Connected Council

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Helping councils to help themselvesHeadlines concerning local government tend to make depressing reading.

Reports of cuts to services, increases in council tax, public demonstrations

against service closures and other financial woes - just how do we turn this

negativity around?

Here at Aylesbury Vale District Council we believe that the funding model for local government was already broken. Austerity merely exposed the fact that local taxes didn’t cover the costs of service delivery and central government merely plugging the gap was unsustainable.

If we are honest with ourselves we know that the government money will not be coming back. The positive response to this is to seize the opportunity to reshape local government and taking ownership of the problem to create a self-sustaining funding model for local government.

AVDC faced this head-on and we redrew our funding model. From the old model of local taxation plus government hand-outs, ours now looks like this:

Our services contribute to one or more segments to deliver a balanced budget. In the future we aim to grow the profit segment to create surplus income – profit - that can be invested in services for our local residents and businesses. AVDC want to introduce new services in the future, not cuts.

We know that not all councils are like us so we challenge you to decide what your new model will look like. You will have already started with savings and efficiencies but what more can be done?

Are you using digital to improve services and deliver savings?

Are your teams focused on efficiencies and savings?

Cost cutting alone isn’t sufficient, how will you find new sources of income future?

Are your staff encouraged to be entrepreneurial?

The world is changing and local government must change too. Our customers deserve the best so what will the council of the future look like?

Whatever your model AVDC can help to identify the opportunities for your council.

EfficienciesSavings

ProfitIncome

Steps to successIt’s a cliché but we are on a journey and we haven’t got here overnight. To capture the huge transformational changes that we have already undergone we developed our Steps to Success which has pride of place in our offices. And there is plenty of space on the wall for the next chapter of the story.

How we can help youAVDC has learnt a great deal getting where we are today. We have made mistakes, we have sometimes changed direction but as a result we have created repeatable, successful programmes that other public sector organisations can benefit from.

You can work with us to:

• Access proven models and make them work for you

• Implement technology solutions that are already working in local government

• Develop your own value propositions

• Manage the costs of procurement by buying from the public sector

As a local authority we understand the legal frameworks, the reporting and financial constraints and the relationship between officers and members. By buying from us the funding stays within the public sector.

We have the experience of engaging stakeholders across the council to gain buy-in this will deliver time and cost savings.

Talk to us now about how we can help you to uncover your opportunities.

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One of first councils to move to Cloud IT strategy

Be the change – start of culture change

2008-10 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

AVDC foresee complete removal of revenue support grant

New business model to look for new income opportunities

Staff move to new state of the art Gateway offices

Engine room created - the hub of change

Next phase of Aylesbury town centre redevelopment

Car pool scheme launches saving £100K and 100,000 miles annually

Commercial AVDC - looking at income generation and culture

Vale Lottery – launch of UK’s first community lottery

Right here, Right Now digital revolution starts with new website and My Account

New organisational structure to break down department silos

Surviving to Thriving first external transformation conference held

Launch of first Council Amazon Alexa skill in UK

Council-wide commercial restructure - everyone undergoes assessments

Seed commercial team signs up first customers to share experiences

Connected Knowledge next phase of digital revolution including AI

The culture required for a successful local authority is changing. We face technology opportunities and threats, shifting roles, skills and talent shortages; we need resilience in the face of almost constant change.

AVDC undertook a major cultural transformation to become a flexible, resilient and commercially-minded organisation within the social enterprise model.

Our culture change programme was at the heart of AVDC’s transformation. We based it on new behaviours that underpinned the reorganisation of the whole council. We firmly believe behaviours come before skills which can be taught.

We assessed the effectiveness of various programmes but ultimately developed our own. This approach has ensured that we have been able to make significant changes through our culture change and digital innovation.

Cultural Transformation

AVDC Behaviours Framework

Maximising personal potential Building

effective relationships

Innovation & adapting to change

Customer focus

& insight

Delivering results

Commercially minded

Building value & financial strength

Our focus on culture has meant successful innovation and adoption of new working practices such as:

• Car pool scheme that has saved 100,000 staff miles and £100k in direct costs.

• New income from garden waste

• Planning turned from a loss to a profit

• Successful My Account adoption through digital innovation

• Agile working supported by a cloud first strategy

Community LotteryAVDC was the first council in the UK to implement a Community Lottery. We saw this as an opportunity to move from handouts to enabling good causes to fundraise and thereby encourage self- sufficiency.

The local authority is the licence holder and the provider of the platform for the lottery. Local good causes, particularly smaller charities, can benefit from a new way to fundraise without incurring the costs. From our experience the lottery is highly successful at leveraging significant donations to charities from a small investment.

Our research shows that a community lottery taps into people’s motivation to give rather than gamble. The whole process is online and there is no instant option to win. And whether you wish to supplement an existing grants programme or are struggling to fund an existing grants process, a community lottery generates a totally new source of income for good causes.

Unlike some other lotteries, tickets are £1 each and a higher amount, 60p goes to the good causes with the remaining 40p going in costs of delivery and prize money. Since its launch in October 2015 the Vale Lottery has over 180 good causes registered raising over £140,000 and this continues to grow. There are now more than 40 across the country, when will you launch yours?

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Organisational design Culture

Current State People Future state

Leadership Behaviours

£5,000 investment from AVDC allows local charities to access in excess of

£140,000

People at the heart of change

Culture for the council of the futureWhen AVDC developed its framework there was a significant investment in communications and training, consultation and familiarisation for staff. We have developed a wealth of training materials, briefings and guides as well as staff and assessor experience.

Wherever you are on your cultural change journey we can apply our experiences to update your behaviours to become more commercial, enhance your vision or work to engage stakeholders to take them on the journey:

Leadership workshops – As the role of the council changes it can help to have external challenge when you look at an organisational map for the future. We can work with you to facilitate the development of a new vision and share lessons learnt. These workshops include access to senior team members that were part of the AVDC transformation programme.

Behaviours and Assessment Centre – We can help you identify your future behaviours sharing with you the AVDC experience. We can help develop and implement a leadership and staff model assessment centre reflecting your core values delivered by experienced facilitators and assessors We offer additional support such as understanding personality profiles and familiarisation sessions.

Stakeholder workshops – communication and peer support for members and/or staff to support them through the culture change to remain positive, confident and resilient. This can include support guides and training, presentations and briefings.

Ongoing coaching and mentoring support - for the leadership and other teams, either as a group or as individuals to keep up momentum and challenge the potential return of the old ways of thinking.

Speak to us about how we can help you, cultural engagements begin from £2,500.

AVDC helped Corby Borough Council launch the Corby Lottery in March 2017. We provided a package of support to assist them both with their decision-making process and implementation. This included:

• writing the business case and plan

• supporting the application to the Gambling Commission

• extensive help with the marketing including design of the website

• project management and general advice

There are now 63 causes registered already generating £37K.

Corby sees their lottery as a way to help good causes to raise additional funds otherwise not available to them and encourages community funding.

“Our experience of working with AVDC to implement a community lottery has been excellent. In fact, we couldn’t have done it without them.” Adrian Sibley, Director of Corporate Services,

Corby Borough Council

We can help with:

• Member and officer on-boarding

• Delivery of your business case and plan

• Delivery of a cabinet/council report

• Completion of your licence application

• Marketing and good cause recruitment and launch

We can help you deliver this value to your good causes from £2,000.

Case Study

RAISING FUNDS WITH THE COMMUNITY FOR THE COMMUNITY

AVDC has completed in excess of

1,000 behavioural assessments

Digital TransformationAVDC is recognised as one of the leading digital local authorities in the UK. It was the first with the ambition to move to 100% cloud-based solutions and the first to launch an Amazon Alexa skill. Our Connected Knowledge strategy provides direction, consistent principles and allows for close partnership working to create a flexible, future proofed digital platform. Our aim is always to be a step ahead never to merely catch-up.

In order to do this, we have overcome significant challenges and we can share our experiences with you:

• Approaches to managing legacy technology

• Addressing organisational blocks to implementing digital solutions

• How to deliver a digital platform that spans the entire council

• Understanding customer’s needs and mapping their journeys

• Managing the risks including security and staff engagement

One of our guiding principles has been to improve services but for lower cost. We want to be as good as Amazon, delivering value and quality efficiently to customers. By exploiting the opportunities that digital offers we can serve customers according to need.

AVDC was approached by a local authority looking for stories of successful culture change. Curiosity was raised after hearing AVDC culture change was likened to a “stick of rock”; break it anywhere and the culture remains the same all the way through.

The council is facing familiar challenges including making best use of finite resources, a challenging local plan and of course funding. The management team had already recognised that organisational change was required and members were supportive.

After a half day planning session, AVDC played a crucial role facilitating a workshop with executives and heads of service to explore what commercialism meant for them, how to tackle possible objections and to hear what lessons AVDC had learnt.

Feedback from the day echoed its timeliness, the management team were fully on board with the process. AVDC was seen as an excellent example of a commercial approach working in local government. The council is moving fast with new behaviours agreed and being rolled out to underpin the commercial change with an income board already set up for new initiatives.

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Culture change leadership workshop

We continue to develop improvements, launch new services online, drive further savings which will ultimately deliver more revenue that we can reinvest in others services.

To realise the potential offered by digital transformation we cannot emphasise enough that culture is as important as processes and data. Our experiences show that digital is a complex opportunity.

Digital leaders and change workshops – What is the role of technology within your strategic corporate plan? Working with one of our digital leaders we can help you develop your own core principles based on AVDC experiences sharing tips, techniques and models.

Core change delivery – We can help with implementation support based on the needs of your customers, helping to map out a high-level change programme creating cross divisional teams to support implementation.

Digital service development – AVDC has worked closely with digital suppliers to create council ready solutions, tried and tested, and able to meet legal and regulatory requirements. We have delivered solutions such as fully online taxi licencing and we are just rolling out other regulatory services. Talk to us about how you can benefit from these council ready solutions.

Flexible working – Underpinned by our Cloud first strategy we have worked hard to enable flexible working for our staff by providing remote access and implementing supporting working policies. One crucial move for us was to IP telephony. Moving to IP telephony can typically offer an immediate 30% reduction in annual telephony costs. If you haven’t looked at this already speak to us about how it can work for you.

Digital engagements start from £2,500 for a workshop.

Tier 0Self Service

Tier 1Contact Centre/Assisted & Front

line delivery

Tier 2Case Work

Tier 3Expert

Delivery

Supporting Channel Shift

Job Families cover the roles to do the work at the appropriate level of skill. Culture change and skills development.

Customer journeys start here, fulfilled by resources at the appropriate tier

ResultsBenefit helpline calls down 20%

Council tax calls down 26%Recycling & waste calls down 23%

Web chats 1,800 a month

up 83% on 2016-17

Delivering efficient servicesDo you really know how much your services actually cost to deliver?

The light-bulb moment for our planning team came from the realisation that it cost more than twice as much to process a planning request than the statutory planning fee. AVDC has since successfully turned around its planning services from a £1.5m loss to a £500k profit and growing.

We can support your service review to help you get to grips with where your costs versus charges lie, undertake policy and process reviews and develop new approaches that will work for you develop the right framework going forward.

Aylesbury Vale District CouncilAVDC’s vision will probably be very familiar to you but with one crucial difference.

We are here to create value for Aylesbury Vale residents and businesses but to do so through commercial activities with a social conscience.

The AVDC Seed team was born from its commercial transformation programme and it stands for Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Development (SEED).

The Seed team work within AVDC to support entrepreneurial ideas and service innovation as our transformation journey continues. And we work with other councils and public sector organisations so they can learn from our experiences to help them to transform.

As a team we consist of experienced individuals from both public and private organisations with a passion for changing the public sector for the good of everyone. Working with us means unique access to members of the teams who have undergone this transformation within AVDC. We can share our experiences rich in the stories from a council that has done it themselves.

Our passion comes from knowing that what we do will save lives. Unlike a commercial organisation,

our success won’t be measured in share prices and dividend payments but in the quality of services that we provide to those in society that need our help. We want to put the social in social enterprise. And we believe that we share those goals with you.

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AVDC was approached by a UK local authority wishing to review its planning process. Having heard about the successful changes that AVDC had implemented in its planning department which led to significant savings and ultimately a financial surplus, they wanted to hear about and learn from the AVDC experience.

Three workshops were delivered with both members and officers. The workshops explored the specific challenges being faced by the authority. The attendees were clear that there was a need:

• To protect the good relationships between officers and members

• For better member knowledge around the planning process itself.

• For fewer call ins and the requirement to shorten application times.

To support the knowledge sharing AVDC provided both facilitation and expertise in the form of the Head of Planning and the former Chair of Planning in the council. Both talked openly about the AVDC experience, the drivers for change and how concerns could be managed and overcome. The sessions brought out challenges faced such as changing call-in arrangements and AVDC shared its experience of managing them.

The authority is now exploring how it can take on board the lessons shared and plan the changes that it needs to make. Improvements being explored include more communications at an earlier stage, how to make the whole process easier and to encourage greater collaboration between departments.

Planning review workshops

Aylesbury Vale District Council is a multi-award winning and highly successful authority that recognised 7 years ago that local government funding was set to change for good. Since then it has been on a journey to implement new business models with an authority wide rethink about how services are delivered and supported by a leadership programme and staff model assessment to change the culture of the whole organisation.

Some of our achievements:

• In excess of £18.5m savings from our cloud first strategy, channel shift and our cultural transformation programme

• Over 50,000 registered users of our My Account

• First ever UK Community Lottery

• First council in the UK to launch an Alexa skill

• AI (artificial intelligence) to improve our customer services delivery

Our team are regularly asked to share our experiences at events across the UK and we even have interest from Australia for the community lottery.

We provide services such as payroll and health and safety to other local authorities and are constantly experimenting with and evaluating new products and services both for our residents and working with other councils.

As a local authority we are uniquely placed to help other local authorities and public sector organisations meet their challenges.

Contact us today to find out we can help you.

seed@aylesburyvaledc.gov.ukCall us 01296 585145

Why work with us

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Aylesbury Vale District Council The Gateway, Gatehouse Road, Aylesbury, HP19 8FF www.aylesburyvaledc.gov.uk/seed