Agenda item

Report attached.

Members considered a report of Councillor Vanessa Alexander, Portfolio Holder for Resources and Council Operations, to propose the Council’s Productivity Plan.

Councillor Alexander briefly introduced the report. The need for a Productivity Plan had been established under the previous Government and was intended to create a means of monitoring spend and efficiencies against productivity.

It was as yet uncertain how this would be taken forward following the change of Government and the requirements could change moving forward.  In the meantime, the Council was still required to produce the plan. The main document was included as an Appendix to the report and set out a large number of indicators.

Approval of the report was not considered to be a key decision.

Reasons for Decision

The concept of productivity plans had been introduced by the previous UK Government as part of the recent Local Government Finance Settlement. The requirement to submit and publish a Productivity Plan was currently still a requirement the Council would have to adhere to notwithstanding the change in Government. The stated aim was for plans to improve service performance, reduce wasteful expenditure, and ensure efficient resource utilisation in local authorities.  The former Minister for Local Government, Simon Hoare, had said that the Office for Local Government and the Local Government Association would "consider the themes emerging from the plans, the implications for future national policy design, the role of Government in supporting further change and the role of the sector in going further".

The Minister had acknowledged that local government had already done a huge amount in recent years to improve productivity and efficiency and stated that the new plans would help UK Government to understand what was already working well across the whole country, what the common themes were, whether there were any gaps and what more it needed to do to unlock future opportunities.

The Hyndburn Context

This plan highlighted the actions that the Council was taking - or would take - to ensure it was operating productively and delivering quality services for residents. Over the last 14 years, Hyndburn had faced major funding challenges, in particular because of significant reductions in Revenue Support Grant from the government and the transfer of the risk of non-collection of business rates to local government. These changes had signalled a period of significant decline in the overall resources available to the Council.  In response, the Council had successfully delivered efficiency savings, allowing all its key services to continue being delivered despite a reduction of nearly £6m in Central Government funding (based on 2010/2011 figures, adjusted for inflation).

The Council had always been forward thinking and innovative in achieving productivity, and had a strong record of sound financial management. However, there was always more that it could do and the authority welcomed the opportunity to highlight the potential barriers to further productivity gains, including those that could be addressed by central Government.

Key Components of the Plan

·         Adaptive Organisational Design - The plan set out the mechanisms and processes by which the Council tracked and reviewed productivity and what it planned on doing to build on this.

·         Technology and Innovation - To enhance efficiency and service design, the Council would explore how it could adopt useful technology and make better use of data across various functions.

·         Agile Workforce - This section of the Plan recognised the role people had to play in ensuring the Council worked productively, encompassing leadership, skills, clarity of roles and objectives, and effective partnership working.

·         Overcoming Barriers – The Council had identified the main barriers that hindered progress, especially those where it believed Government support could help to overcome them.  The authority welcomed the Government’s intention to explore how it could support local government to overcome these barriers.

Timeline

Councils had been asked to submit their productivity plans by 19^th July 2024. Before submission, elected members were required to oversee and endorse the plan. The General Election – which had not been called at the time the deadline was first given – had required some meeting dates being moved, which was the reason that this deadline had slipped very slightly, meaning the Productivity Plan would only be published in draft form by the deadline, until Cabinet approval was obtained.

Once agreed by Cabinet, the Productivity Plan should also be uploaded to the Council’s website for residents to access.

There were no alternative options for consideration or reasons

Resolved                                 (1)   That Cabinet agrees the Productivity Plan in the form attached to the report and to its submission to Government.

(2)   That the Productivity Plan is published on the Council’s website.