Corporate Intranet Pages

Here you will find pages on the corporate services of the council such as performance monitoring, audit, corporate improvement projects, work on climate change etc. We will also post CX announcements here.

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14th September 2011

Geoff Bonner will be giving staff briefings on the budget in September.

27th September at 10.30 in the Council Chamber

29th September at 10.30 in the Council Chamber.

5th October at 14:30 in Hart Leisure Centre (for Leisure Staff)

*** 27th/29th meetings will be followed by a pensions presentation by Unison - all welcome.

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25th February 2011

Council last night agreed the budget for next year, as recommended. You can find the full details here:-  

http://www.hart.gov.uk/paper_c_-_budget_cabinet_v2.pdf
http://www.hart.gov.uk/paper_c_-_appendix_3_-_fees_and_charges_v2.pdf
http://www.hart.gov.uk/paper_c_-_appendix_4_-_capital_budget_201112.pdf
This was pretty much as recommended by Cabinet, with a few minor changes and corrections

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7th October 2010 CX Briefing - Management Team 4th October 2010

This was the first Management Team we have had for some time, due to various people being on leave or absent for other reasons.

The main topics of discussion were as follows:

1.  Budget 2011/12 - we are in the process of carrying out the first round of "Budget Challenge" meetings at which we look at the budgets on a service by service basis and try to identify possible areas for savings or efficiency improvements.  So far we have completed the meetings for the major services, and still  have to do Corporate Management, Community Safety and Environmental Health.

Overall, the Council is likely to have to find between £800K and £1M this year in savings. We don't know the exact figure yet because that will depend on the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review, which is not due to be announced until the end of this month, and it will probably take a few weeks for the detailed implications for us to become clear.  This represents about the same overall level of savings we have had to achieve in each of the last 4 years.  As always, I will keep you informed as the situation develops.

2.  The longest discussion was in relation to Workforce Planning, looking to take forward both the workforce strategy which we agreed earlier in the year and also the recommendations from the Investors in People (IIP) inspection during the summer.  One of the main recommendations from IIP was that we should look at defining the skills or "competencies" needed by managers across the organisation, and we have been doing some work on that.  I attach the current draft identifying a possible set of competencies, which you may be interested in.  The idea is that managers at different levels should be able to demonstrate these competencies, and that we should focus management training on improving them.  It is only a draft - we still have some more work to do on it - but I thought you might like to see it in its current form.  

3.  We also gave some thought to what skills or Behaviours we should encourage all staff to exhibit.  This is a little less worked up than the Management Competencies at the moment, but again you might be interested in the current draft.  I have attached that too.

That was all from Management Team for this week.  The next meeting is on 18 October and I will do another one of these briefings after that.  

Whilst writing, I thought you might also like an update on a few other things that are going on.  

The Hart Local Strategic Partnership is a partnership led by the District Council, incorporating all the other major public sector agencies in the area, and also voluntary sector and private sector representatives.  Given the uncertainty over future funding for the public sector, the LSP's Management Group recently had a discussion about reviewing the Partnership's work, and trying to identify some clearer and more focused priorities for future joint working. Emma Broom is going to head up a little review group across the Partnership looking into this, and producing some recommendations by the end of the year.  

In September, Cabinet received the Fleet Town Centre Vision, a report produced by a firm of consultants on regenerating Fleet Town Centre.  The Vision, if carried out, would include building a new Harlington Centre and library, a new superstore on the Victoria Road car park site, and various new housing developments within the town centre.  The aim is try to attract back into the centre the shoppers who currently go elsewhere, and to revitalise and reinvigorate the environment of the town centre.  

The Council has not yet approved the vision, and will be going out to consultation on it during the spring, as part of the Local Development Framework work.  If you would like to have a look at the Vision, you can find it amongst the Cabinet papers for the September meeting of Cabinet.  

The new coalition government has been stressing the "Big Society", and also using the word "Localism" a lot.  Underlying both these concepts is the idea that government in Britain has become too large and too centralised, and that a lot of functions carried out at national level could be better carried out at local level.  We don't know the detail of how this will work yet, but clearly this is good news for local government and should increase our ability to promote and enhance the communities we serve.

The government do not want decentralisation to finish with councils, they also want councils themselves to decentralise functions to parish councils and to community/voluntary groups.  The Leader of the Council, Ken Crookes, and I have recently been meeting with parish council representatives to ask them to think about how we could achieve a more constructive relationship between the district and parish councils, and what sorts of activities might be better carried out at a more local level.  This is an interesting and exciting piece of work and as it develops I will try and keep you informed about it.  

That's it for now, I will write again after the next Management Team meeting.

Geoff Bonner

Chief Executive

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6th August 2010 - CX Briefing - Investors in People Review July 2010

Many thanks to everyone who took part in the Investors in People (IIP) Inspection which took place last week. The assessor commented particularly on how much he appreciated the effort staff had put in to talking to him and speaking frankly about their experience here at Hart.

We have now received the draft version of the Inspector's report (See Downloads).  There are one or two factual inaccuracies in it, but broadly I think it is a good summary of where we are, and wouldn't argue significantly with its conclusions.  I am sending it out now to all staff because (as I have said previously) I want this to be an open and honest process in which we all take part, and which helps us move ourselves forward as an organisation.

IIP works by assessing employers against 10 Indicators.  To obtain IIP status the organisation has to meet the standard of all 10 indicators.  At the moment, the Inspector believes that we are meeting 6 of the indicators, but not meeting the remaining 4.  We now have to develop an action plan to improve our performance on those 4, and aim to achieve them over the next 2 years.  In the meantime, we keep our IIP accreditation.  

As you will see, one of the areas we need to strengthen is the way in which we communicate with staff, and engage staff in developing ourselves as a learning organisation.  Over the next couple of weeks I am planning to give some thought to how we can improve our performance here, and will write to you again on this shortly.

In the meantime, I would welcome any comments you would like to make either on the report itself or any ideas you may have on how we could move forward.

Geoff Bonner

Chief Executive

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4th August 2010 CX Briefing - Management Team 2 August 2010

Most of the management team meeting this week was spent discussing the "snow plan", looking at how we (and the other public agencies) could respond better to the snow emergencies we faced last winter.

John Elson had produced a lengthy series of detailed recommendations, and we talked through these at some length.

The other main topic of conversation was the Investors in People (IIP) inspection which took place last week. We hadn't actually received the report on the inspection by the time the management team meeting, but we did know the main conclusions the inspector had reached.  

The Council has kept its IIP accreditation, and we can still use the IIP logo, although as expected we need to do some more work, particularly with regard to our training and development programmes for managers.

This is not a surprise, as you know the organisation has been through some fairly fundamental managerial changes over the last couple of years, which has meant that many managers have had to take on new roles and learn about the job whilst also trying to do it.  We had quite a long discussion about what could be done to help and support managers to develop their skills, and will be producing an action plan for this in the near future.  

When the IIP inspector's report is finalised, we will be sharing that with all staff and thinking about how we can take forward its recommendations together.  Earlier in the year Emma Broom consulted with staff about the proposed "Workforce Strategy", and we will be using that strategy to strengthen our IIP performance over the coming months.  

That's all for this week; there won't be a management team on 16 August because a number of heads of service are on leave.  The next one of these briefing notes is therefore likely to be on Monday 6 September.

Geoff Bonner

Chief Executive

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21st July 2010 CX Briefing Management Team 19 July

Management Team on Monday was mostly concerned with a discussion about current progress on the Local Development Framework, the number of houses to be built in the district over the next 20 years, and progress on a number of major development sites.

You may know that the Local Development Framework (LDF) timetable has been put back several months as a result of the government's announcement that it is scrapping the Regional Spatial Strategies - these were the documents that prescribed the number of houses each district had to plan for over the next 15-20 years.  It is now up to the districts themselves to set their own targets.  That means that as a council we now need to think about how much housing development we want to see over the next 20 years, and where it is to be located - a big job, a controversial one, and one that will take quite a lot of work.  

Another aspect of the LDF is what happens to Fleet Town Centre.  The council is currently working on a Vision for the town centre, which will probably involve the relocation of the district council offices, the construction of a new superstore, and a number of new housing developments.  We are planning on bringing the Vision to Cabinet in September.  Assuming the Cabinet are happy with it, and subject to public consultation, we are going to incorporate it within the LDF early next year.

Although I have talked about relocating the council offices, we don't have a definite plan as such, and in particular I don't know where any more offices would be located.   Whatever we do go for is likely to be smaller and much cheaper to run than our current offices, and hopefully in better condition.  It would be at least a couple of years before anything happens on this front, so don't hold your breath.

We also talked about progress on the major development sites in the district, principally Queen Elizabeth Barracks (QEB), Hitches Lane and Pyestock.  Each of these are going through the planning process and are to a certain extent being held up by the general economic situation.  However,  work on planning them is proceeding and it shouldn't be too much longer before development starts on each of them.  

The other issue we addressed was the council's latest Investors in People inspection, which is taking place on 27 and 28 July.  The Inspector will be meeting  a number of members of staff, drawn at random from across the organisation, and will want to know what it is like to work for the council, how clear we are about our business objectives, how you see your job fitting into the council's wider work, and so on.  We will want to use this information as a benchmark for improving our work planning, human resources and staff motivation work, and if you are asked to join in please be as frank and as honest as you can.  

That's all this week but I'll try and put out another briefing after the next MT meeting on 2 August.

Geoff Bonner

Chief Executive

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5th July 2010 CX Briefing  - Looking Forward

You may be aware that the Cabinet and Management Team had an Away Day on Friday, and if so you might be curious to know what we talked about.  

The main purpose of the session was to look forward over the coming couple of years at the issues that are likely to be facing the Council and how we are going to tackle them.  We divided the day into 2 parts, in the morning looking at how the Council itself needed to change, and in the afternoon looking at what changes were facing the district.  

The morning conversation was, perhaps inevitably, dominated by the financial situation, and particularly changes likely as a result of the new coalition government.  At this stage it is too early to say exactly what the government changes would mean; although the budget announcement on 22 June gave us some broad pointers, the key date is likely to be 20 October, when the Chancellor announces the outcome of the government-wide spending review which is currently underway.  The Chancellor has indicated that he is looking for cuts in government expenditure of 25% across most departments, including local government.  Those cuts are due to take effect over a 4 year period.  On average, therefore, we can perhaps expect to see our government grant reduce by 6% a year over each of the next 4 years.  That equates to about £250,000 a year for us.  

We also have to think about other pressures on us, including inflation, legislative changes, and so on.  Once again, some of these issues will become clearer as time passes, but our best guess at the moment is that in the coming budget round (ie, to set the budget for 2011/12) we will need to find savings of the order of £800,000 (that includes the loss of government grant mentioned above).  That is roughly the order of magnitude of savings we have had to make each year for the last 3 years.  

Some of the discussion at the Away Day was about how we might achieve that.  Clearly we will continue to look for efficiency improvements, and we will hopefully be able to increase our income in some areas (such as planning fees) as a result of the economy beginning to improve again.  However, there are once again likely to be some service reductions and we need to think about how these can best be achieved.  All these discussions are likely to take place over the autumn and Christmas period.  

We also discussed relationships between the District Council and other bodies, particularly the parish councils, our neighbouring district councils, and the County Council.  Now that the whole of the district is covered by parishes, we can look to talk to them about a range of issues, particularly in relation to the future planning of the District.  Ken Crookes and the Cabinet are looking to have closer working relationships with the parish councils in the future, and we think that together we can achieve quite a lot.  

With regard to neighbouring district councils, one of the emerging themes in local government is the idea of merging the management of adjoining councils - so that two councils can be managed by a single team.  This allows different districts to have their own decision making systems, sometimes even with different parties in political control, whilst sharing teams of managers and staff to carry out the work.  One of our neighbours, East Hampshire, is already going down this route with Havant District Council, and there are a number of other examples around the country.  

One possibility for saving money, therefore, might be to seek to share a  management team, and perhaps even some services, with some of our neighbouring councils.  We already do this to some extent with Basingstoke, with whom we share a legal service and one or two smaller activities, but we might be able to do more and on a larger scale.  We will be talking to our neighbours over the coming weeks and months to see what might be possible here.  

We also talked about the Council's own office buildings, and the future of them. The Civic Offices are no longer ideal for the Council's needs, and cost quite a lot of money to run.  One option might be for us to consider moving out to smaller, and more cost effective premises at another location (yet to be identified).  We had a brief discussion around the desirability of such a move.  

In the afternoon, we turned to looking at the district, as distinct from the Council, and how that might change over the coming years.  The big question here is how many houses the council should allow to be developed.  Until very recently, we were told by the government what that number should be; with the change in government that decision is now being left to individual planning authorities (such as us).  That means we now need to determine how many houses should be built in Hart over the next 20 years or so.  This discussion took up most of the afternoon.  Many people in the district like it as it is, and do not want to see any more housing development; on the other hand, development brings the opportunity of developing further facilities and infrastructure which the district needs.  If we want to ensure that our schools, for example, are adequate to meet our children's educational needs, the only way of funding additional school provision is through allowing housing development to go forward, which can then pay for the new schools.  

Not surprisingly, we didn't reach any final conclusions on this issue.  The Cabinet would like to talk in some depth to our parish councils about what levels of housing development could take place around all the communities of the District, and these discussions are likely to take place over the next 2 or 3 months.  At the same time, the Policy Teams in Planning and Housing will be working on assessing the levels of housing need in the district, which will also feed into the ultimate decision.  That decision is expected around the Christmas/New Year period.  

That's a very brief rundown of what was quite a long day; I hope you found it interesting.  If you have any questions about the issues raised I suggest in the first instance you contact your Head of Service, and failing that drop either me or Emma an email and we will do our best to respond.  

Geoff Bonner

Chief Executive