London Borough of Ealing provides support for older people to live in their own homes. This initiative provides Value for Money (VfM) by enabling the Council to reduce spending on residential and nursing care. It also helps the Council to meet its objective of increasing the independence of older people.
Careful placement management enables the Council to ensure appropriate referral to the most suitable type of care. The Council has also been working in partnership with its Private Finance Initiative (PFI) provider to rebuild and remodel resource centres for older people. The final centre opened in summer 2009. High quality facilities, for example nursing or emergency respite care, are available for those most in need. This increases the VfM of placements on offer in Ealing.
Robust planning and monitoring enables the Council to bear down on costs, focus attention on performance, and release resources for frontline services and the achievement of Council-wide priorities. This approach has strengthened the Council's financial standing further. It faces the challenges of the economic downturn, whilst delivering quality services focussed on resident priorities.
"Achieving Value for Money and low council tax increases" is a firm part of the management and organisational culture. The Council has delivered low council tax increases on a consistent basis. It has firm plans in the medium term financial strategy to continue to do so, despite being a grant floor authority.
Detailed monitoring of savings targets allows the Council to ensure that its departments continue to be efficiently run. This also contributes to the delivery of low council tax increases, which improves VfM for Ealing residents.
The Council achieves its objectives through:
- Planning: The Council has a well-established single process integrating financial and corporate planning, with visible support from Members and the Chief Executive. The process also considers the wider impact on the community through equalities impact assessments. Detailed benchmarking figures are presented to Members for comparison purposes, and each service submission within this process is required to produce a VfM self-assessment for review and challenge.
- Monitoring: The Council reports significant performance and financial information together on a monthly basis via the “Finance Monitor”. This is a fully embedded effective management tool. The Finance Team has made improvements to the tool every year since its introduction in 2005, to ensure that it remains responsive to user needs. The Council reports via this tool to the Finance Strategy Group, Corporate Board and Cabinet.
The Council has pioneered detailed in-year root and branch 'line-by-line reviews' of all council budgets. A target of £2 million line-by-line savings has been set for 2009/10.
The Council has a number of innovative reporting arrangements on 'key' financial health indicators for both revenue and capital, relating to debt collection in particular, which is significant to the Council.
There is a "What do I need to know in five minutes?" summary of key financial health indicators. This utilises a traffic light system to assess current performance against key targets:
- key balance sheet items (e.g. investments and outstanding council tax debt)
- 'Savings Tracker' highlighting progress made by services in delivering savings and proposed actions to mitigate any risks
- a 'Top Ten' savings summary, reviewing in detail the progress of the Council’s ten biggest savings (40 per cent of total savings)
The Performance Monitor provides a monthly snapshot of how the Council is performing against key performance indicators:
- What do I need to know in five minutes?
- Key indicators: A snapshot
- Recession monitor - an innovation focussing on the performance of a number of Performance Indicators that might be affected by the current economic climate