Issue - meetings

1.         The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government’s endorsement and recognition of Surrey’s approach to public service transformation be welcomed and support for the forward programme of work be confirmed.

2.         Officers develop outline business cases for consideration at the October 2013 Cabinet meeting.

Reason for decisions

The Council is working closely with partners to develop its plans for public service transformation in Surrey. Public service transformation will significantly improve services and outcomes for Surrey residents and generate financial savings. By working as “one team” with partners, public service transformation will focus resources away from expensive, high cost responses towards prevention and earlier intervention. 

[The decisions on this item can be called in by the Council Overview and Scrutiny Committee]

The Council is working closely with partners to develop its plans for public service transformation in Surrey. This includes a shared expressed ambition to develop a community budget approach in Surrey. At the LGA Conference on 3 July 2013 the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government announced that Surrey had been successful in being appointed as one of the areas to work intensively with the new Public Service Transformation Network on public service transformation. The Network will aim to disseminate the learning from the Government’s whole place community budget pilots and encourage application of the principles to a larger number of areas.

The six strands of focus for Surrey’s Public Service Transformation programme were:

·        Emergency Services Collaboration -  transforming the way the emergency services in Surrey work together

·        The Surrey Family Support Programme - improving the effectiveness and efficiency of partnership working and early interventions with families, as Surrey’s response to the Government’s ‘Troubled Families’ initiative

·        Dementia Friendly Communities - improving outcomes for people with dementia and reducing reliance on acute care, by providing a greater level of support for individuals, both within and by their communities

·        Better Use of Public Sector Assets - giving additional impetus to existing work on rationalisation of the public estate in Surrey to reduce its overall size and cost,

·        Increasing Youth Participation - building on the success in reducing the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs) in the county

·        Transforming Justice - focusing on more integrated working and case coordination to reduce offending and reoffending, reducing costs to the police and criminal justice system.

The Cabinet noted that the proposals were a way of both saving public money and making things work better for the benefit of all residents. Ministers and senior civil servants had been very impressed with what they had seen in Surrey and this had been represented in the success of the bid.

RESOLVED that:

1.         The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government’s endorsement and recognition of Surrey’s approach to public service transformation be welcomed and support for the forward programme of work be confirmed.

2.         Officers develop outline business cases for consideration at the October 2013 Cabinet meeting.

Reason for decisions

The Council is working closely with partners to develop its plans for public service transformation in Surrey. Public service transformation will significantly improve services and outcomes for Surrey residents and generate financial savings. By working as “one team” with partners, public service transformation will focus resources away from expensive, high cost responses towards prevention and earlier intervention.