Introduction
Welcome to the June edition of Core Brief. This briefing includes key information and news that we need everyone across the organisation to understand
Financial position - update
Everyone at Cheshire East needs to understand the council’s financial position, what we are doing about it and what you can do to help.
As explained in the May edition of Core Brief, over the next four-years we are forecasting a funding gap of £100m.
There are four aspects to our work to improve financial sustainability of the council, that all must work together:
- Sound day-to-day budget management;
- Monitoring delivery of savings, growth and income in the Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) 2024-28;
- Developing robust proposals (business cases) for the MTFS 2025-29; and
- Whole-organisation transformation.
We must continue with our established spending controls, including:
- Stopping any non-essential spend;
- Ensuring that all income is invoiced and debt is managed promptly;
- Only recruiting to essential roles, and delaying recruitment where we can;
- Reviewing our contracts to ensure we are taking every opportunity to make savings with suppliers and providers, (see example below*);
- Ensuring that fees and charges for services reflect the true cost – increasing income where we can; and
- Ensuring we seek to be as efficient as possible in the way we do things.
Throughout June and July, we are sharing the final position (outturn) for last year (2023/24) with our service committees. We will also be sharing an update to the budget, as was agreed in February as part of the MTFS 2024-28. This includes updates to the assumptions we have used to set the budget and plan for the year ahead.
We also have updates on delivery of the savings agreed as part of the MTFS. Where delivery of the proposals to deliver those savings is slipping, or has become less possible, we are working to develop alternative proposals to deliver the savings.
It is critical that we effectively forecast and manage our spend and income throughout the year and identify additional savings and actions that are required to balance the books now and for the future.
This will all help us have a much clearer picture of our financial position and help us determine the best course of action as the situation develops.
We are also now continuing to work on developing next year’s MTFS. We are asking managers across all services to develop new proposals for savings and efficiencies to support a sustainable financial future for the council. The transformation programme will contribute to this but will not alone deliver the £100m savings over four years that we need. Please see below for an update on the programme.
*It is important to remember that every little helps – and that even relatively modest savings add up. We must take action to reduce expenditure wherever we can. For example, our printer/photocopier contract allows us to reduce the number of printers we pay for by a limited number each year. We have identified a number of low-use printers across our estate which we will now remove, with a view to removing more in the next contract year (after August 2024). We should all be thinking before we print or photocopy anything to reduce both unnecessary spend and environmental impact anyway – but this is a way we can use the terms of our contract to further minimise expenditure.
Our procurement team will be doing more work over coming weeks and months, working with services, to review contracts that are coming up for renewal, and further guidance and resources will be made available to colleagues who manage contracts to support them in identifying opportunities to make savings.
Transformation and improvement programme
Our work with Inner Circle to develop our transformation and improvement plan is continuing at pace. Having undertaken a broad overview of the organisation’s operations and priorities, we are now looking in detail at a range of ideas that may prove to be a significant part of our whole-organisation transformation programme.
This ‘Deep dive’ work is a process where initial ideas are looked at and considered in more detail to better understand a range of factors such as implications, costs, resources and potential for success.
The deep dives include work on:
- early intervention and prevention;
- strategic asset management and economic growth;
- becoming a digital first organisation;
- adult social care commissioning and brokerage; and
- children services placement optimisation.
Thank you to everyone who has responded to requests for information and those who are directly involved in this deep dive phase.
The critical financial position means that we urgently need to transform the organisation to help us to move towards financial sustainability.
We need to write a transformation and improvement plan to be submitted to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) by the 27 August as part of the criteria for exceptional financial support.
Corporate Peer Challenge – timeline
The timeline for the publication of the council’s LGA Corporate Peer Challenge report has been changed.
The council’s peer challenge report was to be published ‘no later than 28 June 2024’. However, following the Prime Minister’s announcement in May, of a General Election on 4 July, the Local Government Association has said that it will not publish any council’s peer challenge report until after the election.
The report will now be published on Monday 8 July 2024.
We are working on an action plan based on feedback already received which will complement our developing plans for transformation and improvement. We are required to publish the action plan no later than 28 August 2024.
Feedback
If you have any questions, feedback or ideas in response to the items in this briefing, please discuss within your team and with your line management. We share the briefing with senior managers in the organisation ahead of wider distribution so that they can be ready to discuss the content. We will make sure we check in with colleagues throughout the month, across the organisation and at all levels to make sure people are aware of and understand the information shared, and to pick up on any ideas, questions or suggestions.
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