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Productivity plan
As a condition of the 2024 to 2025 Local Government Finance Settlement, we must publish a productivity plan. The plan should cover the following 4 questions:
- How the council has transformed the way it designs and delivers services to make better use of resources
- How the council plans to take advantage of technology and make better use of data to improve decision-making, service design and use of resources
- The council’s plans to reduce wasteful spending within its organisation and systems
- The barriers preventing progress that the Government can help to reduce or remove.
Our productivity plan was agreed by the cabinet on 15 July and submitted to the newly-named Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. It sets out our achievements and plans to improve service delivery and seek efficiency improvements.
Productivity plan 2024
1. How we are transforming the way we design and deliver services to make better use of our resources
What we have done – stronger communities
- Put housing, community, health & wellbeing together to ensure target place-based approach to working
- Moved our museum into a charitable trust
- Introduced a community lottery to mitigate the impact of reduction in community grants
- Set up a LATCO which provides our housing repairs, grounds maintenance, commercial assets functions
- Overhauled & simplified our Local Council Tax Support to make it easier for claimants to understand entitlements and make it more efficient to administer
- Teams are working agilely utilising technology to record and upload inspections, virtual meetings are in place and cashless payment systems are in place to make transactions easier for our residents
Our future plans – stronger communities
- Once target based approaches are embedded, we will expand the practice across 2 other super output areas in the district
- Align our customer strategy and digital investment to maximise customer expertise. Ensure that complex and urgent customer need is met as a priority and customer satisfaction is on an upwards trajectory. (Fit for the Future programme)
- Development of our waste and recycling services following the end of the Biffa contract. Focus on the value add of insourcing a service that touches every household across the district. (Fit for the Future programme)
- Insourcing our waste function into our wholly owned company – Terra Verde Services Ltd (TVS)
What we have done – stronger place
- Working with 4 authorities to deliver Harlow & Gilston Garden Town
- Adopting the Local Plan and gaining approval for a number of strategic masterplans supporting our housing requirements and sustainable growth
Our future plans – stronger place
- Take forward recommendations from a recent Planning Advisory Service review to improve our decision making processes
- Economic development expertise is provisioned from the county council working in partnership to deliver skills we do not hold in-house
- Maximise the opportunity for EFDC assets to contribute to the financial stability, growth, and inward investment of our district
What we have done – stronger council
- Shared arrangements in legal, payroll, economic development, emergency planning, Essex Procurement Partnership, North Essex Parking Partnership, ICT and 151 / deputy 151 functions. Also delivery of services on behalf of other councils e.g. DFG for Castle Point BC – On-street parking enforcement for North Essex Councils. Shared senior roles – head of legal, chief internal auditor, S151 officer, chief accountant and service directors for finance, ICT & transformation across Colchester and Epping
- Implementing our People Strategy 2023 to 2027 – maximising organisational capacity and capability; effective and inspirational leadership, values and culture; employee experience and engagement
- Worked with our trading company to review the council’s asset holdings, to maximise rentals and dispose of surplus assets in support of corporate ambitions
- Reviewed council office accommodation and disposed of 2/3rds by working flexibility, reducing operating expenses and releasing surplus assets for regeneration
Our future plans – stronger council
- To share our enabling functions, ICT, people, finance across 3 authorities – Braintree, Colchester, Epping. Also our revenues and benefits functions
- Develop our people strategy to align with our Fit for the Future programme – Future Workforce. Working with North Essex councils to share, procure and commission together
- LGA peer review into our corporate communication function including community consultation and insight later in 2024. Corporate peer Review in 2025
- Our Fit for the Future programme, focussed on a portfolio of transformation over the next 4 years – details to be confirmed but focus on – future workforce; shared services; improvements to our waste and planning services; our assets; digital transformation
- Work with our private sector partners to sponsor our citizens award celebrations and other events
What we have done – stronger place
- Working with 4 authorities to deliver Harlow & Gilston Garden Town
- Adopting the Local Plan and gaining approval for a number of strategic masterplans supporting our housing requirements and sustainable growth
Our future plans – stronger place
- Take forward recommendations from a recent Planning Advisory Service review to improve our decision making processes
- Economic development expertise is provisioned from the County Council working in partnership to deliver skills we do not hold in-house
- Maximise the opportunity for EFDC assets to contribute to the financial stability, growth, and inward investment of our district
2. How the council plans to take advantage of technology and make better use of data to improve decision making, service design and use of resources
What we have done – stronger communities
- Used housing compliance / benchmark data to inform our service design
- Upgraded our customer contact centre IT system to improve our customers’ journey / satisfaction
- Upgraded our housing system to improve our customer interaction, provide data for decision-making
Our future plans – stronger communities
- Continue to develop our Housing system and process to improve service delivery
- Align our customer strategy and digital investment to maximise the customer experience
What we have done – stronger place
- Being a founding member of the Digital Innovation Zone and board to bring digital enhancements to our residents. Partners with councils in Essex and Hertfordshire
Our future plans – stronger place
- As a partner of the Harlow, Gilston Garden Town Partnership develops technology across the development sites
What we have done – stronger council
- Embracing new technologies through COVID – Zoom, Teams etc
- Senior strategic leadership across ICT and transformation
- Utilising data to develop meaningful performance data to inform our service and improvement plans
- Invested in digital transformation to deliver automation and self-service for those that want it
Our future plans – stronger council
- Review of our organisational performance management including KPIs, employee reviews,
- Develop a digital strategy across 2 authorities
- Develop a data governance strategy including enhancing our use of SharePoint and OneDrive capabilities
- Work with Essex County Council and 3 other authorities to share a policy graduate to enable joint working on issues impacting us all
3. The council’s plans to reduce wasteful spend within its organisation and systems
What we have done
- Business support reductions due to automation – savings realised in excess of £2m since 2018
- Ongoing programme of ICT system upgrades and implementations i.e., housing, planning, regulatory services to improve customer journeys
- Commission Essex County Council to supply temporary / agency workers and consultants via their procured framework
- Robust budget monitoring and budget management process in place
- Partners co-locating into a Community hub to make better use of our Civic Offices for our residents
- Leasing a floor of our Civic Offices to a private sector workspace provider to maximise income and utilise our estate
- Over £6.4 million of savings and efficiencies removed from the council’s budgets in 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025 alone against a net budget of £16 million
Our future plans
- Planning review recommendations to transform our committee structure and decision-making
- Review of our council debt function, improvements to our policy and processes to maximise income
- Shared finance service with Colchester – currently sharing 151 / deputy 151 function
- Shared services across 3 councils to achieve efficiencies and resilience
- Marketing empty office space for lease / rent. Maximising income and retaining businesses within the locality
- Maximise income, reviewing services for additional income streams
- Leveraging economies of scale across our councils
- Improving our ICT supplier management across our contracts and contract management in general. Including specific training to maximise value for money from our suppliers
4. The barriers preventing progress that the Government can help to reduce or remove
Create resilience in our public services
- Support local government with sector recruitment issues
- Implement multi-year finance settlements to allow longer term planning
- Better support for councils dealing with those leading market share / market dominating technology providers to tackle poor performance and products
- Evaluate the current restrictive procurement regulations to refocus them so that better outcomes are achieved
- Promote shared common operating systems across local government to remove barriers
- Flexible funding streams to enable closer working with the health service to enable whole system provision for our residents / patients / service users
- Resolution to the local authority audit backlog through simplification of the accounting reporting requirements