Encouraging a spirit of entrepreneurship from the shop floor to the boardroom will help councils meet acute spending pressures, as Tom Whiting explains.
This autumn's Spending Review will give town halls a clearer picture of the financial landscape in the years ahead. We are in tough times, and have to do more with less. In fact, councils have to fundamentally change the way they operate.
This process of change began in Harrow, north-west London, five years ago, when we signed a transformation partnership with Capita. Since then, we have delivered savings of £50m, while rapidly improving performance. But the gap between income and expenditure is growing, and we must make further savings of £45m over three years – 30% of our controllable cost base – with very low reserves to dip in to.
We have already made the quick-wins and Harrow LBC, in its current form, is, in boxing parlance, fast approaching its fighting weight. We now need revolution, not evolution, and the starting point must be a strategic approach to transforming the way the council functions.
In July, we launched the Better deal for residents programme: Shaping Harrow for the future, an innovative package which will change our services, use of property and the way we work with residents, seeking greater efficiency but continuous improvement. This ‘deal' rests on three pillars:
