Issue - meetings

The Council faces a number of key challenges - a tough economic situation, tighter financial constraints, radical changes in Government legislation and increasing pressure on services with an ageing population and increasing unemployment particularly amongst the young and vulnerable.  It is essential to prioritise and protect frontline services, especially for the vulnerable.

In addition, extensive changes in national policy will transform the delivery of local public services to create new relationships between councils and communities, referred to as “Localism”, which will involve the Council increasingly becoming a commissioner of services rather than a direct service provider.

To address these issues the cabinet has

·  Refreshed the Vision, maintaining the general direction of travel but with a change of emphasis that puts People and Communities first.

·  Replaced the previous 8 Priorities with 3 Objectives that will start to deliver the vision over the next few years

·  Created a series of Outcomes so that we and our communities can better measure our performance

·  Developed Values to determine the kind of organisation the Council wants to be.

These developments have been the subject of consultation with all Council Members and senior managers and are set out in this report for adoption.

Councillor Paul Crossley, in proposing the item, referred to the wide consultation which had fed into the new vision and values.  All Councillors and middle Managers were invited to contribute and the Cabinet had taken on board a significant number of suggestions and observations from that consultation.

Councillor Nathan Hartley seconded the proposal and said that putting people first was a fine principle on which to base the Council’s service decisions.

Councillor Cherry Beath endorsed the proposals.

Councillor Crossley, in summing up, referred to paragraph 5 of the report and observed that the list of partners should be amended by adding “town and parish councils”, so that it would now read, “the police, schools, the health service, town and parish councils, community organisations, local businesses, local people and communities”.

On a motion from Councillor Paul Crossley, seconded by Councillor Nathan Hartley, it was

RESOLVED (unanimously)

(1) To AGREE the refresh of the Council’s Vision;

(2) To REPLACE the Council’s previous eight priorities with three objectives that describe what it is trying to achieve and enable it to focus resources;

(3) To UPDATE its values to reflect how the Council will operate and the kind of organisation it will be; and

(4) To COMMUNICATE these developments to the public and staff.