Meeting documents

1 THE ISSUE

1.1 This report presents the Council's Corporate Plan 2008 - 2011 (in draft) for consideration by the Cabinet and for recommendation to Council for adoption.

1.2 The draft Corporate Plan will be dispatched under separate cover.

2 RECOMMENDATION

The Cabinet agrees that:

2.1 The draft Corporate Plan 2008-11 and incorporating the Financial Plan be recommended to full Council for adoption as a Policy and Budget framework item.

2.2 It authorises the Chief Executive in consultation with Leader to make presentational improvements to the Corporate Plan prior to submission to Council.

3 FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

3.1 The Corporate Plan incorporates the Council's Financial Plan ensuring that decision making on priorities and resource allocations fully aligned.

4 COMMUNITY STRATEGY OUTCOMES

•  Promoting a 'sense of place' so people identify with and take pride in our communities
•  Celebrating the contributions people from different backgrounds and with different experiences can make, and promoting equality of opportunity
•  Sharing resources, working together, and finding new ways of doing things
•  Building communities where people feel safe and secure
•  Taking responsibility for our environment and natural resources now and over the long term
•  Improving our local transport
•  Improving our housing situation for local people
•  Improving local opportunities for learning and gaining skills
•  Improving our local economy
•  Improving our local environment
•  Improving our local health and social care

5 CORPORATE IMPROVEMENT PRIORITIES

• Reducing fear of crime
• Promoting independence of older people
• Improving life chances for disadvantaged teenagers
• Improving the environment for learning
• Cultural Development
• Reducing Landfill
• Increase in Affordable Housing
• Improving the Quality of Public Transport/Roads/Pavements and easing congestion
• Developing a sustainable economy
• Improving the public realm
• Improving customer satisfaction

6 CPA KEY LINES OF ENQUIRY

• Ambition for the community - i.e. What the council, together with its partners, is trying to achieve
• Prioritisation of ambitions
• Increasing capacity of the council to deliver ambition for the Community to ensure we achieve what we say we will
• Managing performance of community ambition to ensure we achieve what we say we will
• Creating and developing a better quality of life for the area through

• o Sustainable Communities and Transport

  o Safer and Stronger Communities

  o Healthier Communities

• Improving engagement with and a range of services for Older People and Children and Young People

7 THE REPORT

7.1 The Corporate Plan is the means by which the Council and its Cabinet ensure that priorities are clearly set out and adequately resourced. The plan enables a strategic approach to planning and resource allocation; supports the achievement of longer term and more complex goals and ensures an integrated move towards service and financial planning.

7.2 The Corporate Plan has been developed alongside work with partners to review the Community Strategy and refresh the Local Area Agreement. In this way we have been able to align the Council's emerging priorities with those of our partners to show more clearly how the Council's priorities and those of our partners work together to deliver better outcomes for our communities.

7.3 The draft plan at this stage captures the story for the area, the vision for the future and taking account of current performance, the areas for the Council to priorities over the next three years. We have then set out what the key objectives are under each of the outcomes, then how we might achieve it then the list of indicators by which our success on this will be measured.

8 RISK MANAGEMENT

8.1 The report author and Lead Cabinet member have fully reviewed the risk assessment related to the issue and recommendations, in compliance with the Council's decision making risk management guidance.

9 RATIONALE

9.1 The Corporate Plan has been developed using a robust evidence base of the issues facing Bath & North East Somerset over the next few years. This evidence base compared issues from the whole framework of the Social, Environmental and Economic spectrum.

9.2 This has been shared with partners and this has been considered alongside evidence of existing performance. In order to set out those issues which the Council wishes to focus more of its time and resource.

10 OTHER OPTIONS CONSIDERED

10.1 The Plan was developed looking at a range of issues and a judgement has been made based on the rationale above to focus on the proposed improvement priorities as areas where we need to have greatest impact over the time of the Plan period.

11 CONSULTATION

11.1 The Corporate Plan has been consulted on with elected members and a range of stakeholders and partners.

11.2 Staff have been involved through a range of presentations by the Chief Executive to all staff. Additionally it has been discussed with Trade Unions more formally on the 30 January.

12 ISSUES TO CONSIDER IN REACHING THE DECISION

12.1 Social Inclusion; Customer Focus; Sustainability; Human Resources; Property; Young People; Equality (age, race, disability, religion/belief, gender, sexual orientation); Human Rights; Corporate; Health & Safety; Impact on Staff; Other Legal Considerations

13 ADVICE SOUGHT

13.1 The Council's Monitoring Officer (Council Solicitor) and Section 151 Officer (Strategic Director - Support Services) have had the opportunity to input to this report and have cleared it for publication.