2. Co-operative Peer Review Councillor Chris Penberthy Giles Perritt Plymouth City Council

3. What is a Co-operative Peer Review?
“The ambition of a Co-operative Peer Review is to help support co-operative councils to improve their ability to respond co-operatively to local priorities and issues.”
Giles to read slides 1-3
Begin with background to the development of the commission and Plymouth’s motivation to lead in this area
July 2015 CCIN launched a commission to develop a Peer Review Process and Plymouth jumped at the chance to lead on this commission due to -
Plymouth’s recent experience of an LGA Peer Review;
Recent drive in Plymouth, to develop and advance intelligence and communities of practice;
Based on the breadth of experience that Plymouth had from its peer review and expert connections within the LGA, it was thought that Plymouth could lead in this area for the network;
From this stemmed a group of interested commissioners – Cllr Penberthy, Councillor Burns - Edinburgh, Stephen Brown - Bassetlaw, Jonathan and Jenni -Oldham and Sarah and Simon - Co-operative College.
Why and what is a co-operative peer review?
Since the network was first established it has gone from strength to strength and tirelessly campaigns the “co-operative difference” which I (Giles) was involved;
Initial co-operative peer review discussions built on this and focussed around how we would quantify and measure each organisations ‘ “co-operative difference”. (also explains peer review close link with Oldham Performance Framework.)
Commission concluded each organisations response to local issues and priorities is unique each member authority will embark on different parts of their co-operative journey at different times.
However each journey will share some common characteristics and co-operative principles and a peer review would assess where and how these principles are embedded within the authorities.
The peer review in essence will test the strength of the authority’s co-operative response to local priorities and issues and be improvement focused. (Chris will talk more later about the criteria used to asses this).

4. What can you expect from a peer review?
Flexible guidance aimed at advancing and improving your council’s co-operative journey;
Clear, established outcomes;
A focus on maximising benefits and minimising unnecessary burdens.
Giles
What to expect from a Peer Review?
Talk about rationale for a flexible peer review process;   
Leader or the Chief Executive will meet to agree –
focus of the challenge;
length of the challenge (flexible pricing structure to incorporate all differing needs from 1 day – 4 days);
best time for review;
any prep worked required;
the nature and form of the feedback.
What does it involve?
Each peer review will be unique and tailored to meet the individual council’s needs adding value to the council’s performance.
An experienced peer review team will use their experience of local government to reflect on the information presented to them and the material they read.
The team will spend an agreed period of time speaking to a range of staff together with Councillors and external stakeholders and gathering information and views from meetings, visits to key sites and initiatives in the area.
(use examples of these techniques being used from LGA review Plymouth)
Using all of the above to collectively determine findings.
Results are provided in the agreed format; classically it would involve an initial feedback discussion followed by a report addressing the main findings, conclusions and recommendations.
It would be put to the participating council to decide how this feedback was shared across the network, but we would strongly advise the participating authorities to share the peer review experience and learning across the network. Authorities could then commit to a further follow up meeting in 12 months’ time to demonstrate the impact of the peer challenge.
Handover to Chris

5. Where are you on your co-operative journey?
Do you have a Co-operative Vision?
Can you evidence strong co-operative leadership?
Can you demonstrate co-operative leadership of place and communities?
Councillor Penberthy
Giles talked a bit about the process and structure of the peer review;
As Giles mentioned each council’s co-operative journey or co-operative difference is unique to them and indeed each local authorities challenges are unique be it issues with deprivation, health inequalities or skills gaps;
Each approach will address these in a different way that is unique to the place;
Talk about your role as the Chair of V and P and the Board identifying a number of overarching co-operative principles which will be present in some form in any co-operative journey a council undertakes –
Social partnership;
Democratic engagement;
Co-productions;
Enterprise and economy;
Maximising social value;
Community leadership/new role for councils;
New model of meeting priority need;
Innovation ;
Learning.
Talk about your role as Chair of the Peer Review Commission, and how you encouraged the commission to think about how we could develop some core areas of focus for the peer reviews and peer review team that would best demonstrate these principles in practice in our authorities.
Talk about the result of this discussion being that the commission developed some core criteria/ or core areas of focus in which a Co-operative Peer Review could base its assessment on where the council would be on its journey.
Co-operative Vision – is the vision clearly defined and embedded across the organisation ? – Give Plymouth example of corporate plan “Brilliant Co-operative Council”
Co-operative Leadership of Public services - is their effective governance processes; social partnerships; democratic engagement, co-production, maximising of social value? Give Plymouth examples of Co-operative Commissioning Strategy; Social value policy work;
Co-operative leadership of place - is their effective co-operative leadership of place? Plymouth Social Enterprise Network, strongest in country etc.?
Co-operative Leadership in communities – is the council building on its assets and building socially resilient communities? PEC, Four Greens Trust?

6. What does a typical peer review team look like?
Typical team would include –
A lead peer reviewer;
2 other Councillors with relevant experience;
3 - 4 Officers (inclusive of an officer from an external co-operative body).
Councillor Penberthy
Talk about each peer review as Giles mentioned being flexible and responsive to the requesting authority’s needs and the team will be selected according to this.
Talk about each team being a mixture of experienced elected members and officer peers from the network. Talk about how we are still recruiting for Peer Reviews, but how we already have a range of reviewers from Co-operative College, Nicola, Stephen from Bassetlaw.
Talk about the decision around an officer from an external partnership body, like for example Co-op Uk, Co-operative College.
Lead – Peer Reviewer - (you may wish to elaborate based on earlier EOC discussion and decisions).
Talk about accompanying pricing structure that is flexible according to needs for peer reviews, that reflects the peer review team and its work.
(Copies of this are available to hand out and discuss on individual basis, also refer to handy guide which summarises what you have heard today and guides you through the co-operative peer review process.)