Mike Callon, Project Coordinator and Kevin MacCallum, Corporate Marketing Officer introduced a report and gave a presentation which provided the Committee with an update as to the progress of the Future Council project, as well as an opportunity to engage with and influence the emerging options which were being developed in order to transform the Council and achieve the savings required of the Council.

The emerging options would be further developed and then published by the Chief Executive, as officer budget options, for full public, staff and service user consultation in September 2014.

The Strategic Director set the context for the project in that investment decisions and budget savings were to be made according to three key priorities:

·  Tackling health inequalities, poverty and disadvantage - narrowing the gap between the richest and poorest communities in the borough

·  Protecting the vulnerable, making sure people were safe and felt safe – and could remained independent as long as possible

·  Driving economic growth – investing in Wirral’s future

The Council was also committed to ensuring that savings were identified and delivered based on the following principles where possible:

·  Spend less on the cost of running the Council

·  Broadest shoulders to bear the greatest burden

·  Mitigate the impact of savings on frontline services

Current projections of savings were for a total of £70million would be required by 2018. Across the Council 81 different service areas had been reviewed in detail. Services had been considered according to three themes and within the theme relevant to this Committee, Community and Neighbourhood Services, there were five ‘blocks’:

·  Looking after the environment

·  Regulation and enforcement

·  Neighbourhood services

·  Cultural services

·  Driving economic growth

Responding to comments from Members, the Strategic Director, Kevin MacCallum and Mike Callon made the following comments:

·  With regard to field based staff, improvements to IT systems would help in maintaining logs without staff having to make unnecessary journeys back to an office.

·  The results in terms of tourism generation, from a very small team of three with a budget of not more than £100,000, significantly outperformed other authorities in the region, with around 5,000 people in employment in Wirral as a result of tourism.

·  Budget options would be brought forward which might have previously been rejected, as options would add up to more than £45m, the required saving in 2015/16 and 2016/17, so that choices could be made.

·  The Future Council project would make it easier for customers to access services in the most appropriate way, the Customer Relations Management system would be developed as a person centred system.

·  The Coordinating Committee, at its meeting on 2 July (minute 4 refers) had agreed that a working group of the Chairs, Vice-Chairs and spokespersons from all the Policy and Performance Committees could meet in early September to look at the best way of scrutinising the options to be published and this had been supported by the Families and Wellbeing and Transformation and Resources Policy and Performance Committees.

·  The working group could decide how and if the public could be involved in workshop sessions.

A Member expressed the view that it would be useful to get the views of other organisations as to how budget options could affect them and this could be done in a workshop setting.

Resolved – That the report and presentation be noted.