Council progress innovative plans to transform services

At today's Cabinet meeting (29 October), South Ayrshire Council officers shared details of ambitious plans that will see transformation across a range of services.   

Earlier this year, Audit Scotland reported that the Council has a greater strategic focus on improving the pace of change.  However, it also stated that the underlying cost to deliver services is not sustainable.

In the financial years 2025/26 and 2026/27, the Council will need to make savings of 29 million pounds to balance the budget.

Transforming the way we deliver services is essential to meet future needs, ensure the Council's sustainability and ultimately bridge this budget gap.  To help us realise these savings and preserve service delivery, we've identified a range of transformation proposals which are now in development.

Key priority areas for our transformation programme include our workforce; our technology; our assets and our delivery model.

We want our processes and activities to be more effective and efficient.  We also need to seek opportunities to enhance our offering of services that generate income, as well as reviewing or rationalising those that don't provide best value for the public pound.  In year one of the programme this includes exploring the possibility of branching out into private property maintenance and factoring and reviewing our community estate

We'll also look at improving and expanding our digital offering.  This will enhance the customer experience, making our digital services more user friendly and convenient.

Realising our proposals and implementing the projects will involve work with our employees, communities, partners, stakeholders and Trade Unions.

We'll provide further updates on the transformation programme as the work progresses.

Leader of South Ayrshire Council and Corporate and Strategic Portfolio Holder, Councillor Martin Dowey, said: "We are committed to transforming our services to ensure we can continue to deliver for the local people and communities who rely on us. Our transformation programme, 'Shaping Our Future Council', will see a range of positive changes across our services that benefit customers and South Ayrshire residents. We'll monitor the impact the programme has as work progresses."

South Ayrshire Council's Portfolio Holder for Finance, HR and ICT, Councillor Ian Davis, said: "Like many other local authorities, we're facing extremely challenging financial times and it's becoming more and more difficult to balance the budget. The 'Shaping Our Future Council' projects have been specifically identified to achieve savings, generate income, and bring benefits to the residents of South Ayrshire.  I'll look forward to seeing this important work progress and the positive change and improvements it will lead to."

Information about 'Shaping Our Future Council' projects is available here.