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Case Study – Borough Council of Lynn & West Norfolk

Borough Council of King’s Lynn & West Norfolk achieves £1m efficiency savings – ahead of Gershon

Productivity, Efficiency and Establishment Review

On the basis of the feasibility study, the Borough Council of King’s Lynn & West Norfolk decided to embark on an ambitious programme of efficiency savings and productivity improvements by appointing external consultants Cannizaro. Their brief was to achieve 6% savings across the Council’s operations without affecting the quality or delivery of Council services. Other factors both the Council and Cannizaro needed to consider were:

• streamlining the management structure following the transfer of the Council’s housing stock to a registered social landlord.
• effecting a culture change and ensuring that managers were proactive in dealing with performance and quality issues and the delivery of continuous improvement
• improving external perception of the Council as an efficient and cost effective body
• maintaining motivation during the change programme and being sensitive to the impact on staff morale
• maximising the planning delivery grant

The project was supported by the Council’s own internal communications programme which provided regular staff briefing sessions, led by the Chief Executive, Ray Harding. “The success of any organisation is down to its staff. We wanted to ensure that our staff understood the reasons behind the proposals, were able to take advantage of any opportunities that these may provide and were able to ask questions at all stages of the process. As well as briefing sessions, we issued regular briefing notes and developed a question and answer facility on our intranet, which meant staff could share their concerns and receive responses direct from management.”

Tom Doyle, Director, Cannizaro, said “the key to the success of this project was openness. To maintain staff morale during this period we needed to be sensitive to the situation, open about project objectives and present our proposals clearly. We held communications meetings regularly with all relevant parties including Union representatives throughout the programme.”

At every stage of the process staff were involved, whether in analysis of workload, identification of problems or development of solutions. Cannizaro set out a detailed 32 week programme, step one of which was to second existing council staff to work with the project team under Cannizaro’s direction. This would ensure that once the consultants had left, the authority would retain the knowledge and experience gained.

Weekly team and manager meetings, along with monthly meetings with Cabinet members ensured the Council was involved at every stage of the process. A comprehensive training programme for 120 managers and supervisors was implemented by Cannizaro as part of the process, to embed a more proactive approach to management and to lay the foundations for improved management control systems.

The case studies attached show how opportunities for savings were optimised by Cannizaro’s pragmatic but flexible approach and the Council’s careful handling of their proposals, in a range of quite diverse service areas.

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