The three London councils announced their ambitions for the extra £7m of savings, which have been identified within the corporate services portfolio, in a new tri-borough progress report which was tabled on 7 March during a meeting between the three councils' leaders and Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.
The report highlights a number of key achievements by the three councils one year on from their original plans to share services, including:
- The reduction of the number of senior and middle managers across the three boroughs by 50 per cent and the dramatically reduced cost of the executive pay bill.
- Funds have gone further: We announced our first £1m of savings in October 2011 and are on-track to deliver the original target savings of £7.7m by 2012/13 and £33.4m by 2014/15. We are also ambitious that we will save a further £7m a year by 2015/16
- We have protected front-line services by combining children's services, adult social care and library services across the three boroughs, and have started to share environment services across Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea councils. Nearly four in five (79 per cent) of tri-borough residents are now satisfied with the way their council is running the area, up from 77 per cent from the start of 2011
- We have shown how honest comparison across three sovereign authorities can help identify new and better ways of working and increasing pace across our three organisations.
Commenting on the latest tri-borough achievements, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: "This report shows how councils can make sensible savings through sharing back office services, joining forces to procure and cutting down on middle management whilst protecting frontline services.
"The success of the tri-borough programme is testament to the innovation and forward thinking of Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea."
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Leader Cllr Sir Merrick Cockell said: "The decisions we took to share services have resulted in significant savings which is good news for our residents. What is also good news is that we have identified new ways of working that mean we should be able to improve the quality of some of the services that we are providing our residents."
Westminster City Council Leader-elect Cllr Philippa Roe said: "The tri-borough programme is already providing significant savings by allowing us to reduce management and back-office costs. The fact we have now scaled up our savings target to an ambitious £40m a year by 2015/16 illustrates just how much potential there is within this programme to respond to tough budget challenges while helping us protect, and in many cases improve, the frontline services we offer to our residents."
Hammersmith & Fulham Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh said: "We have reduced management costs by 38 per cent including sharing a chief executive. Through shared contract arrangements, we are driving down the price of the services we buy. These back-office savings mean we have been able to cut council tax in Hammersmith & Fulham and our partner boroughs are freezing theirs, all without the service cuts seen elsewhere. At a time when other councils are looking to close libraries, we have kept all our libraries open."
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Quelle/Source: Kensington and Chelsea Today, 12.03.2012
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