Agenda item

The Leader presented a report on proposals to re-shape the Council and the way that it provides services via the Ambition 2020 programme as well as the next steps for achieving the Council’s vision for growth.

The Leader commented that the Council was at a key point in its history and the proposals that were before Cabinet represented clear long-term goals that would allow the workforce and others to deliver the best possible service.  The new path that the Council was on had received encouraging support from the independent Growth Commission that was launched in October 2015 and the Council had already adopted and begun implementing the 10 key steps set out in the Growth Commission’s report.  The circa £63m budget gap by 2020/21 meant that the Council had to significantly change the way that it operated and the Leader stressed the importance of consulting with the community and voluntary sectors, business and other stakeholders in the area and the Council’s Select Committees to ensure that all parties were fully informed and engaged in the Ambition 2020 programme.

The current elements of the Ambition 2020 programme were presented in the form of two Design Principles that related to core functions and workforce and organisational development alongside 15 Service Design Proposals which set out the proposals for the future delivery of services.  Councillor Carpenter referred to opportunities to raise income in respect of the Refuse and Home Services elements and the Leader confirmed that the Council had to be more commercially minded.  Councillor Worby commented that the transformational nature of the proposals meant that the Council should not under-play the extent to which it and local residents needed to adapt and change and Councillor Twomey agreed with the view that the significant cuts to public sector funding had led to all local authorities having to re-think the way that they provided services to local people.  Councillor Twomey also remarked on the key role that growth, investment and regeneration would have in ensuring that the Council was able to bridge the future budget shortfall.

Members spoke in support of the Growth Commission recommendations and the Ambition 2020 proposals and raised a number of issues including:

·  The significance of the local community engaging in the process to ensure that the services that were provided in the future were the most important to them;

·  The need to have clear strategies for engaging with all sectors of the local community, and especially the elderly, to ensure that no-one was left behind as the Council moved into a more digital age.  In that respect, Councillor Worby referred to the Care City initiative which had a strong focus on digital systems designed for the elderly;

·  The importance of focussing on outcomes for local residents.  On that point, Councillor Turner referred to the graph within the draft public consultation document at Appendix 1 to the report which showed the very poor comparative outcomes for residents of Barking and Dagenham in the areas of deprivation, low pay, children in care, teenage conceptions, unemployment, GCSE and A level results, homelessness and domestic violence.

Cabinet resolved to:

(i)  Agree the publication of the document at Appendix 1, which sets out the Council’s proposed response to the independent Growth Commission and the Ambition 2020 proposals, subject to the amendment of the document to reflect that the Council had already agreed to adopt the 10 key steps proposed by the Growth Commission and was in the process of implementing them;

(ii)  Agree an eight week period for public consultation, to commence on 20 April and end on 16 June, and note that a report will be presented in July 2016 detailing the results of consultation and inviting Cabinet to decide on the proposals in the light of consultation; and

(iii)  Agree the referral of recommendations 17 to 109 within the Growth Commission’s report “No-one left behind: in pursuit of growth for the benefit of everyone” for consideration by Select Committees between May and July 2016.