 Customer Excellence: Delivering seamless services Customer excellence: Delivering seamless services John Gilbert Director for Corporate Resources Essex County Council

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 2 / 12 An introduction to Essex: Challenging perceptions A large and diverse county –1.3 million people in a variety of communities: rural, urban, coastal, London –Entrepreneurialism, wealth and deprivation A large and diverse landscape of partnership working: –£1.6 billion Local Area Agreement – 14 priorities, over 120 partners –5 Primary Care Trusts, 12 District and Borough councils, 2 Unitary councils, Fire, Police, Ambulance – with no coterminous boundaries –Local Area Agreement 2 development

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 3 / 12 Context for change: A continuing journey, not a new start Customer focus CSR is just the latest focus for continuing financial pressures –Complexity of care –Volumes of customers in key services –Inflationary mismatch between funding and service costs –Rising customer expectations –Rising regulatory expectations Provides a further stimulus for change

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 4 / 12 Addressing the challenges: A multi-stranded strategy Addressing the internal opportunities –Internal shared services opportunities for support services –Energising the organisation Building on external partnerships –Building on trust and opportunity Building value for our customers –Responding to our communities –Joining up front offices

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 5 / 12 Addressing the internal opportunities: Improving our Service programme Foreseeing the financial challenge Galvanising the organisation Driving internal shared services Creating the execution capability Managing the change The next generation

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 6 / 12 Building on partnerships An already rich environment Different ways of implementing shared services There is no need to reorganise or be either in two-tier or unitary pathfinder We have found that letting this develop organically is better than trying to bring it about through reorganisation Even in a regulated framework, shared services that have developed organically are more likely to succeed

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 7 / 12 Partnerships and shared services: An already rich environment in Essex All authority partnerships: –Infrastructure – Essex On-Line Partnership –Capability building – strategic HR partnership and Leadership development centre County District/Borough joint working –Procurement agency and hub –Developing contact centre coverage District/Borough shared services –Internal audit –Insurance An organic growth based on shared need, shared capability and opportunity and demonstrable delivery

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 8 / 12 Partnerships and shared services: An already rich environment We have a shared services working group made up of public sector representatives from across Essex We developed a matrix of all of the shared services work underway and it showed us the wide range of groups and projects that have grown organically Some of these shared service projects involve Essex County Council, but a great deal of them do not, which is right and proper

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 9 / 12 Some examples Braintree District Council – a developing partnership –Witham library project as a joint front office –Developing deeper partnership – piloting different locality models, Brentwood Borough Council – a new way of working –Early opportunities –A deeper insight of each organisation –Retaining local identity

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 9 / 12 Brentwood/Essex Partnership Context : Essex-wide commitment to improve two- tier working across Essex Aims to secure improvements in terms of governance, seamless delivery of services and efficiency Innovative and unique way of working First ever arrangement of this kind between a Borough Council and County Council

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 9 / 12 Brentwood/Essex Partnership Single Chief Executive covering both Essex County Council and Brentwood Borough Council Strategic role for Chief Executive Brentwood retains a ‘Deputy Chief Executive & Head of Paid Service’ Potential benefits: -‘One Stop Shop’ customer access -Better value for money

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 9 / 12 Brentwood/Essex Partnership Potential benefits: -Speaking with a ‘single voice’ on key issues -Shared service provision -Joined up services for children & young people -Joined up housing for vulnerable young people, those with learning disabilities and for older people

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 10 / 12 Building value for our customers: Locality working Shared services is all about the customer Localism and locality working are essential In Essex we talk about three tier working because parish and town councils also have a vital role to play (we have around 400 in Essex)

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 11 / 12 Building value for our customers: Joining up the front office proposition There is an assumption that joining up more than one back office can generate great savings, but this isn’t always the case Joining up front offices can offer customers a single point of contact e.g. Witham library project

Customer Excellence: Delivering Seamless Services 12 / 12 Concluding thoughts Managing the paradoxes Customers and citizens Customer responsiveness and place shaping Personalisation and “post-code lottery” Service provision and government Scale economy and reflecting our communities