Efficiency and other savings

Every part of our organisation seeks to deliver the best possible value for money. Across the authority, we are working hard to reduce cost, improve efficiency, and maximise trading, thereby ensuring Essex residents get the best possible value services.

 

Over the next four years, central government funding will fall significantly as the coalition government tackles the national deficit. Like all councils, Essex is having to find significant savings and this will require that we take difficult decisions to focus our resources on the issues that our residents and customers tell us are their core priorities.

 

This context means it is more important than ever before that we spend taxpayers’ money wisely and that we look at what we do and how we do it so that services are built around the needs of the customer, not the organisation.

 

In Essex, we have already embarked on a transformation programme that not only will reduce our costs by more than £300 million but will also fundamentally change the way we work. In the future we will make greater use of external providers from the voluntary as well as the commercial sector. We will make better use of technology and more efficient use of our property assets. We will purchase goods and services in a more cost-effective manner, and we will be rigorous in taking unnecessary costs out of the organisation.

 

In 2011/12 we are planning to deliver efficiencies and savings of £98 million to support our increasing pressures and to ensure that we have been able to freeze our council tax for this year.

 

More details of some of the efficiencies and savings we are planning to deliver can be found in the Corporate Business Plan.

 

 

Over the next four years, central government funding will fall significantly as the coalition government tackles the national deficit.  Like all councils, Essex is having to find significant savings and this will require that we take difficult decisions to focus our resources on the issues that our residents and customers tell us are their core priorities.

 

Over the next three years, our capital programme will have to fall to reduce the costs of borrowing.  Nevertheless, we will continue to invest in the future and this year’s budget sets out £221 million of capital investment in Essex over the next 12 months.

 

Aligning resources to our priorities

 

We remain fully committed to our overarching principle of ‘Putting the Customer First’. This year we are making ‘Delivering value for money’ a second overarching principle that will inform everything that we do.

In 2010 we carried out a detailed consultation to find out which issues the people of Essex consider the most important. The information gathered told us that residents’ top priorities were:

 

As part of our integrated service and financial planning process, we have reviewed all our budgets to ensure that we have the resources available to invest in our priorities and that we are spending public money as effectively as possible.
 
We have set a net revenue budget of £864 million to deliver our EssexWorks priorities; this budget meets inflationary pressures of £24 million and provides for new investment of £85 million. As a consequence of the review process, we have identified £98 million of savings and efficiencies to allow us to re-direct resources to our priorities.

 

The following table shows how our budget requirement has increased between 2010-11 and 2011-12 and how this increase has been financed:  

	£m
Budget requirement 2010-11	899 (1)
Increase due to inflation	24
Increase due to new investment in services and other pressures	85
Less savings and efficiencies	(98)
Less withdrawal from reserves	8
Decrease in government formula grant	(54)
Net change from 2010-11 budget	(35)
Budget requirement 2011-12	864
Financed by:
Increase in national business rates	2
Decrease in Revenue Support Grant	(41)
Increase in council tax requirement	4
Net change from 2010-11 budget	(35)

 

 

The budget requirement for 2010-11 is shown as our notional budget requirement figure of £899 million rather than the actual requirement of £822 million.  This notional budget requirement is calculated to allow a like-for-like comparison between the 2010-11 and 2011-12 budgets, taking into account the funding adjustments made by the government in 2010-11.

The government has only announced two years’ settlement information, for 2011-12 and 2012-13.  As a result some uncertainty remains over the resources that will be available in 2013-14 to fund our services.

 
We do have an indication of the national funding figure for 2013-14, however as the department for communities and local government (CLG) reviews the funding formula our share of this funding is far from certain.  The county council will continue to actively monitor progress with this review and make representations to the CLG on the funding formula to ensure that it reflects a fair approach for distributing funding between local authorities.

 

 

We are entering the fourth year of our EssexWorks programme, which has delivered 224 school maintenance and refurbishment projects, improved 120km of roads and footways, increased the recycling of household waste to over 45% and provided free telecare equipment to 4,176 older people in their homes, enabling them to live safely and independently.