This content has been automatically generated from the original PDF and some formatting may have been lost. Let us know if you find any major problems.
Text in this format is not official and should not be relied upon to extract citations or propose amendments. Please see the PDF for the official version of the document.
Public Accounts Committee Performance Management Follow Up Review Witness: Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs
Wednesday, 28th June 2023
Panel:
Deputy L.V. Feltham of St. Helier Central (Chair) Deputy M.B. Andrews of St. Helier North (Vice-Chair) Deputy T.A. Coles of St. Helier South
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat of St. Helier North
Mr. P. Taylor , Lay Member
Mr. M. Woodhams , Lay Member
Mr. G. Phipps , Lay Member
In attendance:
Ms. L. Pamment, Comptroller and Auditor General
Witnesses:
Ms. K. Briden, Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs
Mr. P. Horsfall, Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs
[16:00]
Deputy L.V. Feltham of St. Helier Central (Chair):
Welcome to this public hearing of the Public Accounts Committee. Today is Wednesday, 28th June and we are holding a public hearing with the Chief Officer for Justice and Home Affairs as part of our review into performance management. I would like to draw everyone's attention to the following. This hearing will be filmed and streamed live. The recording and transcript will be published afterwards on the States Assembly website. All electronic devices, including mobile phones, should be switched to silent. For the purposes of the recording and transcript, I would be grateful if everyone
who speaks could ensure that you state your name and role. We can begin with introductions. I am Deputy Lyndsay Feltham and I am chair of the Public Accounts Committee. I will ask the committee to introduce themselves.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
My name is Matthew Woodhams . I am a lay member.
Mr. G. Phipps :
My name is Graeme Phipps . I am a lay member as well.
Mr. P. Taylor :
I am Philip Taylor . I am a lay member.
Deputy M.B. Andrews of St. Helier North (Vice-Chair):
I am Deputy Max Andrews , vice-chair of the Public Accounts Committee.
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat of St. Helier North :
Deputy Mary Le Hegarat of St. Helier North , a member of the Public Accounts Committee.
Deputy T.A. Coles of St. Helier South
Deputy Tom Coles of St. Helier South , a member of the Public Accounts Committee.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
And we also have with us ...
Comptroller and Auditor General:
I am Lynn Pamment, the Comptroller and Auditor General in attendance.
Deputy L.V. Feltham : And the officers?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Kate Briden, Chief Officer for Justice and Home Affairs.
Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs:
I am Peter Horsfall, Head of Business Support for Justice and Home Affairs.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Thank you. We do only have an hour, so it is a fairly short hearing. We would appreciate it if you could keep your answers as concise as possible. I am going to hand off to Deputy Andrews first off.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
Thank you very much, Chair. Starting off with the first question area on objective setting and appraisals for all chief officers, firstly, looking at the department, what are your corporate objectives for 2023?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
We have got a suite of corporate objectives in terms of key performance indicators. Health and safety, making sure that we manage our people well and that we stick to our indicators; that is my first objective. My second one is about leadership and culture in the department. The third is focused on the ministerial plan, so particularly investment in our services at the moment. The fourth is building a safer community. The fifth is recovery from the major incidents work, which is very much a cross-government effort that is quite focused in our department. The sixth is a particular priority for our Minister, which is youth justice.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
Thank you very much. I would like to understand the relationship between the Chief Executive and yourself as chief officer. How often are you in communication with one another?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Well, we formally meet monthly but we are in communication with each other a lot more than that, so at least weekly if not a couple of times a week. In terms of objective setting, it is a conversation at the beginning of the year and then quarterly. Obviously we are only part the way through the cycle and we are about to change Chief Executive, but quarterly reviews and regular conversations about our priorities and anything that might be threatening them. The formal meeting is monthly with quarterly reviews.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
What process is undertaken in terms of how your objectives are formed at the beginning of the year?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I gathered my objectives partly looking at what last year's objectives were for the role, what the ministerial plan priorities are in the delivery plan and what the focus in my job description needed to be. Obviously you do not put your whole description in there. The 6 I have just read out are the key things that I picked out, put those to Suzanne and we had a good discussion about them. We refined them and also she was interested in how I had set and what I had set as objectives for my people, which I am sure we will come to. It was a good discussion, a good dialogue, really thinking about how we focus on our priorities and then, as I say, we have reviewed that recently at a quarterly review.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
How do you ensure that ministerial priorities are deliverable? When challenges do arise, how do you best address those challenges?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
The setting of the ministerial priorities of course as we came out of the election process last summer and then to what our plan for 2023 would be. That was a very collaborative process with the Minister. Obviously, as you know, our Minister has had a long career in the public sector, had in fact been a member of this committee for a little while and then came in to be Minister. She was quite clear what her priorities were and particularly as we are looking at her taking political responsibility for justice as well as for home affairs, that shaped our approach. We discussed the ministerial plan in the autumn up to its publication as part of the Government Plan process and I drew my objectives from that process, having talked to the Minister about them briefly just to reassure her that mine were in line with her plan.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
Thanks very much. I know you mentioned people and culture briefly just at the beginning. How do you ensure that people are appraised in terms of their performance and how are measures in place so that people can then report back to you within the department?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
My part of the department is about 350 people, so of course that cascades down the pyramid of line management through the different services. They are different services and different professions and they generally have competence frameworks and quite clear structures around what each person needs to do at each level, and that gives me a top-level assurance of how that works. In terms of how we make sure people are delivering, of course that is through their own reviews.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
Okay. In terms of the tiers, in terms of the lines of management, how many tiers are there within the department?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
The formal Government position is there should be 6 tiers, chief officer being tier 1. The heads of service with Justice and Home Affairs are the tier 2s and then it cascades down through the layers. There are professional layers in each of the services and sometimes there are more than one - we would know them as ranks generally - rank in each tier, but there is obviously defined line management arrangements in place in each service.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
Do you believe at the moment that the structure is running effectively or do you think there may be room for improvement in some areas?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I think in most areas it is working effectively. We have made some refinements to the original target operating models that were put in place in 2019 or 2020 in recent months. For example, one of the changes that had happened in that target operating model is for many of the services we had taken deputy head of service posts out. In the main, we have generally put them back in and that is not a reversal of an efficiency for the sake of it. It was genuinely demonstrated that we needed that layer in for a variety of reasons. That is the sort of change we have made but other than that, as I say, the professional structures, the rank structures are pretty formulaic and they work well.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
Also with the ministerial priorities, how do you link those into your personnel objectives as well?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
It is clear on the face of them how they are linked. Particularly the building a safer community is something that our Minister is very passionate about and that is something that I spend a fair proportion of my time on. Making sure that the front-line services are funded and are effective and efficient is a statutory responsibility between the Minister and many of the heads of service and it is obviously one of my priorities as well. That is where a lot of our focus goes. We meet weekly with the Minister and then ad hoc when we need to and also I join her for certain topical meetings as well. We make sure that we review quarterly things like finance risk and performance with the Minister.
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
If we are looking at the States Assembly, it is a 4-year term. Do you believe there will be any changes when we are looking at, say, performance management within the remit of Home Affairs?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
In terms of performance management of our people or of our key indicators?
Deputy M.B. Andrews :
In terms of your people within the organisation.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Well, I think as we embed the Connect Perform system that will bring about a good degree of change. It will take us in a good direction. The quality of the conversations is the real focus for me. The system helps us manage that but it is not the be all and end all. I think we will benefit from being able to use that system in a way that is much more suitable for our services than the previous system was. So I think there will be improvements. Well, there will be improvements, but that would be one we think there would be.
Deputy M.B. Andrews : Good to hear. Thank you.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
I am now going to pass on to Graeme.
Mr. G. Phipps :
I am just going to dig a little deeper into how this actually works in conversations. To what extent do items discussed during your quarterly appraisal process, yourself and above and likewise with the direct reports ... how do these relate to performance objectives agreed to at the start of the year?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
For mine it is effectively a quarterly review with the Chief Executive. We looked at the objectives we had set at the beginning of the year. We had them on the screen in front of us in Connect Perform during the meeting and the person who was supporting the Chief Executive in doing that was taking notes as the Chief Executive and I were having a conversation about it that went directly into my record, which is a good way to do it. It is a new way to do it. We did not have that functionality on the old system, so we are just getting used to that. For the people that report directly to me, I have had more regular informal conversations but I will do a mid-year review with them rather than a quarterly review. They are all coming up in the next couple of weeks and I will try and do the same approach with them.
Mr. G. Phipps :
The same process where it is very clear and obvious?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes, so using the system. It is clear what that objective is and then it is clear what the update on it is.
Mr. G. Phipps :
How do your conversations during your quarterly appraisals differ from your regular conversations you have about performance and delivery in your regular meetings, both above and below?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
The regular meeting would be more what is on my mind, what is on the Chief Executive's mind, what we have been dealing with, what I think is a threat to achieving an objective and more topical things. They are generally still focused on the priorities because that is what we are effectively delivering but they are not with Connect Perform open in front of us really focusing on: "That is your objective. How is it going?" That is my experience of my quarterly performance review with the outgoing Chief Executive. That was very focused and we deliberately only talked about what was in my Connect Perform objectives plan and sort of ring-fenced ourselves to make sure we talked about that and not the topical issues of the day.
Mr. G. Phipps :
You are comfortable with that kind of mix and match sort of thing?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes. I think that works well and when I do the mid-year reviews with my team in the next few weeks I will do the same. I will say: "We have 1½ hours. We are only going to talk about your objectives and your development in this session." As I say, we remain focused on that.
Mr. G. Phipps :
Okay, thanks. I will pass it on now.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Just before we move on, you mentioned in one of your answers just then that in your appraisal that you have with the Chief Executive there was a note-taker present. Did the presence of the note- taker have any effect on the type of conversation that you were able to have?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
No, I do not think so. I think it is a very positive thing. So, I do not think it is a negative effect, I actually think that is a positive effect because it enabled me and Suzanne to concentrate on the discussion, the dialogue running through each of the objectives and neither of us having to really focus on note taking. The note-taker was able to enter the information live, effectively. We have captured the discussion straight on to the system without anyone having to write up the details afterwards. Now, Suzanne will go in and write her appraisal of me, reviewing that information, but the exchange of evidence was captured live and I think that is a really good way to do it. It is the way I was used to doing it in a previous role and it is a way I would like to emulate when I do my reviews of my people. It relies, of course, on the person that is in there as a note-taker being trusted by both parties and it would not necessarily be a model that we would easily implement across the whole of government quickly, but personally I think at our level it is really good to have that approach.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
That approach currently is just used at your level with the Chief Executive. It is not something that is done ...
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I obviously cannot speak for other departments.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
... within your department?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
It is not yet something we do in our department but I would like to introduce it.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Just before we leave the appraisals and linked to that, what support is available to yourself and other senior officers during objective setting and the appraisals process?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
We have just introduced a new system and of course there was a lot of support around that system, so the more mechanical how you use it. It is very different to the previous one. It is much more intuitive. It guides you through it much more effectively, so to a certain extent the system itself is more supportive. There was then a lot of products, of course, because of the Connect programme, of online learning and there is quite a lot of quick and easily accessible guides. Each department also has, as you will be aware, a number of subject matter experts and super users. Peter was one of those and he has been on all the business engagement forums for that, so he has helped me out a couple of times when I got stuck. We also have our training and development manager in the business support unit who has also helped not just me but lots of people - we know there have been some glitches in the system, of course - to help us get through those glitches. So it is the technical side of things really. What the new system does is explain much more effectively what a smart objective is, how to do it and how to write it. It gives you much better prompts around your work objectives and your development objectives. Then very importantly, but briefly because I think it is probably a question later, the competence frameworks for our professions, as I have mentioned, are really important to me in supporting people putting their objectives together because it links everything together for our people. There are a number of different ways of gaining support.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Thank you. Just for clarity for the record, the business support unit that you referred to, that is within your department?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes. It is Justice and Home Affairs Business Support Unit.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Thank you. I will hand over to Matt.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
Obviously your objectives are all based on trying to make sure that you can deliver the Government strategy and it is successful. The Government strategy is based on trying to close off risks that Jersey faces.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs: Yes.
[16:15]
Mr. M. Woodhams :
I love things in 3s. Every chief officer I ask about things in 3s. What are the top 3 risks that you manage through your objectives?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
The top 3 risks at the top of our risk register are lack of major incident cover for medics on the ground, which is a risk raised through the ambulance team; the high demand on fire safety resource, which is a suite of risks around fire safety; and also a risk around succession talent and workforce. The one that shows on the risk register ...
Mr. M. Woodhams :
Could you just explain that last one a little bit?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes. The specific one that shows as the mostly highly scored on the risk register is about fire and rescue but obviously we have risks of that ilk across the department. They are the top 3 and what we have done over a number of years is built a really good understanding of where our risks are in the department. Peter is the head of risk, one of his many hats, for the department. What we see reflected there is that when the Minister started last summer, this time last year, we said: "These are our risks. We would recommend that you build your Government Plan priorities and your ministerial priorities around addressing these risks." So that converted into investment business cases for investment in ambulance and fire and rescue, which was supported through the Government Plan last year and are now being implemented. I think there is a good link between the risks we are most concerned about, the investment in the ministerial plan and my own objectives. As you heard, one of them is overseeing the significant investment in those services and making sure that we are in due course mitigating those risks and delivering on the investment. It will take time. They are long programmes of work, sort of 4, 5, 6 years for each of those services.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
When you are looking at those risks and the management of the risks, what is the process of using your objectives to manage those risks? How practically do you manage them?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I think the practical thing is reverting back to my objectives and thinking: "Am I spending the right proportion of my time on the right things?" Particularly in a quite reactive department like Justice and Home Affairs, we will often get lots of things flying in at us and, of course, the major incidents in December and January were the really headline examples of that. Trying to focus back in ...
Mr. M. Woodhams :
Just to go back, what is the planning process you use to manage those risks?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Sorry. We use the electronic risk management system. Each service will use that to regularly review their risks. Peter will then review them at the departmental level and work with the government-wide risk group. We then present those risks to the Minister every quarter as well, the risks and the mitigations and what our progress is on reducing those risks and mitigating them. Hopefully that answers the question better.
Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs:
The system helps, if I can just interject. What we have got is varying levels of maturity of a checkpoint system that we have mitigations tracked, we have got the risk aligned with the Government Plan funding. So we are looking at if we have got the target and a residual and we look at how we can reduce the risk level over the period of the Government Plan with controls and mitigations in there associated with the funding.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
You have got set objectives and testable outcomes?
Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes. So there is controls in there, there is mitigations in there. What that does is ... I attend each of the different service S.L.T.s (senior leadership teams) and then there is a specific item on risk within those S.L.T.s and particularly within fire and ambulance they spend a significant period of time making sure ... having a conversation around the risk, saying: "What are we doing about it? Do we think the likelihood and probability are the same? Are the mitigations working? If they are not, what do we need to do?" What has happened as a result of the Government Plan investment is the conversation has changed. We are now talking about how can we make sure that the money is spent, demonstrate the money is being spent and it is having a significant impact and reducing the overall risk level. If that is not happening, then you say "why?". There is that regular challenge and record to make sure that we are using the money. We can demonstrate we are using the money to lower the risk level.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
Overall, you obviously want to have a good year to be able to have successes. What are the indicators that you would have to say: "My department has had a cracking year"? How would you know that?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
We have quite a big suite of key performance indicators in Justice and Home Affairs.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
Yes, I know you have those. What is it you would see that would say to you: "Yes, we have had a good year"?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Given the situation we are in at the moment, it would almost certainly be good recruitment and delivery against those business cases to see ambulance and fire and rescue fulfilling the plan we have set out for them and beginning to make those changes we need to make. That would be my key.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
So it is having that change at the staffing level. To get to that wonderful point, fantastic. What is going to stop you getting there?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Getting the right quality and quantity of people on seats is the real challenge and that is more about ... that is a number of different factors. That is not a recruitment is really hard and there is lots of delays. It is just summoning up the right number of paramedics and firefighters is really quite difficult and so we are experiencing a little bit of lag in that recruitment. We are putting lots of effort into it but that is one of the problems that would stop us getting there.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
So it is the mechanism, the lengthy process, there is a limited pool?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes, exactly. Paramedic science, for example, is now at least a 2-year if not 3-year degree programme in the U.K. (United Kingdom) and so it is difficult for us to recruit on-Island and find people who are ready to commit to that. It is not impossible but it is difficult. There is a limited pool or we are having to attract already trained professionals to come here and there are limitations with that.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
Is that challenge recorded as a risk within the system?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes. The longer description of the succession risk and recruitment risk for fire and rescue is that we place that out and there are other risks in other parts for other services as well. It is a common concern.
Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs:
That is directly related to obviously the workforce plan and is in fact one of our top 3 priorities. The priority in our workforce plan is developing a resourcing and recruitment strategy that then targets and makes sure that we are getting bums on seats and it is starting to work, is it not, to be fair? With the prison recently, for example, where there is stuff ... they are looking further for stuff comes into play. Things like Susie Richardson, the prison governor, has recently been quite prolific on social media, so it is starting to present and give more of a vision and a feel of what it looks like to be in the service and the recruitment campaign at the prison has been relatively successful. I think it is because of that more rounded view. Within a small Island it is always going to be difficult to attract the number of people but it is starting to ... having that approach is working.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
That hopefully means at your appraisal you can say: "I have hit all my objectives and we have filled every role."
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs: Yes, that would be good.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Given the conversation that we have just had on risks and that recruitment and retention and staffing, given those risks which sound like they could be issues, but you can verify that or not.
Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs:
They are actually recorded as issues. It is risk and issues and we have chosen the 3 highest, which are issues.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Okay. Can you tell us a bit more about what the impact of that is on outcomes in terms of services and providing services?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
If we take ambulance as an example, we had a review by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives the year before last and then a demand and capacity review last year into this year. That gave us the evidence to back the business case and prove that we needed the investment, but what it shows is that the demand is outstripping the capacity, so we do have concerns about not meeting some of our performance targets in ambulance and we do need more people on the road. That is a real tangible effect. We have mitigation plans in place and obviously the ambulance team are managing it to the best extent they can while we get the new recruitment done. Some of it is a tangible effect and some of it is a heightened risk. For fire and rescue, for example, we know some of that investment is around how we would respond to a high rise residential fire, for example. At the moment we do not have enough people to deploy to that. We would, of course, deploy and we do our very best but that is a sort of latent risk that is not presenting yet, touch wood, but could in fact become an issue. So that is just trying to be brief in terms of the ways that we are carrying risk while we address that.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
A quick question. When you have that very specific risk which has a potentially very serious impact, where does it get escalated and how?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
That one is entwined in the top 3. As Peter said, they are in the issues part of the register rather than the risk part. That has been escalated to E.L.T. (Executive Leadership Team) level and it was featured in my end of year review and then my objective-setting conversation with the Chief Executive and of course it is very much on the ministerial agenda as well. The heads of service in each of J.H.A. (Justice and Home Affairs) services meet with the Minister quarterly. It is deliberately timed just before her scrutiny session with the appointment there, because we are normally in there, the Children, Education and Home Affairs Panel, and so they have a direct brief to the Minister as well. It is not just coming from me. For that one, for example, the chief fire officer will be explaining to the Minister what he is doing to mitigate that risk in the meantime and then explaining how he is getting on with delivering on his Government Plan business case.
Mr. G. Phipps :
One quick question. You have mentioned the problems in recruiting and shortage of staff. How do the people of Jersey sleep at night knowing that given these concerns that you have got enough backup or enough fallback or plans in place? You are going to fix it over the long term, but in the short term they sleep okay.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes, it is troublesome and that is the justification for the business case and the investment in the Government Plan. In the meantime we have very good services that are very good at what they do. They turn out, they will show up and they will do their very best. I would not want to call into question any ... I would not want to create new worry in describing the issues that we think need to be addressed because we have good solid performance from each of those services, but it does need improving. Professional standards generally, particularly in fire and rescue, have only continued to increase at a point where our workforce has remained fairly flat, so we need to close the gap. That is what we are doing. It is not a disaster that needs rescuing. It is an improvement that needs to be done.
Deputy M. R. Le Hegarat :
Can I, on the back of that, ask if there is any consultation in relation to the risks of high rises that you bring to the attention of those that then go through planning process to build high rises?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes. The fire and rescue service work closely with building control. It can be improved and the fire safety team in fire and rescue has recently had some extra people taken on pending substantive recruitment specifically to address some of that, getting ahead, getting upstream. It is not just about responding if something happens, exactly as you have posed the question. It is about prevention and that is very much at the heart of what the fire and rescue service do and we have just added some extra investment in that area exactly so that they can strengthen their workings with planning and with building control.
Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs: That is good news as the planning officer.
Mr. P. Taylor :
I might just go off-piste a little bit. Systems are great but they do not improve performance. They are just a tool. It is humans and their behaviour and how teams work that make all the difference. How many people have you got in your team?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
The total departmental team under me is about 350 people. In our immediate senior leadership team it is about 12 people, maybe slightly more if we include our business partners.
Mr. P. Taylor :
How do you feel about that? Is it too many?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
No, I think that is right because they are the heads of service of quite a range of different functions and then it is the business support team that we referred to earlier who provide support to those services.
Mr. P. Taylor :
It is quite a responsibility, though, of being head of 12 different units effectively in there. How are you personally prepared yourself in the way that you conduct those activities? You are mentoring, coaching, training but you have to prioritise 12 people.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes. The S.L.T., that number of 12 includes a number of business partners who work with J.H.A. but are not directly line managed by me. My mid-year performance conversations will extend to about 7 or 8 of those people, so that does take preparation time, of course it does. I have good working relationships with all of that team. I will make sure I find time to make sure that we prepare properly for their mid-year reviews. Well, they will do the mainstay of the preparation first. We will have that good quality and focused conversation and that will give us protected time to talk about it.
Mr. P. Taylor :
How is the immediate team performing?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I think very well. We have got lots of areas of development and when we look at our key performance indicators we see that there are a number that we are not meeting and we are very conscious of that and we talk about it. I talk to them about it on a one-to-one basis in particular and we will make sure we have got improvement plans in place.
Mr. P. Taylor :
You said the wider team was 350?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
The total departmental headcount under me is about ... well, it is 345.
Mr. P. Taylor :
It is just that according to the annual report and accounts, which must be true, there is 728 employees in Justice and Home Affairs.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
There is but there are 2 accountable officers. I cannot do the maths between the 700 and the 300 figure off the top of my head. The remaining amount is under Robin Smith as Chief of Police as accountable officer.
Mr. P. Taylor :
Okay. How many of your 350-odd are on the new Connect Perform system?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
The latest figures we have - well, they are all on it - is that 326 of 345 have had their objectives set.
Mr. P. Taylor :
How will you ensure that those objectives are consistent with the overall departmental priorities and the performance indicators for everybody are consistent with meeting the departmental priorities?
[16:30]
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
We refer to that as the golden thread, of course, in terms of properly understanding what we are doing. I think that the system we operate now is better than the previous one, which was departmental operational business plans. It is difficult to say, apart from anything else. The system of ministerial plans and then ministerial delivery plans has really helped us, as has the fact that community is one of the common strategic priorities. That is where we fit in terms of the overall mission for the department is for the Island to be safe and feel safe and that community aspect has really helped us build our understanding in our teams of that is where we fit, that is our thread. My objectives are shared with the immediate S.L.T. in J.H.A. that we talked about and then for each of the heads of service, some of their objectives reflect my objectives but some of them, of course, are very specific to them. A number of heads of service have specific statutory duties directly for and on behalf of the Minister and they will be reflected in their objectives and then that will cascade down through the services. One of the things that really helps us in the new system about achieving consistency, as I referred to earlier, is the competency frameworks. We can build in that professional framework into the Connect People system and they will have their specific objectives and areas of focus for that year, their development objectives but also the competencies they are expected to achieve at that level and whatever their stretch might be to achieve to be ready for the next level. We are just getting used to how that works, but for me it is a really big asset in ensuring that we have consistency of approach.
Mr. P. Taylor :
You said that the team was working well, you are pleased.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs: I think so, yes.
Mr. P. Taylor :
There are some metrics that perhaps you are not meeting yet. What is getting in the way?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
There is a number of things. Sorry, you can see us flicking to the page. There is a number that we still have an impact of resourcing; so ambulance response times, for example, we are not meeting them and we know why. I am looking at the chart. There was a big dip last summer in passport processing times, for example, which was covered quite broadly. That is because that demand had peaked in an odd way, having troughed in an odd way due to COVID. We put extra resourcing in there. This year so far looks stable.
Mr. P. Taylor :
Where is the best time for me to apply for a new passport?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Generally in the winter and definitely more than 6 weeks before you want to go on holiday unless you want to pay more for the express service, but we are on top of that now. There have been a number of innovative solutions in there. We have got a secondee from the U.K. passport service over at the moment, for example, which we also did last summer, and because he has got more experience in the more difficult cases he is able to get through those more quickly. So we do address the risks. Yes, that is probably ... there has also been a number in the prison where they were underresourced for some time, affected by COVID, and had lost a number of their vocational and reintegration planning staff. They were not achieving some of their targets but that is now coming back up in terms of amount of activity in the prison and also reintegration targets.
Mr. P. Taylor :
I think you said that nearly 95 per cent of your people are on Connect. There is very few who are not yet. Is that because they have not been as diligent as they should be or because they are not in scope?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
It is 345 in scope, so we are still lagging 19. Some of those are because the emergency services control centre is a mix of those who have been civil servants for some time and those who were, until 1st January, police employees, so their records are still on the police network and the police network at the moment is not compatible ... well, the police access is not compatible with Connect People. We have got a real technical problem there but it does not mean those people have not had their objectives set and they are about to have mid-year reviews. It means they just not on the system yet and so that is the problem with police as well.
Mr. P. Taylor :
That means that they will be on it?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes, absolutely. In the meantime, the same methodology is used off-system to have their objective setting, mid-year reviews and then in due course their end of year reviews.
Mr. P. Taylor :
We can all have objectives and have systems. What matters is the quality of the appraisal.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs: Absolutely, yes.
Mr. P. Taylor :
How are you able to ensure consistency in the appraisal process so that every person has a meaningful appraisal, knows what is expected of them and where they have done well?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
There is a couple of aspects to that, I think. Before My Conversation My Goals, which was the predecessor system, as you know, was introduced, generally our services had a very good structure around what would have been called P.R.A.s (performance and reporting appraisals) at the time and because of those professional frameworks being in place, the need to meet certain standards before they could progress, for example, there was good structure around it and there were good quality conversations. I could not say to you that is 100 per cent consistent. I know we have still got bits where it is not right, where management arrangements have changed or we have got managers who perhaps need some more development in that area and we are focusing on that. We have also had pockets where the services are just so busy it is difficult to get to regular performance conversations and that is something we need to address because we must get in a situation where you can be both busy and have the performance conversations. We have got a couple of pockets like that as well, but I am confident that we are increasingly getting to really good quality conversations that are recorded well and Connect People is a good tool to help us manage that.
Mr. P. Taylor :
That includes appraisal of behaviours and there is good teamwork, which are often the difficult parts of a conversation?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes, absolutely. The focus is on the what, of course, but also on the how and we use the Government of Jersey values and the associated behaviours to have that part of the conversation: people being consistent with the values and are they behaving in a way that we would expect and there is feedback on that.
Mr. P. Taylor :
Before I get slapped on the wrist, I had better pass you back to the Chair.
Mr. G. Phipps :
Just one quick one along that line. To what extent do you incorporate 360 feedback so that people have the ability to not only be appraised but appraise upwards and laterally? Is this something you have considered and implemented at all?
I do not think we do as much as we should. We do not do it as much as I would like and we do not do it as much as I was used to in a previous organisation. At the very senior level, certainly the Chief Executive asked for feedback from the Minister, for example, when she was doing my quarterly performance review. When I was promoted substantively into this role about just over a year ago, I asked my team some feedback questions to help me prepare for that interview. So it happens on an ad hoc basis but it is not built into the system. Well, we do not use it in the system yet, but Connect People gives us a way of doing that and we can use the system to go out and request feedback from our peers and our team, so we are just not using that yet but it will come. I know that the Chief Executive is very keen to encourage her successor to further that and make sure that we have a proper 360 feedback cycle. I think it is extremely valuable for everyone, all the layers of the organisation. To an extent we will get some feedback when we get the results from the Be Heard survey, the staff engagement survey that is underway at the moment. That is another way of getting feedback and I am sure you will have heard of the MC-Cubed tool that will allow us as managers to get some feedback. There are a few different ways but it is not as embedded and useful as I would want it to be yet.
Mr. G. Phipps :
What is preventing you, meaning your group, from doing that, implementing it to the extent you think it would be useful?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I think inconsistency is important and I think we need to do it in a safe way that people will really trust how their information is being used and that takes time to build. I think we will benefit from the tool that the system gives us to do that and to explore that and understand it a bit more. In the meantime we have had pockets of team development activity that has involved 360 feedback on a team, so we have done it but in pockets, not consistently. I will make sure that we do it more.
Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs:
It is worth adding to that we have had the staff government-wide survey that closes this Friday. Kate worked with myself and the people that arrange it and there was a core team that has been set up specifically. That did not have to happen but Kate asked specifically for that happen so that Kate can get that feedback. It is worth noting there is quite a high level psychological safety. As you would imagine, working in an environment where you are dealing with emergencies et cetera, the culture is pretty good. People say it how it is. Some areas of government I do not think are quite at that level but that is fair to say, is it not, Kate?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs: Yes. We will see when we get the results.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
I am going to hand over to Deputy Le Hegarat now.
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :
Obviously, as we have already discussed and a bit of information has been gathered, as you hold responsibility for a number of officers within very different professional areas, how do you ensure that they are meeting professional standards as a part of their appraisal process?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
For each of the heads of the service that report directly to me, I rely on them having their own networks with their professional organisations. For the prison governor, for example, she has ensured that she can attend the prison governors conference in the U.K. and she came back from that recently. She has a mentor through one of those prison governors and I rely on her maintaining her professional links and drawing on her colleagues for testing and checking her thinking and making sure that we are the appropriate standard. We will talk about that when we set her objectives and when we do her mid-year review. Some of it will come on those ... it is a periodic cycle of inspection, extended inspection, and that will help me understand how the leader of that service is doing. We have recently had the peer reviews of the ambulance and fire and rescue services and I got feedback from those reviewers about the chief as well as ... they got it too but for my benefit. That is one way. Well, that is the primary way, actually, is them having their professional networks because I am not a firefighter or a prison governor. I am overseeing them as a generalist and I rely on them making sure that they have proper professional interaction and then we inspect the services on a periodic basis, which helps as well.
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :
This is a bit random. Is there sufficient budget, if you like, for any development of those individuals? As an example, if you then get something back, as in the fire or ambulance review, have you got sufficient to be able to then put them through a development programme if that is needed?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
There is a small amount of money for development in what we call the J.H.A. Directorate, which is the bit that Peter and I manage, effectively, but each head of service will also have their own training, learning and development budget in their service. If a need like that arose, I am sure we would make sure that we found the money from one or the other area because it is important and it would be a priority to ensure investment in them and ongoing performance of the service.
Quite often those budgets relate and quite often are utilised on the people further down the tree and then you do not get the development of the people at the top.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes, absolutely. It is definitely an area of focus for that reason.
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :
How many contractors do you have working within Justice and Home Affairs? How many have you got? When I say contractors, I am thinking about people who might be on contracts. Having been in those environments, quite a lot of people ... how many do you think you have got?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I have not run the figures for today, but every time we look at them we find it is generally a very low amount but they fall into quite different areas. I think if we ran a report now we would see a number would show as contractors but they would be in relation to the major incidents. I think we would see that we have a number of zero-hours contractors who are in the main bank staff for ambulance. I think we would see possibly a very small number of fixed term contracts, some of whom are in the emergency services control room, and there might be one or 2 elsewhere. It is a very small proportion of our staff.
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :
How are they appraised, if you like, because obviously some contracts might be for a short period of time? At what stage do they ... do they fall into the Connect situation or how are they appraised?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
People in what I would put as the third category, so fixed-term contracts, will be treated exactly the same as everyone else as if they were a substantive member of staff. They will have performance appraisals at the appropriate point. People who are zero hours will have a much more light touch approach between them and their manager as to if they are achieving what they need to achieve. A contractor through a professional services arrangement would be managed as part of that contract management arrangement and not through Connect People.
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :
Do you have any as front-line emergency workers, as in fire or ambulance? Is there any contract?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Sorry, the other category would be that there is agency staff in ambulance at the moment, filling some of those periodic gaps and I think we have ... the 2 people who are now in fire safety, we have just started them on contracts.
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :
Those that are recruited through an agency, and you talk about paramedics, who appraises them?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
They will be appraised by the L.A.P. (leading ambulance paramedic) in the same way as the others if they are sustaining ... if they are only here for 4 weeks or something they are not, but we do have some that have been here for a number of months and they would be appraised in the same way as everyone else. I do not know if they would be on the system. I would need to check that but I would expect there to be performance conversations and development conversations, particularly in an area such an ambulance where they have to stay current with clinical governance, we have to be assured they have done all their C.P.D. (continuing professional development) et cetera.
[16:45]
I would expect that conversation to be happening in that way, exactly the same with an agency member of staff as a permanent member of staff, but I would need to check whether agency is on Connect People or not, unless Peter happens to know.
Head of Business Support, Justice and Home Affairs:
There is currently a bit of a lag, quite a lot of lead time because of the uploading, so the system is not as automated because it is being embedded still. It takes time to get people in it. It is not an automated process, so because of that it would surprise me if people ... for example, there was a new starter on Monday, there would be a lead time. I cannot give you that but it would take 6 weeks or something to get in, so that would then have an knock-in effect with you being able to utilise the system.
Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :
I can fully understand that, but it would be more a concern if you have got somebody who then continues to be employed and then all of a sudden, having seen it in the past, somebody has been here a year, 18 months, 2 years and not being managed. Of course, all of those sorts of things can have an effect if that person then decided to apply for a full-time position.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs: Yes, absolutely and it is a point of focus.
I am going to hand over to Deputy Coles .
Deputy T.A. Coles :
We were talking before about your culture and how people are quite open and frank. Do you have much in the way of turnover of staff within your ...
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
It varies quite significantly across the services. We have a reasonable amount at the moment of turnover from retirement and also a fair proportion of people leaving the Island, which I think is seen across Government, in fact probably across Jersey as a whole. It ties into cost of living concerns when we do exit interviews. Generally the populations in the services are pretty stable. People come in and treat it as a career for life but not always. There is a little bit of movement between the services, which does cause a problem for the departing service but is usually welcomed by the receiving service. Part of our strategic workforce planning is looking at how we can handle that and manage that in a different way and make it more positive and do more secondments and more cross- department working. We are conscious that because we are small services there is not really much ... they are narrow pyramids, so if you want to get up you often have to go across first and then maybe come back and they are the sorts of things we are working on to improve retention. The key factors of retirement and leaving the Island are quite difficult to mitigate.
Deputy T.A. Coles :
The levels of satisfaction in, like you say, long-term career people, do you have any mechanisms of measuring your employee satisfaction?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
That is primarily the Be Heard employee engagement survey which, as we have said, is underway at the moment. It closes this week and we will get the results in about a month, I think. I do not quite have the timetable in my head and that will be our prime way.
Mr. P. Taylor :
What do you expect it to say? Being in touch with the team generally, what would you expect it to say?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I would expect that ... the last time we did the survey, as you know, was in 2020 and then we did pulse surveys but only in a number of areas, so customs and immigration, prison, emergency
services control and business support unit in the autumn. The consistency between those 2 suites of surveys was that people are really proud of what they do, they really value the contribution they make to public life, they really value the investment and the uniform, the services and their identity really matter to our people. They think there is a good level of teamwork and that they are well supported by their immediate teams. I would expect them to say in some areas, because there is a fair deal suite of questions ... I would expect some comment that they are not remunerated fairly or reasonably because it prompts them to compare to other sectors et cetera. I would expect there to be some concern about workload and wellbeing and how workload and wellbeing are balanced. That is probably ... we will see when we get the results but that is what I would expect.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
You said also about losing people because of the cost of living on the Island. There is not a great deal you can do about that. It impacts lots of areas. Do you do anything to try to get people instead of retiring to stay? One of the things about trying to deal with our issue of not having enough people is to try to say: "Well, work longer, never retire."
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I think there is a lot we can do in this area. I think that we do not have a particularly sophisticated picture in relation to it. I think there is a lot more we could do in terms of partial retirement, so part- time working, so taking your pension or part of your pension and then working for part of the time. I have used that very successfully in other organisations. I think there is definitely a bit of an element of that because people will often retire from their uniformed service roles and then come back not to the same job - it is not that strange rollercoaster or sort of cycle - but to a different job as a civilian. For example, that is what one of the fire safety people I have mentioned is pursuing.
Mr. M. Woodhams :
It is like in the U.K. everywhere. You leave to retire and you come back within a certain time.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
That is entirely legitimate and as long as it is done right from the pension point of view then it makes sense. I do not want that expertise to walk out the door and equally there are a number of roles, the fire service is a good example, where the absolute benefit of having been a firefighter is unquestionable but I do not necessarily need them to be in uniform and ready to deploy when they are doing that role. I need the right number of people in uniform ready to deploy, and we are not there yet, but I can also have some who are retired, basically. I am really interested in how we get that right and I think there is a lot more we can do across government to get that right and partial retirement options is not the only way to do it but that is certainly something that I think we should explore more.
Deputy T.A. Coles :
My final question comes in the area of the Team Jersey programme following the 2018 one.gov reforms. How would you describe that and its impact on your workplace culture?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
We had that intensive period of activity of course from 2018 onwards where Team Jersey was resourced and delivered a lot of interaction and a lot of sessions with our teams. I think we all really valued the commonality that that brought, so managers doing ... we had all done the same thing and then staff all doing the same thing and I think that gave us a common language, which really helped. I think it really helped us to embed the values, the 5 Government values, and the pages associated with them. I think that is one of the things that stuck. If you go round the services, we had some really good posters about this value looks like this and does not look like that and they are still used. They are in good tools that are still used. I think one of the things that also gave us, certainly in J.H.A., is an engaged team of people through the Team Jersey leads. The concept and naming of them has petered out but what we see is a number of those Team Jersey leads still being really engaged and now being at the forefront of leading our wellbeing approach. We have also, last year, created a diversity, equity and inclusion network in J.H.A., which is called Shoulder to Shoulder. That is about making sure that we address diversity, equity and inclusion in the department and that people are engaged in it and a number of the people who were involved in setting that up and channelling it were our Team Jersey leads. I think it has really helped to get people together and generally the feedback from our people was it is just really fascinating being at a session or setting up something like Shoulder to Shoulder where you get a chance to mix with people from different services. They will do it at a road traffic accident or something but doing it in a different way as part of a wider department is beginning to come alive now and I really value that. I think that was a good outcome as well.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
You have talked quite a lot about the risks and issues and managing those in your own objectives within the department. I am conscious that you are also a member of the Executive Leadership Team for Government and one of your escalation points that you mentioned earlier was escalating those key risks and issues to the Executive Leadership Team. As a member of that team, what is your view about how that team works? Do you have joint priorities and objectives and how do you measure E.L.T.'s performance against those?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
I would not say we have joint priorities and objectives as such. What we have, of course, is a series of ministerial plans. What we do have on the agenda now is the 3 areas of the Chief Minister's areas of relentless focus and so the agenda is structured around items that are relevant to that. For example, this morning we had a follow-up presentation from the team who have been working on key worker accommodation, which is really important to recruitment and retention, which is one of those areas of relentless focus and, as we have said today, it is also very important to me. We will see the delivery of that objective at E.L.T. and it was very encouraging this morning. That is where we get the commonality but we do not have a set of E.LT. key performance indicators or measures that we hold ourselves against because it is those areas of relentless focus and then our ministerial plans that give us that.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Where I am trying to get to is some of the things that you mentioned earlier are quite critical issues for the Island. So if you are escalating that up to E.L.T., what does E.L.T. then do with it and what tools are available to E.L.T. to resolve those problems?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
The point where I escalated those was the beginning of the Government Plan process last year where that process was structured and we were specifically asked by Suzanne to bring the things that I think it may have even been were keeping you awake at night, the things that really trouble you, your highest risks and your highest issues and share them so that we have got a good joint understanding of what we are facing. That helped in terms of I had a chance to advocate my concerns but also really listen and understand everyone else's. That helped the build process for the C.S.P. (Common Strategic Policy) and for the ministerial plans. They do not come back regularly. Everyone knows I am carrying those risks and that investment in the Government Plan but we would look at them again as we look quarterly at the corporate risk register at E.L.T. That would be where the conversation would happen really in terms of what does the corporate risk register look like and what do your high-level department risks and issues look like. There is a sharing and an understanding function there but, as I say, they are not measured as a collective.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Okay. Does that flow through into Government Plan price bids and then how they may or may not be treated by Treasury?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs: Yes, absolutely.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Okay, thank you. I am conscious we are almost to the end of this hearing. Before we go, I just wanted to get an update, if I could, on the implementation of an outstanding C. and A.G. (Comptroller and Auditor General) recommendation. It was a recommendation that your department is the responsible department around the governance of the States of Jersey Police and that follow-up report. Recommendation 11 was: "Document a clear plan for the proposed 2023 and future independent inspections of the States of Jersey Police, setting out when these will be undertaken and by whom." The original target date was 30th September 2022. That was then revised to 31st March 2023. It does not look like that has been completed yet. Can you give us an update on that?
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs:
Yes, sure. We have been considering it in the period up to that tracker update at the end of March. We have just this morning done our update ready to come to you for quarter 2 and there is a slight change of direction in relation to this one. The States of Jersey Police have I cannot remember how many but a number of inspections by H.M.I.C.F.R.S. (His Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services), what a mouthful, and they generally come at a very high cost and the U.K. framework is mainly relevant to here but not wholly. So I think it is the 4 chiefs of police, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man and Gibraltar in this case, have collaborated on developing what should be a more cost effective peer review programme where they will peer review each other. It will have input from and be overseen by the H.M.I.C.F.R.S. and their proposal is that there will be an inspector of H.M.I.C.F.R.S. on the inspectorate team, the peer review team, for each jurisdiction and that will take time to set up. I think Jersey has said we will be first - I am just looking at my notes - but it will likely take place in 2024 instead of 2023 but that will be the substantive update that we will give probably a little bit more eloquently because I am trying not to read it to you. But when you read it, it will be a bit clearer. That is the general direction of travel.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
Given the time, I think the committee will look forward to the update, but if within the update you could include the reasons for why the original timeframe was not met that would be fantastic.
Chief Officer, Justice and Home Affairs: Yes.
Deputy L.V. Feltham :
On that note, I will say thank you to you both for attending the hearing and thank you to the supporting officers as well. I will close the meeting.
[17:00]