Uttlesford welcomes hugely helpful and positive external review report

"The council is seen to be a very different organisation to that of a few years ago - centred on a strong drive for an improvement and an increasing opening up as an organisation" - Corporate Peer Challenge initial feedback, December 2024

The Corporate Peer Challenge (CPC) review has showcased our successes, helped reinforce our confidence in our existing improvement plans, and given us some really helpful fresh suggestions too.This great set of outcomes has really made all the effort we put into preparing for the visit since the summer feel worthwhile.

This week (Tuesday 3 to Thurs 5 December 2024) we played host to a team of six highly-experienced colleagues from local authorities round the country who visited Uttlesford in person to carry out a Local Government Association Corporate Peer Challenge. These CPC teams are made up of council chief executives, directors and leading councillors, and we invited them in because we are always keen to both celebrate what we do well and to reflect on areas where we can improve further, so gaining the perspective of fresh pairs of eyes and a constructively critical challenge is always helpful.

As well as spending two-and-a-half days speaking to councillors and staff at all levels and with key partners from parish councils, community groups, partner agencies and local businesses large and small, the CPC team read through and analysed an awful lot of information beforehand. As well as documents already publicly available (like our Corporate Plan, our draft Local Plan, our budget and our Medium Term Financial Strategy) we prepared for them a 'position statement' (PDF, 313 KB) ahead of the process teasing out some of our key local challenges and circumstances.

Each CPC team, when they are invited in to a council, considers in what they read and they explore five standard areas of focus in the dozens of meetings they have with well over a hundred people:

• Local priorities and outcomes - Are the council's priorities clear and informed by the local context? Is the council delivering effectively on its priorities? Is there a robust organisational-wide approach to continuous improvement, with regular monitoring, reporting on and updating of performance and improvement plans?
   
• Organisational and place leadership - Does the council provide effective local leadership? Are there strong and effective relationships with partner organisations and local communities?
   
• Governance and culture - Are there clear and robust governance arrangements? Is there a culture of openness, transparency, challenge, and scrutiny?
   
• Financial planning and management - Does the council have a clear understanding of its financial position? Does the council have a strategy and a plan to address its financial challenges? What is the relative financial resilience of the council like?
   
• Capacity for improvement - Is the organisation able to bring about the improvements it needs, including delivering on locally identified priorities? Does the council have the capacity to improve?

As well as these five standard questions, each council visited adds on one or two special areas of focus, and the two extra things we wanted the CPC team to consider were:

• Growth and sustainability in Uttlesford - how well are we geared up to support a thriving local economy and ensure that new housebuilding is matched by vital infrastructure, all whilst striving to deliver our ambitions on the climate and biodiversity crisis?
   
• Rural communities - how well does the council work with residents and communities, other agencies, voluntary groups and businesses to serve our beautiful rural area?

The CPC visit is over, and we'll receive their written report in early January 2025, which we will publish in full, so everyone can see their settled conclusions in their own words. We have though already had a feedback presentation (PDF, 2 MB) given to the Cabinet and leaders of the three opposition parties, as well as to senior staff. We'd caution you to wait to read the full report to see their findings set out in fuller context than to focus overly on individual phrases from a presentation that was accompanied by a lot of explanatory discussion.
 

Highlights

Here are some highlights excerpted from their presentation to us.

Local priorities and outcomes

• Ambition around the Local Plan is high - both in terms of what it is seeking to achieve and in soon having a successor to the current one adopted which looks to 2041
• The Administration is driving, as a joint endeavour with officers, strong climate change and biodiversity ambitions
• The same applies to the affordable housing agenda, which the council acknowledges has proved very challenging to date - with a renewed emphasis and drive being seen around securing "genuinely affordable" housing

Organisational and place leadership

• The council is seen to attach importance to local partnership working
  • Reinvigoration of the Uttlesford Health and Wellbeing Board
  • Good joint working through the Community Safety Partnership
  • Good engagement with Town and Parish Councils - including a quarterly forum, workshop sessions and training provision in such areas as Code of Conduct and Planning
• The council has a number of willing and able partners who want to be more meaningfully engaged
• There is felt to be much to 'play for' here - whether around economic growth potential, Devolution or shared services

Governance and culture

• Overview and Scrutiny is seen to have progressed a long way, in a constructive and enabling environment
• Constructive learning has been drawn from those instances where things have gone awry in recent years
• Elected members largely see officers as being accessible and responsive - and the casework email mechanism that has been established for them is highly valued

Financial planning and management

• The council recently commissioned a CIPFA review of its approach to financial planning and management, which is a proactive step to assess a council's processes
• The [CIPFA] review highlighted "Evidence of a strong vision from the Leader of the Council, the Chief Executive and the S151 Officer, which emphasises the importance of financial management to strategic decision making and there is a high awareness of the importance of ensuring financial sustainability"
• There has been intensive effort to arrive at a situation in which, by 13 December, the council will have published its draft audited accounts for the years up to and including 2021/22 - and those for 2022/23 will follow shortly thereafter
• It is acknowledged that these will contain 'disclaimers' - as a consequence of the position with the national external audit market

Capacity for improvement

• The council established its Workforce Plan in October last year, with this being heavily informed by staff input
• Good progress has been made in reducing the reliance on agency staff and the council 'growing its own' through career-grade schemes and apprenticeships
• The council has extensive agile working arrangements in place which are highly valued and felt to have had a positive impact on recruitment and retention
• The council is conscious of the challenges that agile working arrangements present for people settling into the organisation who are new to it

We are immensely grateful to the CPC team for their commitment, passion and hugely hard work over some very long days - not least because they do this voluntarily without extra pay, meaning that the process also doesn't cost Uttlesford anything. We are similarly grateful to all the colleagues from other statutory agencies, voluntary and community groups, parish councils and local businesses for taking the time to share their experiences and perspectives, all to help us at Uttlesford District Council celebrate our many successes and also to focus on learning for the future. We will prepare an action plan for our councillors to discuss and agree, to help put this valuable learning into practice, and publish that as soon as we can after the CPC written report arrives. Some of the CPC team will also come back about six months later for a quick follow-up visit to see how we are getting on, so we'll update you on that in due course.

A final huge thank you to all the councillors and staff for engaging so constructively and openly with this process. We can be genuinely confident that will be able to learn from it not least because we were so open and transparent in our approach to the CPC, which we invited in the first place because we never want to miss an opportunity to help improve the services we provide for local people.

"The culture of the organisation is widely seen to be changing and improving" - Corporate Peer Challenge initial feedback, December 2024

Cllr Petrina Lees
Leader of Uttlesford District Council

Peter Holt
Chief Executive