Agenda item
Strategic Plan update
Verbal update
Minutes:
8.1 The Council’s Assistant Director, Policy and Strategic Delivery gave a brief overview of the Strategic Plan. The plan would provide the means in which the Council could bring together all of the commitments, political and actions responding to community needs and pressing issues in a way that was agile and adaptable enough to be a framework that sets a direction that could be reviewed and amended over time.
8.2 The Strategic Plan would also allow the Council to be an enabler working in partnership community and statutory partners and local residents. This way the plan was not just about delivery but also about the relationship with those aforementioned groups. The plan was about the borough’s priorities and the Council’s role as an enabler, convenor as well as having the accountability for delivery.
8.3 Under the Strategic Plan implementation would be multi-level, breaking it down into parts whose delivery could be tracked, however this would not be the only aspect of the plan. The Strategic Plan would set out outcomes and deliveries but also how the Council was tracking those deliverables and whether there was an impact on the long term outcomes. It was important for the plan to identify all the cross cutting actions that also need to be tracked, this was the focus of the Strategic Plan was how the Council would get to the outcomes when no one service was responsible for any of the long term outcomes.
8.4 The recent Strategic Plan briefing with Committee members in October included details about partnership working and the implementation plan which would be supported by strong internal communications and engagement. The Strategic Plan would also assist the Council in shaping its narrative so that it was then guided by the communication strategy that was being developed. The Council’s Assistant Director, Policy and Strategic Delivery suggested to the Committee that they should consider how partnership working fits in with their remit and the focus on regulatory services. Clear links had been identified between several pieces of work and the impact on local communities which in turn could become an issue for the Strategic Plan.
8.5 The Committee noted that the Chairs of both the Council’s Audit Committee and Scrutiny Panel would look at the Strategic Plan challenge to see how it was coming across in the delivery and whether any issues need to be escalated particularly by the Scrutiny Panel.
8.6 The presentation slides, Developing and Embedding the Strategic Plan, from the October briefing, would be shared with the Committee after the meeting by the Governance Officer.
8.7 There was a brief discussion wherein the following points were noted:
· There had been a delay in the timetable for the various phases of the Strategic Plan. A detailed timetable would be circulated to Committee by the Council’s Assistant Director, Policy and Strategic Delivery;
· The various phases of the Strategic Plan were working in tandem with one another;
· There was no delay in implementation. Work was under way to ensure that the Council took on board the work to deliver the Strategic Plan, that new Mayor and her fellow Cabinet members were fully briefed. This had caused a delay and the Mayor was yet to confirm what her priorities were in relation to the Strategic Plan but it was noted by the Committee that there was no break in delivery;
· The Council would look afresh at partnership working. Analysis had already been undertaken but the solution might not necessarily be having a structure. Partnerships were about convening around cross cutting issues and those intractable issues that could not be addressed by only one single party. It needed to start with identifying the issue that needed to be addressed and working backwards and how the Council would convene to tackle that issue;
· As more details on the Strategic Plan were developed they would be shared with the committee;
· A resource had been identified under the Assistant Director, Policy and Strategic Delivery’s remit so that the focus could be more on outcomes rather set piece themes.
Action:
The Governance Officer would publish, as a supplementary paper to the 12 December 2023 Corporate Committee meeting papers, the Strategic Plan update presentation entitled ‘Developing & Embedding the Strategic Plan’.
Action:
The Council’s Assistant Director, Policy and Strategic Delivery would provide the Corporate Committee with an update on the timelines for the Strategic Plan.
Supporting documents:
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