Aiming High - value for money

We want to deliver Council services that demonstrate excellent value for money. Our customers rightly expect us to deliver good value services. We want to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness and by doing this we can release resources and increase capacity to deliver Council priorities. This may mean that in some areas staffing levels are reduced because of improved working methods, new technology, and so on and those resources would be re-allocated into other areas, where additional help is required to improve the standard of service delivery.

We are under increasing pressure to deliver value for money:

  • Greater demands are being placed on our services
  • Expectations are rising – residents expect us to deliver more
  • The Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review will put more restraints on the resources available so we must do more with less
  • Government expects us to achieve annual efficiency savings of 2.5%
  • In 2006/07 we achieved a 2 out of 4 rating by the Audit Commission on value for money – we want to make it 4 out of 4

Priorities

  • We will demonstrate value for money
  • We will achieve efficiencies in the services that we provide and commission
  • We will modernise processes and systems
  • We will develop shared services and collaboration

What we will do

We will:

  • Implement a structured framework to deliver value for money (VFM) across all services
  • Monitor performance and establish an annual programme for service-based interactions. Where performance affects staffing level proposals, they will be subject to the authority’s consultation process before implementation
  • Reduce bureaucracy and simplify operational processes
  • Provide business support to assess VFM
  • Identify where performance is below target and challenge service delivery to improve economy, efficiency and effectiveness
  • Continuously review our procurement strategy to ensure it is fit for purpose
  • Develop and implement medium term capital and revenue strategies to prioritise resource allocation identifying where services need to improve value for money
  • Better integrate financial and performance management and improve the data available to monitor value for money
  • Establish and monitor the delivery of corporate VFM targets and performance measures
  • Make best use of Information Communications Technology to produce efficiencies in the delivery of services
  • Engage with the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) Collaborative Services Programme to improve value for money through joint working across authorities
  • Identify and pursue opportunities for service collaboration
  • Ensure that all partnership arrangements contain an efficiency challenge
  • Ensure that we provide consistent, high-quality, timely and comprehensive data to support good decision-making and improved service outcomes