Aiming High - Foreword and introduction: how we work our principles

Foreword

Welcome to Aiming High, Rochdale Borough Council's corporate strategy for 2007-2010.  This strategy sets out our priorities for the next three years, and our contribution to the Rochdale Borough community strategy, Pride of Place. 

The borough of Rochdale lies in the foothills of the Pennines, close to Manchester city centre, and offers the best of urban and rural life.  It is a place going through an ambitious period of change.  Work is already underway on the Kingwsway Business Park, a development with massive stature in the region, close to Junction 21 of the M62.  Ambitious plans are in place to transform our town centres.  Millions of pounds are being spent on improvements to housing and schools.

Partnership working is at the heart of everything we do and our public-private partnership with the Impact Partnership has already made a significant contribution to the local economy, creating jobs in its first year.  Our aim is to transform the borough.

The council has been at the forefront in leading this process of change.  Since the last Aiming High we have achieved four beacon council awards for good practice in service delivery.  We have made good improvements in our services to local people.  Childrens's services and, in particular, educational attaintment have achieved substantial improvement.  Other improvements include the quality of housing, library services and organisational improvements.

This strategy describes how we will build on that success.  We have ambitious plans to bring about step change in the services we provide to our customers.  The Stepping Up programme will significantly improve services across the council and provide value for money for citizens.  Through this programme we will value and develop our members, employees and our partners.  We will be working with our staff to find ways of improving what we do.  They are our most important asset, and the change we have achieved already could not have been done without their hard work and commitment.

Introduction

We have developed Aiming High – our corporate strategy – by taking into account a wide range of factors. This introduction summarises those factors: the context in which we work, the principles which inform the way we work, and how we developed our priorities.

The context in which we work

Manchester City Region

We are part of the wider Manchester City Region economy, the economic powerhouse of the North West. This is the city region with the most potential in terms of establishing itself as a major economic centre to complement London and the South East. We are already working with other councils in the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and partners in promoting economic development, developing transport links, and tackling housing and health issues. We are committed to playing an ambitious role in the development of the city region and to making sure all our people and businesses benefit from economic growth.

Rochdale Borough

Rochdale borough is situated on the edge of the Pennines with beautiful countryside surrounding our town centres, and excellent transport links to Manchester city centre and Manchester airport. It has a population of 206,400 people living in towns and villages, covering an area of 62 square miles.

The Borough’s economy is growing, with jobs and productivity increasing since 2000. We are in the process of transforming our economy with major developments in progress. Kingsway Business Park will be one of the biggest business parks in the UK, with 7,250 direct jobs plus 1,750 support jobs. The public-private partnership between the Council and Impact Partnership will create 1,305 new jobs. We have excellent road links with the rest of the city region, the rest of the North West and Leeds city region. We are working to improve public transport links, with a Metrolink extension planned for 2011. Significant capital resources have been committed to improve schools in the Borough, and millions are being spent on improvements to housing. The Council’s services work well with our partners, particularly in the voluntary sector.

Our population is growing and becoming increasingly diverse. 12% of our people are from black and minority ethnic groups, which is expected to increase to 20% by 2021. We have a relatively young population, but by 2021 the number of people over retirement age is expected to grow by 30%.

The Borough has areas with high levels of deprivation and excluded groups, where people are more likely to be out of work, including 14,800 people on workless benefits, have low levels of household income and experience other types of deprivation, such as poor health, low skills and high levels of crime. We have been working hard to tackle this deprivation and have seen successes in increasing levels of employment and better educational performance of our children. But for many issues, the gap with the national average is still large, and we need to continue working to close that gap.

Pride Partnership – our Local Strategic Partnership

Rochdale Council is a key member of the Borough’s local strategic partnership, the Pride Partnership, both as the lead organisation and place shaper. The Partnership has developed a community strategy for the Borough - Pride of Place - which sets out the vision for 2021. Our vision is of a thriving place where people want to live, work, visit and do business – a place in which we can all take pride. The role of the strategy is to set out an overarching plan for the Borough, based on local people’s concerns and priorities, to which all member organisations can work.

Pride of Place was recently reviewed; a wide-ranging consultation was carried out with local people, businesses and partner organisations and five priorities were identified for the next three years (2007-2010). These are:

• Increasing jobs and prosperity
• Making sure every child matters
• Improving community safety
• Creating a cleaner, greener environment
• Improving health and well being

Townships

Rochdale borough was formed during local government reorganisation in 1974 and includes Rochdale, Middleton, Heywood, Littleborough, Newhey, Milnrow and Wardle. Each of these towns has its own distinct identity. We have established Township committees for Rochdale, Middleton, Heywood and Pennines (which includes Littleborough, Newhey, Milnrow, Wardle, Smallbridge and Firgrove). Through our township approach, we ensure that local people have a meaningful voice in shaping decisions that affect their lives. We are devolving more decision-making to Township Committees and involve our Townships in borough-wide decision-making. The Townships are currently developing their first Township plans. This is part of a major devolution programme which includes delegating some budgets to local Township control. We outline the Council’s contribution to achieving Township objectives within this Aiming High document.

How we work – our principles

Our approach to delivering our priorities is underpinned by six key principles which inform and guide the way we work:

• Creating sustainable communities
• Tackling deprivation and supporting vulnerable people
• Valuing equality and diversity
• Building cohesive communities
• Engaging with our communities
• Working in partnership

Creating sustainable communities

We want our communities to be places where people want to live, both now and in the future. We want our communities to have a long-term future, where people feel safe and secure, can live in housing that meets their needs, and have access to jobs and services. We will develop sustainable communities to meet these needs. Some of the neighbourhoods within the Borough are not currently sustainable. Our challenge is to work with partners to transform those communities.

• We will build sustainable communities by integrating and harnessing regeneration, housing, environmental, social and cohesion programmes in specific areas of need and opportunity
• We will improve the quality of homes and build new homes
• We will work with partners and communities to transform the priority neighbourhoods of Langley, East Central Rochdale, Kirkholt and Inner Rochdale
• We will work with the New Deal for Communities Partnership to transform Heywood by helping partners to become even more community focused when delivering and designing new services so that the changes we are making are sustainable for the future
• We will promote the development of sustainable communities and enhance the overall quality of life for residents through our Local Development Scheme and regeneration programmes across the borough

Tackling deprivation and supporting vulnerable people

Rochdale borough is one of the most deprived districts in England. 55,000 people (27% of the total) live in areas in the 10% most deprived nationally. The gap between the borough and national average on national floor targets is wide for health, crime and worklessness. 50% of vulnerable households in the private sector live in non-decent homes.

We will narrow the gap with the rest of the country on the outcomes that lead to deprivation and disadvantage. Much of the work we will do in the five priority areas:

• Increasing jobs and prosperity
• Making sure every child matters
• Improving community safety
• Creating a cleaner, greener environment
• Improving health and well being

will contribute to the narrowing of that gap. We will also narrow the gap between the most deprived neighbourhoods and socially excluded groups, and the rest of the Borough. Our approach will include focusing on improving the lives of the most vulnerable people.

• We will narrow the gap on key outcomes between the borough and England
• We will narrow the gap on key outcomes between our most disadvantaged people and deprived neighbourhoods and the rest of the Borough
• We will work with our partners through the Supporting People programme. This is a national programme administered by the Council to help people live independently
• We will help prevent homelessness and help vulnerable people to live independent lives

Valuing equality and diversity

We are committed to representing, serving and employing people as equals. We will value the diversity of their contributions and aspirations, no matter who they are or what their circumstances. Our Equality and Diversity strategy sets out how we put this into practice. We believe that tackling inequalities provides a strong foundation for cohesive and confident communities. We believe that all people have a right to equal access to life opportunities, including representation, services and employment by the Council. We value the diversity of people within the borough. We have developed a Single Equality Scheme to provide a coherent approach to making equality and diversity central to the way the council works. We have adopted the Equality Standard for Local Government as a framework for mainstreaming equalities.

We will continue removing barriers to opportunities and narrowing the gap between the most disadvantaged and others

We will work towards level 4 of the Equality Standard by March 2008 and Level 5 by March 2010

Building cohesive communities

We recognise the complexity of our local communities and value their diversity and distinctiveness. Our work in community cohesion is based on a partnership approach, and our success has been demonstrated by the award of Beacon Council and Pathfinder status.

For us, community cohesion means that people’s different backgrounds and viewpoints are mutually respected, and that they feel confident in working together to improve their quality of life, and secure in resolving potential disputes and conflicts. We recognise that such differences and potential sources of conflict are not always directly related to issues of religion, cultural backgrounds or ethnic origin. Other sources of conflict such as tensions between older and young people, and between different geographical areas are often more significant to us.

The Council plays a central role in the Pride Partnership Community Cohesion Sub-group. The Partnership has recently developed the Borough’s community cohesion strategy and we will actively play our part in achieving the five key outcomes set out in the strategy by, for example:

• Improving quality of services - more accessible and responsive to community needs
• Promoting equality - narrowing the gaps between the most deprived areas and the rest of the Borough, fair share for all
• Valuing diversity - creating a workforce reflective of the wider community across all services and at all levels
• Building good relations - promote mutual respect, cross-cultural, inter-faith and community understandings
• Engaging communities - give local communities and organisations greater choice, influence and control over local decision making

We will continue to work closely with our partners to realise our vision of a Borough where people have a sense of pride and belonging based on mutual respect.

Engaging with our communities

We are proud of the progress we have made in community engagement but recognise that we need to continue to develop our work to secure the contributions of our local people and the best quality of life for residents. We will do this by working with our partners.

We have taken steps towards this with the increased devolution of decision making to Townships but more work remains to be done:

• We will work with community centres and bases to develop their role as hubs of local regeneration and ensure clear links with Neighbourhood Renewal planning
• We will continue to seek the views of local residents in a variety of ways, using questionnaires, citizens panel, annual listening events and focus groups. We will ensure that we target vulnerable people and hard to reach groups
• We recognise the ability of the voluntary and community sector to engage with hard to reach groups and with people locally
• We also recognise the sector’s contribution to the achievement of targets in the Local Area Agreement. To this end we will work with the sector to increase their role in the delivery of services
• We will scrutinise existing engagement structures and streamline these for better access by both local people and statutory agencies

We will ensure that residents have equal access to services and that all people take responsibility for themselves and their area. One of the priorities of ‘Stepping Up’ is customer focus and we are determined to improve community engagement and relationships with a range of improvement activity. As part of this we will look at how we can work with partners to encourage local people to take responsibility for services and areas

Working in partnership

Rochdale is the birthplace of the co-operative movement, and we have a proud tradition of working in partnership to bring about change. We will continue to play a lead role in the local strategic partnership; the Pride Partnership and its thematic partnerships. We will do this by engaging partners, building alliances and securing support. We are committed to developing our role as place-shapers by taking an outward-looking and forward-thinking approach.

We work particularly closely with:

• Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, which maintains 15,000 properties on behalf of the Council
• Impact Partnership, our public-private partnership with Mouchel Parkman and Agilisys, which was set up to create jobs for local people, help regenerate the Borough, set up a Contact Centre, and improve some Council services
• Link4Life, which provides leisure and cultural services on behalf of the Council
• Rochdale Development Agency, which works with the Council and other public and private agencies to deliver regeneration services in the Borough

We have already played a leading role in development of the Borough’s first Local Area Agreement (LAA), an agreement between the Pride Partnership (and its partner organisations) and national government. The LAA sets out the future delivery priorities for the Pride Partnership, with a set of targets that have been negotiated with government. These include stretch targets which we need to achieve to secure additional funding. Under plans set out by government, LAAs will become the key delivery plan agreed between local areas and national government. We are committed to working with our partners to drive forward delivery of the LAA (all success measures from the LAA which are included in this document are marked with L).

We also play a strong role working in partnership across Greater Manchester and the Manchester City Region. We work closely with the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and Team Manchester on development of the City Region, development of shared services between local authorities, and issues affecting all areas in the sub-region.

How we decided our priorities

The things that matter most to local people

We asked local people, businesses and voluntary and community groups about their priorities as part of a joint consultation for Aiming High and the Borough’s community strategy Pride of Place. We asked our staff and councillors what their priorities are for improving quality of life in the Borough and for improving how the Council works.

Areas we need to improve

We have looked at our own performance in all services, and looked at the results of inspections carried out by external bodies. Through this process we have identified some areas where we need to improve. They are:

• Adult Care Services
• Achieving long-term reductions in crime
• Educational attainment at A level
• Continuing improvements in libraries and leisure facilities
• Further improvements in recycling
• Maximising the benefits of regeneration for all citizens and supporting vulnerable people
• Tackling health inequalities and identifying gaps in the Council’s contribution
• Improving staff management including workforce planning and absence management
• Enhancing performance management and achieving better value for money

National and regional strategy

Our local priorities are also informed by a wide range of national, regional and sub-regional strategies.

Aiming High

Managing Performance

We will manage our performance against the targets in Aiming High through quarterly reporting of performance to the Council Performance Board and Performance and Scrutiny Committee.

Aiming High Resources

The Council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy sets out in detail how the estimated resources available to the Council will support the delivery of Aiming High. We estimate the resources shown in the table below will be available to support the achievement of our priorities:

In addition there are potential Private Finance Initiative (PFI) Credits of £254m including schools and street lighting improvements. While the use of these PFI resources will be planned during the period of the plan, not all will be spent by 2010.

The resources identified above are estimated and are provided in advance of the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 (CSR07) which will set our spending plans for the next three years. The proposals within Aiming High will be deliverable during the next three years:

• The level of funding identified above is at least maintained, and
• The CSR07 does not result in the increased targeting of resources away from Council priorities.

We will be carefully following the government’s announcements to ensure that our financial assumptions and forecasts are still valid. The activities within Aiming High will be reviewed and revised when the implications of CSR07 are fully understood. One of the key factors here will be the ability to assess the risk associated with the significant level of external and short term funding currently underpinning the delivery of specific services.

  
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