Bouncing back together - October 2021 to March 2023

Delivering and Innovating

Delivering and Innovating

Our priorities

  • Listening to our residents and businesses more and using this information to improve our services
  • Involving communities in the design, development and delivery of services
  • Building strong, effective partnerships across the public, private, voluntary and community sector taking a place based approach to achieve more for the district
  • Modernising the way we work to ensure we continue to deliver high quality services
  • Considering new ways to generate income achieving financial self-sufficiency and investment

We will

  • Through our Investment and Development Programme, continue to develop and implement a pipeline of projects focussed on reducing costs, improving efficiency, generating income and becoming more commercially focussed to deliver against the £1.6m financial gap over the next four years
  • Refresh our Digital Strategy and action plan to address future demand and improve the way we use technology to deliver services
  • Encourage residents to transact with us online by developing our website to allow customers to make bookings, track requests and sign up to receive council tax bills electronically
  • Develop a plan of community engagement to better understand the needs of our local communities
  • Use customer information and feedback to improve services whilst working towards retaining the accreditation for customer service excellence
  • Review the criteria for the discretionary business rates scheme for charitable and non-profit organisations
  • Monitor changes to various legislation to understand the impact on services including but not limited to the Domestic Abuse Act 2020, Environmental Bill 2020 and Planning reforms

Working together we will

  • Work with Fusion to recover and develop leisure services following the pandemic ensuring the district has the right type and level of leisure provision to meet resident’s needs
  • Review and adopt a new Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy for Essex and enhance the value of joint working through the waste management partnership
  • Drive forward Levelling Up for the district including delivery of the Shared Prosperity Fund and rural prosperity fund projects
  • Deliver the Levelling Up rural pilot with Essex Priorities: County Council