Agenda item

Report of the Cabinet Member Development and Safety

The Cabinet Member Development and Safety introduced the report which proposed the next stage of the transformational programme for the Council’s regulatory and and environmental services. The programme would review all resources to identify options to create a commercially focused, flexible and resilient service. This would enable the delivery for the financial savings over a longer term.

The report highlighted the need for initial investment to support the creation of a business culture, installing mechanisms and processes that allowed more effective performance and financial management. Opportunities would be provided for staff to work across existing functions to deliver the priority workstreams. This flexibility would allow the service to react more readily to the constantly changing financial and economic landscape.

The Cabinet Member went on to explain that dedicated roles were proposed to support the delivery of key workstreams whilst the review was underway. These would be funded from existing vacancies across the organisation. To enable these cultural changes and commercial focus to become embedded, a transitional period was required before savings were fully realised. This would allow existing functions to be reviewed and assessed against priorities whilst income streams improved, costs reduced and support could be provided to the local economy and the delivery of the emerging Place Strategy.

This invest to save initiative would require the deferral of the £157k saving identified for 2017/18. It also recognised that Executive Board and Cabinet would work with the MD for Place and Development in meeting the longer term economic growth target of £500k by 2019/20, which also needed to be considered in light of the other challenges set out in the MTFS. Given issues currently arising in the economy and the impact of a growing budget deficit within the Council, careful consideration as to how this target was to be delivered would need to be collectively agreed by officers and members as a priority. He said that the proposed cultural shift to a commercially focused organisation would be difficult to achieve with ongoing financial and economic uncertainty. The challenging financial targets set would only be achieved if some resources could be re-focused and re-prioritised to support activities that were more cost effective and/or generated greater financial return. Executive Board and Cabinet should review how this shift could be achieved and which resources and activities were to be identified and refocused to support the delivery of the new service.

The Cabinet Member Development and Safety highlighted the priority workstreams as identified in Section 6 of the report : Business Management/financial performance monitoring; Car Parking; Economic Development/Tourism; Fundraising/Inward Investment; Events; Anti-Social Behaviour/ Homelessness/ Street Begging.

There would be significant improvements in the way regulatory services were delivered making them more cost effective and more efficient.

RESOLVED THAT

1.    the transformational programme for the Council’s regulatory and environmental services as proposed in this paper over an initial two year period be approved and proceeded

2.    the Managing Director for Place & Economic Development in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Development and Safety be authorised to drive forward the transformation programme and implement the interim changes to the existing organisational structure to support the refocusing of resources where appropriate.

3.    the Managing Director for Place and Economic Development, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Development and Safety be authorised to develop and implement such income generating / cost recovery initiatives and measures as he considers appropriate to assist in the delivery of the financial targets.

4.    the deferral of the £157.5K saving for 2017/18 to 2018/19 be approved.