Productivity Plan

The Council has a proven track record of delivering high quality services in an efficient and effective manner to meet the needs of residents. Since 2010 the Council's funding has been reduced by 39% in real terms. The Council has managed to protect those services that are valued most by residents, through years of austerity and challenging funding levels.

The Council has taken a blended approach to achieve this through a combination of:

• driving out savings through efficiency
• reducing demand by working with partners
• driving growth and seeking to generate more income through Business Rates and Council Tax

In doing so, the Council still delivers high quality services to local residents despite reduced funding and greater demand for services.

The Local Government Audit and Accountability Act 2014 introduced the requirement for auditors of local authority accounts to make an assessment on the value for money arrangements. Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council has always satisfied these requirements.

We are an innovative Council

The Council has successfully deployed many innovative approaches to maximise resources and maintain vital services. This has included:

• successful delivery of savings and improvements to services through a programme of efficiency, improvement and transformation reviews between 2010 and 2016
• a programme of lean reviews, which looked at processes across services, to ensure they are delivered in the most efficient way (including finance, fostering placements, One Call Service)
• invest to save models when considering service design, focused on using resources upfront to avoid greater costs in future
• an annual programme of member scrutiny reviews, assessing the efficiency and appropriateness of services in today's climate

The Council has also launched a new Powering Our Future programme. Agreed by Cabinet in July 2023, this sets out a planned approach to deliver our future ambitions for the Borough and the Council. It identifies how we will transform and implement new ways of working, which will ensure we deliver a balanced budget and value for money, at the same time as improving outcomes for communities.

Examples of activity include:

• creating the Tees Active Leisure Trust was to deliver the Council's leisure services, this has created significant savings whilst delivering an enviable leisure offer
• a programme of replacing street lamps with LEDs has generated savings of £1.8million per year
• reducing the number of administration buildings the Council runs, generating savings of £1million per year
• the Council was the first in the North East to use a new state of the art rubber modified road surface, this surface recycles tyres, reduces carbon by 8% and has superior durability to stand up to large volumes of traffic
• developing a funding model to purchase and operate our fleet, minimising purchasing costs
• social care reviews to ensure the appropriate level of care is provided to meet the needs of individuals, this includes assessing the sufficiency of internally and externally commissioned residential places - we have invested in reconfiguring and expanding our own adults and children's residential and day services provision, to reduce the reliance on expensive external placements
• refocussing early help and prevention services to reduce the reliance on more expensive care services, examples include an edge of care service within Children's Services
• bringing together into one team, our commissioning and contract management of services, this has created efficiencies, ensured a consistent approach and put robust challenge and scrutiny on contracts to ensure we are achieving value for money
• reviewed fees and charges across the Council to ensure income levels cover the cost of delivering those services
• supported the development of a thriving voluntary and community sector across Stockton-on-Tees, this includes the Community Asset Transfer Policy, which transfers community centres to local voluntary and community groups, creating savings for the Council, whilst ensuring the vibrant futures for vital community assets

In addition, Council service budgets are not increased by inflation annually, therefore services are achieving savings each year by maintaining the same level of spend despite increased prices. Budgets are only increased by exception for areas of spend outside of normal levels such as pay award or social care fees.

Driving economic growth and working with partners

We work closely with partners across the public and private sector to leverage investment into the Borough and collectively pursue opportunities for Our People, Our Places and Our Economy. Our Inclusive Growth Strategy drives our approach to attract investment and create jobs that local people can access. This increases local prosperity, whilst also generating business rates growth for the Council.

Activity includes:

• supporting business creation, development and investment in growth, attracting some large businesses into the Borough - for example an Amazon distribution warehouse, whilst also supporting growth in local independent businesses
• delivering a bold and ambitious programme of town centre regeneration, using capital investment to improve places and spaces for communities - increasing footfall, business and employment opportunities
• delivering affordable housing in partnership with the private sector, creating desirable town centre living on an old brownfield site, whilst also delivering a financial return

Our wider approach to working with partners includes the Xentrall Shared Services Partnership. Established in 2008, the successful partnership between Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council and Darlington Borough Council delivers back-office services including payroll, invoice payments, income collection, ICT support, and design and print. This has delivered over £15million of savings.

The Council also has a joint venture arrangement with Spark of Genius to meet some of the sufficiency gaps in placements for children in our care and children with special educational needs. The joint venture successfully operates three children's homes and an independent school that caters for students from a range of backgrounds and with a range of learning needs, all of whom have either social, emotional or mental health needs, or an autism spectrum condition or disorder.  This has allowed us to accommodate as many children as we can in placements within the Borough, where they have family and friends to support them, rather than somewhere further afield, which is also more costly. The joint venture is making savings of £1million per year.

Looking ahead

The Council's Powering our Futures programme, agreed by Cabinet in 2023, sets out a planned approach to carefully manage our resources over the longer term. This will see us take bold, brave and innovative approaches to Power Our Future through a mission-based approach focussing on:

• Partners - achieving more together
• Communities - creating a new relationship that builds on community strengths and supports communities to do more for themselves
• Transformation - developing new ways of working that provide efficient services, offer value for money and are valued by our residents
• Colleagues - ensuring our workforce are skilled and equipped to do the best for our residents with the resources we have available
• Regeneration - delivering growth and prosperity