How customer insight helps us make informed decisions

Cllr Jill Shortland

Vice Chair LG Improvement Board

10 March 2011 www.local.gov.uk

The context

Government priorities

• Deficit Reduction

• Localism

• Self Regulation & improvement

• Big Society

Deficit Reduction

• Toughest finance settlement in living memory

• Councils face tough choices about the services they provide

“This is the toughest local government finance settlement in living memory. A few councils have seen a reduction in the money they receive from the Government of up to 17% in the first year. As a result councils face a total funding shortfall of £6.5 billion over the next year.

We have been clear that the level of spending reduction that councils are going to have to make goes way beyond anything that conventional efficiency drives, such as shared services, can achieve. We have to face the fact that this level of grant reduction will inevitably lead to cuts in services’’.

Baroness Margaret Eaton, Chairman of the Local Government Association

Localism

Opening up and transforming public services by:• Lifting the burden of bureaucracy• Empowering communities to do things their way• Increasing local control of public finance• Diversifying the supply of public services• Opening up Government to public scrutiny• Strengthening accountability to local people

Self regulation and improvement

 "Councils are accountable to their local residents, not central government departments. Ultimately they will be judged by how effectively they deliver services, rather than whether the right boxes have been ticked on a Whitehall bureaucrat’s template form. "

Cllr David Parsons, Chairman of the LG Group Improvement Board

Big Society

• Transferring power, assets, resources and decision-making down to grass roots communities

• Encouraging community activism and creating opportunities for voluntary groups to develop and succeed – as well as to ensure accountability to the community for taxpayers’ money spent locally

Our challenge

Evidence based decision making

• We require data and information that is robust and reliable

• That reflects the real experiences and make-up of our communities

• That combines the ‘intelligence’ of all the agencies working for that community

Understanding our citizens & communities

• Who our customers are as individuals – the make up of the local population and their needs and ‘profiles’

• What the area is like – the issues and challenges local people face as well as the assets and resources of all the partners operating in this area

• Their ambitions and appetite for engagement and how they can help shape their own outcomes

Our expertise

We know our communities and are working withthem to reshape local services including:• Using customer insight - the Customer Led

Transformation programme and the case studies we will see here today

• Developing new models of delivery including shared services, social enterprises & mutuals

• Community budgets pilots• Capital and asset pathfinders

Our prioritiesAll the organisations in the place need to communicate

and share their resources in order to:• engage with and understand the needs and

aspirations of their local communities to meet these whilst being open & accountable

• join up and simplify processes supporting citizens & communities removing duplication and unnecessary interventions

• target scare resources to make the greatest impact and enable self service where appropriate