The Mayor welcomed all to the meeting and asked attendees to introduce themselves. He briefly explained the challenges the Council was facing over the next few years and how he hoped the Board would help the Council to find creative ways to overcome them.

Apologies of absence were noted from Dr Kathleen McCarthy.

None.

Stephen Halsey, Chief Executive gave a brief presentation of the role of the Board and the part it plays within the wider Transformation Governance Framework. 

He explained the key pillars of the transformation journey as

• Culture – there was a need to evolve and develop the culture of the Council to make it more responsive and reactive, remove a culture of workforce complacency and drive-up performance.

• Use of resources – increasing efficiency of existing resources and working with partners to leverage additional resources.

• Tackle a perception of being internally focussed by becoming a more outward facing organisation and reaching out to and learn from partners in other sectors including business, health and academia.

• Tackling the cost-of-living crisis.

Stephen Bramah, Head of Corporate Strategy & Improvement provided a brief presentation setting out demographic and economic overview of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Stephen also provided a brief presentation explaining the proposed LGA Corporate Peer Challenge Review the Council would be undertaking in September 2023 and how the Council was preparing for and steering the review.

The Board offered their reflections on the data presented and made suggestions for how the future work of the Board could be directed to best address the challenges .

Including noting the Board’s Terms of Reference.

Ayesha Hakim Rahman, Head of Corporate Strategy & Transformation introduced the item and explained how the Board were asked to consider and agree key areas of interest that are suited to the expertise provided by external board members. This would be used to agree a set of themes or service-specific areas will form the work programme for the Board.

Following a thorough discussion which reflected on the information provided earlier in the meeting and included contributions from all Board members, the Board agreed a work plan based on the following themes:

1. Performance (including creation of a data dashboard)
2. Housing
3. Health and inequality
4. Partnership and working holistically
5. Relationship with government
6. Engagement and empowerment with community
7. Finance
8. Communication and perception
9. Lessons learnt from peer review.

Stephen Halsey explained that the above themes would be worked into future agendas. He noted that the Board would meet approximately six times per year, but encouraged Board members to communicate and engage between meetings.

The Mayor thanked all Board members for their contributions. He explained he was interested in expanding the Board’s membership to include involvement from the Local Government Association (LGA) and the faith community.

There was no other business.