Agenda item

This report will follow in an Additional Papers pack once the report has been published on the Executive Committee agenda (due for publication by end of Monday 1^st July).

A report on Productivity Plan, which showed how the Council had improved productivity to date and how it planned to improve productivity in the future, was presented for Members’ consideration. It was stated that the Productivity Plan before Members would need to be submitted to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – now Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) – and published on the Council’s website by 19^th July 2024 and would assist Government in understanding what worked well across local government sector as well as identify any gaps.

Redditch Borough Council’s (RBC) proposed Productivity Plan response was covered during the presentation, with some of the points covered regarding Redditch position including:

·       RBC had had a strong shared service with Bromsgrove District Council for 14 years, which delivered large savings by making efficiencies on the use of resources. It was noted that other shared service / function arrangements across Worcestershire authorities also delivered significant savings, with the case of Worcestershire Regulatory Services (WRS) quoted as making savings of £4 million over the last decade due to shared arrangements.

·       The Council had leveraged Towns Fund Funding (£16 million) to regenerate Redditch Town Centre.

·       The Council linked financial and performance monitoring through quarterly reports that were submitted to the Executive Committee and were scrutinised by Budget Scrutiny Working Group (sub-committee of Overview and Scrutiny).

·       Productivity of the Council was also measured and monitored through Members’ corporate dashboard that was available online, a two-tranche Medium-Term Financial Plan process which linked finance to strategic direction, the appointment of a new portfolio holder for performance on the Executive Committee, in addition to service areas methods of operation.

Following the report presentation, Members asked a number of questions to which the following responses were provided:

·       How the Council monitored the success of agile working? – It was stated that Agile Working Policy was introduced by the Council around 15 months ago. The Workforce Strategy Board, chaired by the Chief Executive, managed and monitored agile working implementation on a strategic level. It was noted that the Board was working on developing a suite of agile working performance measures that could be quantified and show progress in this area across Council services. It was reported that service business plans would now be required from each service area, where as part of this the service area needed to demonstrate and quantify performance measures of the service on agile working. It was underlined that ‘agile working’ was different from ‘home working’, with the needs of customers and the business being prioritised.

·       It was highlighted that on the request of the Leader of the Council an all-Member briefing on agile working had been arranged for September 2024 to make all Members aware of the arrangements in this area.

·       Migration of Council data across software systems and ensuring compatibleness and accuracy of legacy data – Officers noted that cleaning of data was one of the main uses of digital tools across the Council with some services holding significant amount of legacy data, for example (26 years) Revenues and Benefits service keeping last 26 years of data for legislative purposes. The automated software provided the ability to retrieve this data and also identify gaps using automated algorithms. It was highlighted that the Council was working towards achieving a single view of customer (via a single form) across Council services which would significantly simplify processes and reduce the resources spent on reformatting data. The Council currently used around 30-40 forms to capture looked mandatory customer data, and it was looking to move to a single standard mandatory form that could be used across council services to deliver services to a given customer– it was highlighted this project was likely to take several years to complete.

·       A Member commented that it was positive to see plans for Community Engagement Proposal, including targeted surveys, and hoped that this would be brought forward to the Committee for scrutiny once the Proposal was being developed.

·       The Chair commented that a lot of work was required to improve joint working between the County Council and Redditch Borough Council.

The Portfolio Holder for Performance was invited to address the Committee. In doing so, the Portfolio Holder commented that she welcomed the report as a way to facilitate and momentum to look towards opportunities to increase efficiency across the Council. Opportunities were identified for improvements in productivity through use of information technology solutions and partnership working with other strategic public sector organisations. The Portfolio Holder highlighted that the data prioritisation programme to establish clean data would greatly assist elected members in making informed decisions.

Following discussion, Members endorsed the recommendation as printed in the report.

RECOMMENDED that

the Productivity Plan, as set out in Appendix A, to be approved, the plan to be published on the Council’s website and forwarded to the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities before the 19^th July 2024.