In a written Ministerial Statement following the Local Government Finance Settlement for 2024 to 2025, the then Secretary of State for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) set out the requirement for local authorities to develop and share 'productivity plans'.
The plans aim to 'set out how local authorities will improve service performance and reduce wasteful expenditure. For example, on consultants or discredited equality, diversity and inclusion programmes. The government will monitor these plans. Funding settlements in future will be informed by performance against these plans'.
Both the statement and a subsequent letter from the Minister for Local Government made clear the expectation that each local authority’s productivity plan would cover 4 main areas -
- transformation of services to make better use of resources
- opportunities to take advantage of advances in technology and make better use of data to inform decision-making and service design
- ways to reduce wasteful spend within systems. This includes specific consideration of expenditure on consultants and discredited staff Equality, Diversity and Inclusion programmes
- barriers preventing activity that the government can help to reduce or remove
All local authorities were required to make sure their productivity plan had member oversight and endorsement. The DLUHC requested that each local authority returned their plan to DLUHC by 19 July 2024. They made the plan available to residents via their website.
The Minister for Local Government advised that individual plans will not be rated or scored. The Minister for Local Government will be chairing a panel to consider the themes and evidence from the plans. They will include both the Office for Local Government and the Local Government Association.
The former DLUHC also supplied a list of 25 topics they wanted local authorities to include information on. They related to the 4 themed areas above. Local authorities were advised that this was not intended to be a burden and that DLUHC expected plans to be 3 to 4 pages in length.
Local authorities have been advised that the production of these plans is to help the government find out about the barriers and opportunities that councils are facing. There will be no formalised assessment. There will be no suggestions that local authorities should do different things.
The former government’s intention was that a national Long-Term Sustainability Panel would be established to consider the themes emerging from Productivity Plans, opportunities for further productivity gains, and barriers to transformation. This was in addition to the financial considerations to achieve productive outcomes.
Our Productivity Plan collates the information requested by DLUHC. It presents it in one document.
DLUHC requested that local authorities should 'report progress on the plans on a regular basis and include relevant metrics and key performance indicators to allow us and our residents to monitor progress'.
Complying with this request, by producing an action plan with performance measures, would duplicate existing and established governance processes that have already been set up for all the projects and programmes outlined in our Productivity Plan. Therefore, in the interests of efficiency it is proposed that no additional reporting mechanisms are established to monitor progress against the Productivity Plan.