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Best Value Performance Plan 2001

Efficiency improvements

The County Council is committed to running its services efficiently and continually strives to achieve improvement through:

• Good management of services
• Setting targets for continuous improvement of services
• Routine internal audit work
• The scrutiny role of elected members
• The process of Best Value Reviews and regular benchmarking of its activities against other organisations.

Last year we told you that we had identified efficiency improvements totalling over £6.5m. During this financial year (2000/2001) we have identified further efficiency gains, totalling £1.311m in the following areas: -

Educational Services

	£000
Sensory impaired service - reduction in staffing	40
Sustainability officer target savings - It was planned that this post would be self-funding and an income target of £25,000 was set for 2000/01 - this figure will not be reached but use of reserves will offset costs.	15

Environmental Services

	£000
Best Value Review efficiency savings
Trading Standards	60
Trade Waste	45
Gypsy Service	40
Countryside service	5
Save to Spend Initiatives
Flooding Problems -Property Inundation	150
Street Lighting	50

Corporate Services

Increased training hours delivered per £1 spent	170
Property Services - management of increased capital program within existing resources (68% expenditure increase, 25% of this increase supported in-house)	118
Support for BV reviews - Library and Record Office	55
Property Services additional fee income	25
Arts - increased sponsorship for corporate events	24
Combined courier/library delivery service	15
Increased income at County Hall - civil weddings/catering contract	5

Financial Services

	£000
1999/2000 Rescheduled Debt - Base Budget Savings	275
Revenue Services - Efficiency saving ratification of debt recovery procedures (period Nov 2000 to March 2001)	10
Pensions Administration - Pay advice sent to pensioners only on changes to pension of +/- £1 (period April - June 2000)	5
Payroll Services - New external contracts plus additional income on existing external contracts	3
Advances made to schools with bank accounts - payments now made by hexagon rather than CHAPS transfer.	1

Social Services

In the current financial year Social Services has been subject to considerable financial pressures, in common with many other local authorities. In response to these pressures, the County Council has made available additional funding of up to £3.5m. During the year there have also been significant operational actions implemented as part of the Department's plans, which are described below in terms of changes to operational activity.

Children's Services

Children's Services began the year with 639 children - approximately 160 more than comparable authorities. Since the introduction of a revised children's strategy, there has been a reduction of 34 children in the 'looked after' system. Since July, the number of internal fostering placements has reduced by 42, and the number of children in Agency Placements and external fostering has fallen by 7.

Adults Services

Adults Services have implemented plans which seek to reduce the absolute number of Service Users in care, and for those in care, an attempt has been made to 'step-down' from Nursing Care to Residential Care and from Residential Care to Domiciliary Care. This process is in accordance with the 'Promoting Independence' framework.

In December 2000, a 'winter pressures' grant of £680,000 was allocated to the department. This enabled the department to fund 90 places in Nursing and Residential Care and enable the hospital waiting lists to be reduced by 52 places.

Reviews of the domiciliary care service provided to users are currently being carried out. To date, 700 reviews have been completed. These reviews will enable the department to refine its deployment of resources.

Throughout 2000/2001 the department has sought to minimise the cost of central bureaucracy. The departmental support services have reduced expenditure in the current year by over £200,000.

Over the last two years through prudent management, target setting, routine audit work, detailed service scrutiny and best value review work we have identified improvements totalling £7.8m. In addition we have made significant progress in improving the efficiency of our services as measured by a wide range of performance indicators which are reported elsewhere in this plan. Examples include:

• The percentage of invoices we paid promptly rose from 71% to 86%.
• We undertook more consumer protection visits to high and medium risk premises than previously.
• We increased the percentage of single adults going into residential care who were allocated single rooms from 76% to 85%.

The government expects all Councils to make efficiency improvements of 2% of the total budget. We believe that the efficiency improvements that we have already identified together with those which we anticipate will be identified by detailed service reviews will meet the government's targets.