and asked for more details. M Brookes advised an offer of appointment had been made to an internal individual that had a lot of experience but he couldn’t give any more information at this stage.

Councillor Taylor referred to page 47 regarding robotic process automation and asked for more information. L Roberts explained they had run some pilot projects but these had been delayed due to having to pause for 8 weeks because of Covid-19. She said as of this week they were restarting and one of the projects had successfully posted 25,000 historical records on to the housing system which had proved extremely valuable. She advised that two of the other projects were in finance; one was how to code utility bills and the other related to invoice numbering. The final project was the most complex and related to case work on a multitude of systems. She said this would save a lot of officer time, particularly those in the Environmental Health team.

Councillor Taylor asked how co-operative departments were of automating their services. L Roberts advised there was a slight hesitation at first but actually the response had been fantastic and because of the success of remote working during the pandemic, she felt that departments weren’t as scared of the changes anymore.

The Chairman asked if there was a plan for staff to start returning to work. L Roberts explained that they were still encouraging staff to work from home as much as possible, particularly those without childcare provision due to school closures. She advised that B Hosier had been preparing the building for reopening in July to ensure we comply with social distancing measures.

M Brookes added that they will be limiting the amount of people in the building at one time and producing rotas for each service. A full list of measures can be found in the forthcoming Cabinet report.

Councillor Tindall queried if it was cost effective to open The Forum if we don’t have to. M Brookes advised that we were trying to comply with Government guidance in terms of giving staff the ability and option to work where they want to. He said they hadn’t looked at it as a cost benefit exercise. He added that any costs incurred were good health and safety investments for the future.

L Roberts said there had been discussions with Group Managers about learning from lockdown so we can provide flexibility for our staff moving forward.

Outcome:

The report was noted.