Savings explained

Below are details of the individual Corporate Workstreams and the amounts
they are currently predicted to save.

Senior Management Reductions –£7.9 million

The County Council is reducing its senior management by 25%. Senior
Management capacity is critical to future delivery and leadership within the
organisation. However it is a significant cost and one which the council has
reviewed. At the start of this process there were over 600 staff on senior
management roles.

Recruitment freeze and Restructuring – £4.4 million

The County Council is not replacing people when they leave apart from
critical posts delivering frontline essential services.

The reduction of the workforce, achieved by voluntary means wherever

possible, will result in the opportunity and need for restructures to ensure that
work can continue to be covered with significantly less money now and in the
future.

Communications – £1million
Current expenditure levels for communication, marketing and publicity costs
have been reviewed across the County Council and reductions will be made
in the level of activity and staffing.

Democratic Infrastructure – £0.9million

Work is currently ongoing in this area which area includes reviewing existing
business processes around member decisions and scrutiny seeking the
opportunity to streamline activity

It also includes the grant budgets held by individual members for community
projects, which are to be retained and the funding available to Hampshire
Actions Teams which will be cut saving £700,000

Grants process – £tbc

This workstream has reviewed how to achieve better value for money in the
way grants are given out by the Council. It has examined how to make the
business process supporting grants more efficient and will achieve the
savings by developing a new corporate framework for consistent application,
allocation and monitoring of grants linked to the Council’s priorities.

NB. Each service will be considering the actual grants they award and it is
likely that there will be reductions.

Inspection and regulation – £0.2million

The Government has reduced the burden and accompanying bureaucracy of
external inspections and regulation, and has reduced the number of national
performance targets the Council has to meet. This means the resources
required and to accommodate these and provide data can be cutback.

Contract negotiations – £9.7million

The focus here is delivering cost reductions by negotiating even better deals
in relation to the County Council’s suppliers and their supply chain. Some 40
suppliers account for £240m of the Council’s average £650m spend.

Income and charging - £0.6million

In 2010/11 over £96.4 million of the County Council’s funding came from
locally generated income, over and above Government grants and local
taxation. Options are under review to increase this income with a target of
£550,000 for next year.

Asset Rationalisation – savings tbc and delivered in 2012/13

The County Council through its Workstyle Programme is rapidly reducing the
volume of accommodation it occupies and will be accelerating this programme
to realise savings and capital receipts earlier.

Support and Administration - £1million

Support and admin functions have been reviewed to ensure the most cost
effective models are operating and identify areas where business processes
can be simplified and any duplication removed. This includes things like
automating processes and allowing more ‘self-service’

Integration of Professional Functions - £tbc

it is proposed to look at the organisation of all the Council’s professional and
corporate services over the coming year to consider where a new model of
one corporate function would bring greater economies of scale, reduced
senior management costs and greater benefits in terms of scale and
aggregation

Business/Shared Services – £0.4million

The County Council has a long tradition of successful trading operations.
These are being reviewed to establish their strategic fit with the Council in the
future. Alternative models of service are being explored to see if they can
deliver at lower cost.

The Council is seeking further opportunities for sharing services with partners
The County Council is already part of various groups of authorities where
opportunities for greater collaboration are being explored. Recent examples
include sharing a Head of Internal Audit with Southampton City Council and
teaming up with Dorset County Council to develop a joint ICT strategy (link to
release).

Departmental merger - £tbc

Combining the Culture, Communities and Rural Affairs department (CCRA)
and the Property, Business, Regulatory Services and IT department (PBR&IT)
will make significant savings and provide the Council with the opportunity to
enhance services. For further details read the press release (link).

Joint Commissioning - £tbc

This was late edition to the programme and will look at how the council can
join up its commissioning of services both internally and with external partners
to boost its buying power. It will also cover rationalising tender processing.

Learning and Development - £0.6million

The Council has refocused training on essential and priority areas only. The
next step in this area is to develop a new model for the provision of training
and development looking at what the Council provides and commissions.

IT Cost reduction - £0.9million

Significant savings have already been made in the reorganisation of IT
Services. Work continues to drive down IT overheads this includes reducing
contract costs, increasing external income, improving productivity through
better use of IT and further simplification of IT processes.