Vale of White Horse District Council
Abbey House, Abbey Close,
Abingdon, OX14 3JE
Email: comments@whitehorsedc.gov.uk
Telephone: 01235 520202

Vale of White Horse District Council

Managing our business effectively

• Provide value for money services that meet the needs of our residents and service users
• Optimise access to our services
• Improve communication about the council's activities and achievements

Local councils are not immune from broader economic realities. Like many households, the Council is experiencing reducing income in real terms, and rising costs. However we continue to provide good quality services for one of the lowest Council Tax rates in England. Against this background, we have a responsibility to ensure services are delivered effectively and efficiently, representing good value for money to the district's Council Tax payers. As part of this, we aim to have a sustainable financial base, captured in a five year medium term financial plan.

We work to ensure that taxes and charges are collected properly, and in a timely and equitable manner. We also continually review how our services are delivered and work to make them more efficient while maintaining and improving quality. In order to protect the local economy, we also pay our bills as soon as is practically possible. It is important residents know that we are being careful with their money.

We achieve this in a number of ways. Firstly, services are benchmarked for cost and quality against other similar authorities. This enables us to identify underperformance and to benefit from a best of breed approach to service delivery.

Secondly, we have put in place a rolling review of the business processes that support the services we deliver in order to weed out inefficiencies and redundant work. We challenge the managers of those services to reduce costs by innovation and deployment of technology, while sustaining high levels of service and set them annual targets for cost reduction.

Thirdly, we compare internal service delivery costs of service against independent external providers, outsourcing services where this makes financial sense for Council Tax payers.

Lastly, we look to collaborate where we can in order to take advantage of economies of scale. A clear example of this is a recent decision to form a joint senior management team with South Oxfordshire District Council. This initiative has already reduced management overheads as a percentage of total costs, and we remain confident that further significant savings will be realisable over the period of this plan as services are reviewed and combined where that makes sense. In addition, it has allowed both councils to jointly tender for waste services resulting in significant improvements in service at reduced costs. These benefits will be realised from 2009 onwards.

The Council holds a number of assets, not least various civic properties based in the major towns across the district. These represent a significant cost and discussions have begun to see if a better way of managing the properties can be found. We are determined to significantly reduce the costs of sustaining them over the next few years.

The Vale is a diverse and disparate area and we work to ensure there is even handed access to services for council tax payers across the district. As part of this we are working to increase the functionality of our website to allow residents to contact us, request and pay for services at times that suit them. That said, we recognise that care needs to be taken not to exclude residents that do not have access to this type of technology. We will review our Customer Contact Strategy during 2010 in order to ensure that a fair balance is struck between benefiting from the savings that increased use of technology offers and the quality, range and manner in which we deliver services.

The Council has various statutory requirements placed upon it. Among these is a requirement to treat all employees and customers equally and fairly. We take this requirement seriously and will work to deliver an equality and diversity scheme action plan, including equality impact assessments that achieve this goal. This Corporate Plan has been subject to an equality impact assessment.   

It is important that the Council communicates effectively with residents, both in terms of consulting people about their priorities and needs, and in communicating progress that is being made. In this context, we intend to increase opportunities for local residents to comment on the Council.