The Council Plan

What have we achieved?

Over recent years we have delivered on required savings to improve our financial position. We have recently confirmed the balanced budget for 2023/24, despite unprecedented financial pressures resulting from both a reduction in funding and the cost of living crisis, which is impacting on the cost of all of our services and materials. 

While working to manage this increased demand with shrinking resources, our teams have received recognition of their exemplary performance. Our Commissioning Team was shortlisted in the CIPS awards in the ‘Procurement Team of the Year (small organisation)’ category, with the team being recognised for diligence, commitment and expertise. All teams are striving to get the best out of our contracts, enhancing value for money and increasing the level of our reserves to make the council more resilient. 

Our front line and digital teams remain focused on improving services across the council. They have been working to provide fast, digital access to our services, offering easy to use technology while also linking residents to specialist teams when more guidance and support is needed. Working with our website users we have improved the council website, making it easier to navigate, and reduced waiting times for those that need to use our customer contact team. We are focusing on getting the basics right, providing value for money and embracing new technology in service design and delivery.

Our HR & OD Shared Service won the Workforce Transformation Award at the 2022 Municipal Journal Achievement Awards. This award recognises our work motivating and engaging employees, whilst demonstrating a firm commitment to embedding our core principles of equality, diversity and inclusion. We have also introduced a new recruitment approach to encourage more diverse applicants and create a workforce that is better reflective of the community it serves, including more diverse interview panels and anonymised recruitment. 
 

Where are we now?

• Our contact response time (average speed of answered calls) is now less than three minutes.
• 95% of freedom of information requests are responded to in under 20 days.
• We have staff turnover and staff sickness rates far below the London average.
• 25% of our workforce are from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnicity groups, and 7% have a declared disability - both under-representative of Kingston’s population. (31.7% minority ethnic, and 14.4% have a disability under terms of the Equality Act).  
   

Priorities

Finance and commissioning

Our commitment

We are responsible with the council’s finances, maintaining a balanced budget. We commission services that are fit for purpose and provide value for money.

Service performance indicators

• Financial outturn performance against budget
• Council tax & business rate collection rate %
• On-contract spend

Transforming our services

Our commitment

We focus on transformational opportunities to address the significant financial, economic and social challenges that impact both us as an organisation and the community we support. We promote equity, equality, and environmental responsibility in all that we do.

Service performance indicators

• Narrative report to highlight impact and outcomes

Service delivery, digital and communications

Our commitment

We provide access to information and services efficiently. We invest in fast, digital solutions, while supporting those who are digitally excluded. We communicate clearly and in an accessible way with our communities.

Service performance indicators

• Quality/satisfaction rate for contacts to the customer contact centre (emerging from customer fulfilment programme) 
• Reduction in repeat calls (emerging from customer fulfilment programme) 
• Web visits and transaction rate reported against phone contact rate

Data and insight

Our commitment

We develop data and insight to guide how we improve services. We share this insight across the council and our partnerships to enable us to make the best decisions for the borough.

Service performance indicators

• Customer fulfilment data packages used to develop service responses (emerging from customer fulfilment programme) 
• Data and insight sets published 
• % of insight sets meeting thresholds for current data

Great employer

Our commitment

We attract and retain the best talent by supporting, investing in and developing our workforce. We ensure our staff are reflective of and connected with our communities and focused on improving outcomes for residents and our council.

Service performance indicators

• Agency spend 
• Staff turnover
• % of workforce / applicants minority ethnic
• % of workforce / applicants disabled
• Gender pay gap (annual)

Buildings, planning and infrastructure

Our commitment

We develop and use our buildings and space in the most efficient and impactful way, and provide high quality planning services, delivering the infrastructure to support new development and enabling residents to get the right design for their communities and the natural environment.

Service performance indicators

• % assets in good use or identified for disposal
• Planning performance set against statutory targets for speed (major/minors/householder processed within timeframe) and quality (appeal overturns) of decision making.