| |  | Where (most of) the money is going | | |  Business process reviewMVDC opens up
January 23, 2010: The destination of the £2.3 million Mole Valley District Council is spending on its business process review (BPR) is still not entirely clear. But it's a lot clearer than it was now that chief executive Darren Mepham and BPR programme director Rachel O'Reilly (left) have taken the Bugle through some of the sums.
You can nail down the money needed for a refurbishment project like the leisure centre to the nearest penny, Mepham explains. You know at the outset what you're buying, what you're going to get, what's going to happen and the time it will take. The costing is detailed and precise, he says.
With a 'culture change' programme like the BPR, the sums involved are much less clear cut. Some of the corporate IT systems and processes used to run the 100 different 'businesses' Mole Valley runs are more efficient than others. By spending £2.3 m on stripping out waste, training its employees to work more efficiently and adapting computer systems to support those changes, the argument runs, Mole Valley will be able to deliver services more cheaply.
Mole Valley's overall BPR aim was to save 30 full time equivalent jobs—10 per cent of the wage bill—by rethinking the way it provided all its services and the systems that underpinned those services.
By the time Mepham moved to his current post three years ago, Mole Valley's officials realised that its current needs were leaving its processes and IT systems behind. "We could see a [financial] cliff coming," says Mepham. "It was quite clear that, in the long term, we couldn't sustain the budget in the way it was."
Councils were being asked to take on more functions once carried out by central government and spend more time and money meeting the burden of Whitehall inspections and audits. To balance the budget Mole Valley had had to cut people and services and could not continue to do that. "It was not good practice," says Mepham. But the council also realised that, "you couldn't have unending increases in public spending." Both the big parties are saying they will cut public spending, and that means councils will lose some of their funding. Mepham estimates that, in Mole Valley's case, the loss over the next two to three years could be £2m to £3m.
As a small council, MVDC's overheads were a large part of its spending and a way had to be found to reduce them. And having outsourced housing and other services, "we had a corporate infrastructure geared up for running an old council which was much bigger."  Shared services didn't deliverAs reported, Mole Valley's first cost-cutting strategy was to share services with neighbouring councils in the east Surrey improvement partnership (ESIP).
Mole Valley did not have the money or people to carry out a BPR programme as well as one based on the ESIP shared-services model. So it went for the ESIP programme and developed business cases for sharing services with Tandridge District Council and Reigate and Banstead Borough Council (RBBC).
The savings proved illusory. It proved difficult to share costs among councils at various levels of efficiency. So Mole Valley switched to BPR. Harry Cannon and his consultancy firm Grahame Robb Associates (GRA) was one of a number Mole Valley spoke to in setting up the first, 'scoping' exercise to work out what a BPR programme would include, what benefits would be possible and what the programme would leave out. The council would then decide how to finance a programme to deliver those benefits.
O'Reilly says the exercise concluded that Mole Valley needed to have another look at its IT systems and to examine each of its services in turn. Though it would need expert help, "we did want to make sure that the majority of this programme was run in house," says O'Reilly, by transferring the experts' skills to council staff.
MV had to make certain assumptions about the cost of change, department by department. The council could not know exactly how much it would cost to revamp each department, said Mepham, until it came to doing the work. That is one reason why the details of the elements of the £2.3m have been so hard to pin down.
O'Reilly concedes that some of the benefits claimed for BPR—listed on page 6 of BPR's programme description—[ Download here.] like "fewer missed calls" or, for councillors, "better quality information to aid decision making", are quite intangible." You can't put monetary savings next to them and it's not easy to say how much it will cost to get them. But each Pippbrook service manager understands the benefits that their part of BPR has to deliver, says O'Reilly.
Savings targets
The 'odd' savings targets the Bugle has drawn attention to were calculated from a 'ball park' 10 per cent saving on each departmental budget. Applying the same percentage cut across the board was a way of ensuring equal treatment for all departments.
"The financial savings are very important," says Mepham. "It's very easy to save money by just stopping doing things, but what's the impact on the customer, and on the staff?" Pippbrook never had the option of making itself more efficient just by sacking 10 per cent of its workforce. But rethinking the way it provided all its services and the systems that underpinned them meant the work and the job titles would also be transformed. Mole Valley might lose two clerical jobs and hiring a third person with different, more IT-based skills, for example.
So-called 'backfilling' accounts for a large though unknown proportion of the £2.3m figure. Backfilling means that, as staff are being trained or they are carrying out BPR projects, part-time or agency staff or consultants have to be hired to continue their work while they are away.
Since the completion of the first (planning) tranche of BPR, Mole Valley now employs 5.5 fewer full time equivalents. That's the figure the council will be building on as the project proceeds. While recruitment hasn't been frozen, Mole Valley would rather retrain and redeploy people it already has.
 How is the £2.3m made up? Hardly any of Mole Valley's £454,000 corporate system upgrades budget is to buy new computer equipment. Some of it has gone to IT and systems companies, but Mole Valley intends to become self-sufficient in those skills.
Most of it will be used to create a common, integrated computer system across not just its finance, customer relationship management and document management systems, but the individual systems in planning, revenues and benefits, and other departments.
Too much data is duplicated in different systems across the council, says Mepham. Each service had its own way of recording and holding information, Mole Valley has been paying for IT support for each system when it could pay one IT person to support a single system used by everyone.
The service reviews budget is allocated to service heads to allow them to carry out their lean projects. The first six months of each service's nine-month project identify its main activities. The remainder applies lean techniques to strip the waste out of them, including the budget for the lean experts hired from the GRA consultancy. They come in for about a day a week each or £230,000 in the second, 'lean' stage. The £655,000 sum also includes staff training and some backfilling.
The central programme costs include programme support, training and redeployment. The redeployment and redundancy provision is £400,000: "It could be much less than that," says Mepham, "it could be much more." You don't know the exact figure until you know which roles and which people are affected by the changes.  Piece by PieceThe programme is set out in five tranches:
[] planning, nearly complete;
[] customer service and partnerships: includes the communications (press and PR), Dorking Halls, partnerships, community safety, leisure development and arts. They are six months through their project having just completed the consultation phase;
[] Wellbeing – all the community services, environmental health – and
[] Environment – street care, cleaning and so on – are running together and are three months into their projects.
[] The final project, internal support staff: finance and assets, including revenues and benefits. There is no point reviewing internal support before the services being supported had been revamped.
Most of the programme will have finished by September, says O'Reilly. Work on two other teams will be finished by the following March 2011.
Mepham notes that some of the changes involve taking out fractions of people's jobs, and that's difficult to do. If a small fraction of someone's work involves dealing with the public, it's more sensible to put that work into the customer services unit (CSU) launched last November 23.
Cannon's role in BPR was reviewed in December and there is provision to use his services for a lower number of days this year. "We wouldn't want to be without his guidance, if you like, in a lot of ways."
O'Reilly says that, although ESIP didn't work as planned, there is plenty of scope for sharing costs with other authorities. Some of the IT systems Mole Valley uses are an ESIP legacy: she mentions servers, networks, disaster recovery and contingency planning arrangements. Internal audits are provided externally with Reigate, Tandridge and Epsom.
Mepham notes that, as the public sector is squeezed harder in the years ahead, the pressure on Surrey authorities to collaborate in sharing costs will increase.
Mepham and O'Reilly seem genuinely concerned that Mole Valley gets its message across and, most importantly, is seen as an open council that doesn't keep secrets from its electorate. The decisions to shut down the webcasts that are the only way people can watch councillors at work is a political choice, not an operational matter. "We are thinking of other ways to engage with the community," says O'Reilly.
What do you think? Tell the editor.
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| | Where's the money going? | | |  Bookham with Fetcham Area Forum Why are we still in the dark?
November 18, 2009: "We're spending £2.3 million of your money. We won't tell you where it's going. And you'll have to trust us to explain eventually, when it's gone."
That's the message from the Conservative executive committee now running Mole Valley District Council (MVDC). The sum is the amount they're spending on the "business process review" (BPR) programme. Not only have opposition Mole Valley councillors been refused an explanation of this outlay. They have even been denied access to some MVDC documents relating to it.
Residents and councillors had hoped MVDC's October 8 Bookham & Fetcham area forum would give details of the BPR programme. The agenda included a presentation from financial services manager Paul Drury on MVDC's capital programme.
But he and MVDC council leader Cllr Jean Pearson, (Con, Capel, Leigh and Newdigate) ( above, first and second left) said they would not give any detailed information about the programme now. All the figures would be published when the review was complete, said Pearson, probably next year. In fact the programme has a March 2011 deadline.
When Cllr Andrew Freeman (Lib Dem, Bookham South) asked why MVDC had not produced a business case for the £2.3m expenditure, Cllr Pearson replied somewhat testily that the business case for the review was on the council's website. Freeman said he had been unable to find it.
A business case analyses proposed expenditure in detail and—in advance of spending the money—lists where it will be spent and exactly how each item will deliver the savings claimed.
A business case is not legally required. But it is a sign of good practice. In 2006 consultants KPMG said a business case was essential to the efficiency projects which the East Surrey Improvement Partnership (Esip), in which Mole Valley is a partner in with Tandridge District Council and Reigate and Banstead Borough Council (RBBC), wished to carry out. The business case for BPR would show that MVDC could prove a clear cause and effect between each pound it spent on BPR and the benefits of spending those sums.
At the Bugle's request, Paul Drury sent a link to a page headed "Efficiency Reviews" on the MVDC website. This page, updated on October 14, includes a link to BPR programme description version 1.6 (PD1.6). Click here to download this document (280kb).
 'It's not an overspend'To learn where BPR is now you have to look elsewhere. Mole Valley's first-quarter finance performance report of September 22 says the council predicts a 'variance' of near £900,000 from the £13m first-quarter budget allocation. BPR accounts for £375,000 of the variance, says the report (written by service finance manager Lynne Geary and performance and risk management officer Linda Oladokun, to MVDC's finance and assets cabinet member Cllr Ben Tatham (Mickleham, Westhumble & Pixham)).
The authors stress that the BPR's share of the variance is a result of "re-phasing the business process review": "This is not an overspend on the BPR process. It represents a reallocation of spend from 2010/11 into 2009/10 to reflect the [option appraisals and a number of the tranches in the] programme being brought forward."
BPR relies on reducing salaries by 10%. Appendix six of the finance report notes that staff turnover in the first quarter of this year was about 7%, three percentage points below the BPR's target. Staff turnover in the previous quarter was just over 8%: "There is currently very little external recruitment to vacancies other than by internal secondment or redeployment."
Though current staff numbers are above target, "as services go through the BPR process, posts currently vacant and no longer required will be removed from the [total] and some posts currently being filled by temporary staff will also be removed."
Unless, that is, the vacancies affect the 'corporate management team', or the 'strategic management team' led by strategic director Nick Gray, which is overseeing BPR. According to the September 22 finance report: "The budget includes provision to employ two Personal Assistants (PA's) for SMT, as well as the Chief Executive's PA. At present one of these posts is vacant and the other is filled by a part time temporary member of staff." An increase from one and a half jobs to three, in other words.  Weird targetsPD1.6 is a version updated in July of the programme description (PD1.5) of February 9 this year. As reported in the Bugle's article last May, Mole Valley sent the Bugle PD1.5 under the Freedom of Information Act on February 26, adding that it "effectively is the 'business case'" for BPR.
Neither that nor the new document, PD1.6, is anything of the kind. They list benefits in abundance. They list expenditures too, but only in amounts. There is no information about where the money is going nor, crucially, how spending it produces the benefits.
But the PD1.6, dated July 31, is slightly different from its predecessor.
[] the 'ongoing savings' the programme will achieve have been reduced from £1.1m a year to £1 m, a 9% reduction.
But though on later pages PD1.6 reverts to the original £1.1m figure, page five sets out the savings targets for the programme in five successive tranches—£185k, £151k, £247k, £124k, and £293k.
Who, you might ask, would set a "savings target" at an odd figure like £293,000, or £151,000? There isn't a rounded figure among them. Yet they all add up neatly to a nice round £1m. Where did these figures come from?
[] PD1.6 does divide the £2.3m expenditure into three parts:
Central programme costs of £1.191m, for 'programme support, training and deployment';
£454,000 for systems upgrades; and
£655,000 for 'Service Reviews – process re-engineering'.
These figures were not in the earlier programme description but are similar to those given in a presentation to councillors on March 18:
[] The amount for system upgrades is the same.
[] The presentation shows a higher figure, £892,000, for 'service review costs'.
[] But the presentation's 'central programme costs' were lower, at £554,000.
[] And the presentation showed a 'redeployment contingency' of £400,000. This provision appears nowhere in PD1.6.  Where is the money going?All this ought to be set out in a single, freely-available document. Instead, anyone concerned, as we have a right to be, about how and where Mole Valley spends our money has to rely on incomplete information spread throughout a mass of electronic files—and on guesswork that may, for all we know, lead us to wrong conclusions.
It may be, for example, that the Tories are right to say the £2.3m are spending on BPR represents astonishing value. But we would be negligent to take their word they have to spend this money to cut the staff bill by 10 per cent. Where is the evidence?
So the most baffling part of the project is why the Conservative cabinet is willing to sacrifice what may be a good case for BPR on the altar of secrecy. What are they trying to hide, even from opposition councillors? One non-Bookham Lib Dem councillor helpfully passed to the Bugle the only document he had on BPR. It was PD1.5. which the Bugle already had. By the time he passed it to us, the councillor told the Bugle, it had been removed from 'Moss', the council members' internal website. Why?
Where is the money going? It cannot be going on IT systems. In the Finance And Performance Final Outturn Report - April 2008 To March 2009 of June 23, 2009, management accountant Geoff Price noted not only that BPR was on track but that, "The projects to review the Council’s IT systems concluded that the current systems are fit for purpose with some development and those development projects are underway."
The council is also rightly cautious about the amount it spends on consultants. The August 11 minutes of the scrutiny and audit committee note that Mole Valley has identified a saving of £10,000 if it doesn't use consultants "to undertake activities on the Council’s behalf in relation to sustainability and climate change."
Price's June 23 document says BPR "has been scoped and planned with the aid of a consultant experienced in carrying out this kind of approach in the public and private sectors." But all this money cannot, surely, be ending up with the Grahame Robb Associates (GRA) consultancy?
We asked council leader Jean Pearson if GRA's work was put out to competitive tender, as you might expect for the expenditure of so large a sum? Her reply was that MVDC gave GRA two pieces of work: "One is the Programme Management and the other is the Lean Process work. These appointments were carried out and let separately a number of months apart.
"The first parcel of work was to scope the programme and to manage it - initially for the first six months. This was done by seeking quotations from four companies who were interviewed and GRA were successful. This was carried out in Feb/March 2008 and Harry Cannon was taken on as a Contractor. Our current contract with him ends in December when we will review it."
The quotation for the Lean Process work was advertised on the South East Business Portal between February 24 and April 10, says Pearson: "Five companies were shortlisted from expressions of interest and were invited to quote. Interviews were held and GRA were chosen independently from the work that Harry Cannon was undertaking."
The obscure South East Business Portal isn't where most people would look to see what contracts its council was letting. But GRA is not, as it turns out, the magnet that's attracting most of MVDC's money. The Bugle can reveal that consultants are being paid £350k to support BPR: £120k for programme management and expertise in business review programmes; and £230k in 'Lean' expertise. This is 15 per cent of the BPR budget, though all of that goes to GRA.
So where's the rest going? That's what the Bugle will ask Mole Valley's chief executive, Darren Mepham, in an exclusive interview planned for mid-January.
What do you think? Tell the editor.
Article updated February 7, 2010. Management tosh for every tasteThe following is marketing information from Grahame Robb and Associates' own website. Elsewhere the company boasts that its 'experiential centre' near Reading has one of the largest ropes courses in Europe. The Bugle's editor, who has been writing about industrial management for almost 20 years, had to look up 'experiential'. If it means anything at all, it's 'learning by doing'. How learning to run a district council by doing a rope assault course isn't clear.
Leadership and Management Development
GRA offers a wide range of tailored leadership and management development programmes. Each one is designed to meet individual and organisational needs, culture and budget, with realistic and focused outcomes. At GRA we truly believe that there is not a single formula or off-the shelf package which creates great leaders or managers, so we will design a programme for you.
From board level strategic programmes, through development for senior and middle managers, to programmes aimed at developing your emerging leaders or graduates, we will work closely with you to define the most suitable format and style. Often there is an initial focus on self-awareness, followed by a powerful combination of proven development tools with indoor and outdoor experiential learning, business scenarios and executive coaching. We use the most appropriate elements of established models such as transformational, transactional, visionary and situational leadership.
Our aim is to deliver high quality experiential leadership and management development programmes that make a positive difference to you and your organisation.
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| | Mole Valley spending crisis deepens | | |  Bus pass funding adds to Mole Valley's funding woesGovernment may halve Mole Valley's free bus pass funds
November 4, 2009: The government today proposed to reduce Mole Valley's funding for free bus passes by 45 per cent. The proposal is in a consultation document ( click here to download from this page). "Some councils have received too much money, whereas others not enough," the government says.
Objectors have until the end of next month to make their views known. The document also proposes to halve funding throughout London, but the grants to Derby and Oxford would nearly quadruple, those for Cambridge and Nottingham treble, and for the the Isle of Wight double. Elsewhere in Surrey, Mole Valley's proposed cut is the same as that in Epsom & Ewell, grants at Guildford and Surrey Heath would be more than doubled, those at Waverley and Reigate & Banstead stay unchanged, and Elmbridge's more than halved.
According to a local press report, MVDC's budget is already in crisis. Stephen Cooksey (Lib Dem, Dorking and the Holmwoods) said: "Overall they are down half-a-million on the estimated income."
The reason appears to be that savage increases in parking charges had kept people away from the town centre car parks where the charges were imposed, reducing the council's income.
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| | BPR questions won't go away | | |  BRA monthly meetingGrowing pressure on MVDC to explain £2.3m BPR project
August 4, 2009: Pressure is rising on Mole Valley district Council (MVDC) to explain its £2.3 million "business process review" (BPR) programme.
John Howarth, former director and president of Leatherhead and district chamber of commerce and now closely involved in Bookham Vision, told last night's meeting of the Bookham Residents' Association that Mole Valley had failed to keep a promise that its Bookham and Fetcham area forums would offer detailed descriptions of MVDC's capital programme in general, and its BPR component in particular.
News of the BPR was first revealed here on Christmas Day. MVDC says it will result in an annual saving of £1.1m as part of MVDC's overall savings target of about £3.5m, a quarter of its budget. But, despite repeated requests, the council has satisfactorily explained neither its figures nor why the savings can't be made without spending such a large sum. It refuses even to say where the money is going.
Pointing to the Bugle's BPR coverage, Howarth said: "£2.3 million of our money is being spent [but] we don't know how it's being spent, where it's being spent, what the potential outcomes are going to be, what the impacts of those outcomes will be on the statutory services [or] what the impacts will be on the voluntary services."
The man in the hot seat is Cllr Ben Tatham (Con, Mickleham, Westhumble & Pixham), above right, the member of Mole Valley council with the portfolio for Finance and Assets.
Howarth said area forum chair Clare Curran (Con, Bookham North) had agreed to a request he made in January for a presentation on the council's capital expenditure programme for the next three years. "It was promised at the next forum that Ben Tatham would be there giving us a presentation. And I also asked if I could have a presentation on the BPR.
"That is a very important presentation we need to have if not at the next [forum meeting then] at the one after, because it's key to what the council is going to be delivering to us and what we expect from the council over the next few years."
Howarth, a consultant, added that if the £2.3 million were being spent on consultants, "You can get an awful lot of consultants working full time in Pippbrook for the next two years for that amount of money." He estimated it would pay for up to a dozen working full time.
A question and answer section of the minutes of the April forum meeting asks whether any ideas had been suggested for future agenda items and answers: "None have been submitted so far." Howarth said "I know I have submitted three [questions], and only one has been dealt with."
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| | Unanswered questions about Mole Valley's efficiency drive | | |  Council refuses to produce its business caseWhere's our £2.3m going?
May 24, 2009: Mole Valley seems unable to justify its decision to spend £2.3m on its business process review (BPR) programme. Most of the time (see below), the council claims that the expenditure will result in an annual saving of £1.1m as part of MVDC's overall savings target of about £3.5m, a quarter of its budget.
But despite repeated requests, the council has explained neither its figures, nor why the savings can't be made without spending such a large sum on a BPR.
As reported, BPR first surfaced under that name in item 11 on the agenda, published over Christmas, for the January 9 meeting of MVDC's executive. However, MVDC's 2008/09 Budget Book, published in March 2008 (download 3Mbyte file by clicking here), had noted that, "Work on customer service improvements will begin this year together with a programme of business process improvement – intended to improve services, reduce waste and therefore increase efficiency and capacity."
The accompanying item-11 report for the January 9, 2009 budget meeting said BPR "is aimed at increasing the efficiency of all the Councils [ sic] processes, while improving customer service and maintaining an appropriate level of performance. It involves:
[] The creation of a customer service unit;
[] The redesign from first principles of all business processes;
[] The review/upgrading of corporate IT systems, and more effective interfacing between them, to support those new processes;
[] The redesign of job roles to support these new processes; Significant re-skilling, re-training and redeployment of staff."
No mention of redundancies
The report went on to explain that £2.3m would be needed over two years to fund: "backfilling/releasing staff to participate in the project; review and redevelopment of IT systems; specialist project management and process redesign specialists; staff training and development." The investment would result in recurring savings of £1.1m a year – if true, this makes the investment worthwhile. But we don't have the information to link the investment with the saving.
The report makes no mention of redundancies. But a presentation about BPR delivered to members of the council on March 18 this year makes clear that the savings derive from a cut of 10 per cent in the council's staff costs of £11m. If MVDC's 300 staff are cut to 270 permanently, the saving will be repeated each year.
The presentation breaks the £2.3m down into a 'redeployment contingency' of £400,000; £454,000 on corporate system upgrades; £554,000 on 'central programme costs'; and £892,000 on 'service review costs'. There is no detailed explanation of what any of these might be, though programme director Rachel O'Reilly may well have given details to councillors during the presentation itself.
No business case
One guess is that some of it is hefty staff-severance costs. But the presentation also notes that compulsory redundancies will be a last resort. What's more, it notes that, including retirements, staff turnover was 30 per cent over the last two years. That said, the recession, and the announcement of the BPR itself, have combined to cut turnover to vanishing point among staff who now smell generous redundancy settlements.
MVDC's 'Programme Description' of BPR, circulated to councillors, contains nothing that could be described as a business case. It includes a revenue item of £2.1m "for development of customer services, change management and corporate systems." No mention there of severance costs.
But then, MVDC is not even freezing recruitment. Last year for example it advertised for a policy manager at a salary of up to £41,000, a customer services manager (£51,000), a 'field officer telecare' at £21,000, and a sustainability officer (£50,000).
Until recently Mole Valley had not explained where the £2.3m was to come from, though one document said it might be from a mixture of the revenue and capital budgets. However, at a presentation in Bookham on October 8 2009, MVDC financial services manager Paul Drury said it would come from reserves.
Sudden surge in IT costs
It seems a sudden switch of policy. Just over a year ago, an MVDC policy committee document had put the cost of IT infrastructure development at a mere £38,000. MVDC also proposed to invest £250,000 in electronic document management over two years. When councillors objected, officers had to produce a cost breakdown. But a January 2006 resources committee report said Microsoft no longer supported MVDC's creaking Office 97 software, so MVDC would replace it with a three-year Microsoft service contract at a cost of £27,000 a year for the next three years.
With the expiry of that contract, last year's Complete Budget Book (CBB) set out "a new ICT strategy" that would align IT projects with new council priorities. This document noted a projected £493,000 capital spend on ICT over five years, from 2008/9 to 2012/13.
The ICT strategy would include:
[] Redesigning and developing MVDC's public website.
[] Running council software from central servers instead of, as now, giving users PCs, each of which runs stand-alone software. A policy committee document said £76,000 investment would save £15,000 annual replacement costs and reduce electricity consumption by £8,000 a year.
[] Reducing the number of registered IT system users from 350 to 250, which could indeed save software licence fees, which are calculated per user.
[] Investing £154,000 in a new telephone switchboard whose operators would also have access to an improved 'customer relationship management' (CRM) system (see inside page).
This is a hefty increase in IT costs, but none of it adds up to £2.3m. (To download the 120-page 3.1Mb CBB, click here).
And note this oddity. In a 92-page report to members for a meeting of the MVDC executive only last month, BPR is referred to in an account of the council's plans for "improving customer service." They include the customer service unit and the overhaul of MVDC's financial, document, and CRM systems. One table says BPR will produce "identified savings of £100,000." Another puts the cost of seminars and training at no more than £21,000, and identifies no major (£50,000-plus) projects.
Article updated October 9, 2009
 BPR: The unanswered questions
[] Why is Mole Valley spending money on CRM?
Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) aims to apply Customer Relationship Management (CRM - see right) to customer-facing staff – the people you ring to ask about benefits, housing, business rates or council tax, the bins, or or anything else. The idea is that they will be better able to help you because they will have instant access to your record. CRM makes it harder for the ordinary voter to build relationships with council staff because whoever answers the phone will deal with your enquiry without having to refer you to someone else. That's one way it saves money.
[] What other 'savings' are in the Business Process Review?
MVDC's Programme Description (PD) of the Business Process Review (BPR), made available to the Bugle under the Freedom of Information Act, identifies £230,000 capital investment in IT "invest to save". One definition of invest to save means investing in what's called 'VMWare' to cut the number of computer servers by making each one work nearer full capacity. But Mole Valley has already made this investment.
[] What's 'Esip' and how does it save Mole Valley money?
Esip is the East Surrey Improvement Partnership, which Mole Valley belongs to with Tandridge District Council and Reigate and Banstead Borough Council (RBBC). Epsom and Ewell joined Esip in April last year.
How it saves our money is harder to say. On the (£30,000) advice of the KPMG management-consultancy giant, Esip aimed to save money by collaborating, for example over procurement: the four councils would have a single department to buy anything from stationary to staff vehicles.
Two and a half years ago the partnership spoke of "fully merged" finance, human resources and information and communications technology (ICT) services by April 2010. Esip believed having common IT platforms and communications networks would be more efficient and save money. Tandridge, for example, uses MVDC's IT systems to run its revenues and benefits computer software across an 'ESIP ICT Comms Link'.
The three intended to harmonise staff pay and conditions. They would deputise for each other at meetings. Instead of all three councils representing themselves on local bodies, they can send one who tells the others what happened. It saves money but doesn't guarantee that individual councils make their constituents' voices heard.
MVDC officials told members in the March BPR presentation this year that sharing equipment and services in Esip was one of the key reasons for the BPR investment.
However, non-member Elmbridge council says Esip is a failure. It noted in January this year that, though the partners had "achieved some positive and worthwhile outcomes in the last two years," only a few months after the "fully merged" proposal they decided not to take the shared services idea any further: "Greater value could be achieved by each council focusing on its own internal business transformation initiatives."
In that light, it's hard to see why Mole Valley is citing Esip to justify the BPR programme.
Update: Mole Valley's legal officer, Robert Burn, told the Bugle on August 3 that, "This BPR Programme is not an ESIP project. As you noted, the 'fully merged' vision of services is not one that is currently being pursued, therefore Mole Valley is concentrating on its own efficiency programme. As such ESIP is not being used to justify BPR at Mole Valley. The reference to ESIP that you have picked up from the presentation made to Members was by way of context to the Council in the last few years."
As for CRM, he said the council was investing in it to improve customer service and provide a "more expedient enquiry resolution": "The Council has done a lot of research into this route and has taken lessons from the successful and unsuccessful rollouts elsewhere.
[] Is there a business case for all this?
Such a good question. RBBC's 2006 ESIP collaboration strategy document says KPMG identified collaboration in procurement, property management, policy and performance management, and IT structure and development: "A full business case analysis for each of these areas will be worked up." Helpfully, it even set out the methodology for setting out the business case in an appendix.
So the Bugle asked MVDC's strategic director, Nick Gray, at an area forum meeting in Fetcham in January if a business case had been prepared for Mole Valley's Esip-related BPR project. He said Cllr Kate Horden was preparing one. If she was, and such a business case exists, MVDC has so far proved unable to produce it despite several requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
[] When was all this decided?
Another good question. As noted above, MVDC's 2008/09 Budget Book, published in March 2008 (download 3Mbyte file by clicking here), said that, "Work on customer service improvements will begin this year together with a programme of business process improvement – intended to improve services, reduce waste and therefore increase efficiency and capacity."
By the time the full council approved the BPR spend at its February 19, 2009 council meeting, BPR was a done deal. The start date the Programme Description document gives for BPR is the previous September. And the decision to proceed with the BPR programme was taken by a programme board chaired by Gray on August 26, 2008.
The real work had started by July, and the PD's drafting history gives some idea as to who is driving the programme. The first draft was produced after a 'workshop' held on July 9, 2008. It was written two days later by Harry Cannon, a "project and programme manager, trainer and consultant" who is owner and director of 'staff development consultancy' Grahame Robb Associates (GRA).
Robb wrote four more drafts of PD. MVDC's BPR programme director Rachel O'Reilly stepped in to draft the first 'official' version, approved by the MVDC strategic management team on August 26, but Cannon stepped in with two more drafts after that.
Note too that, in February 9th's final draft, the funding for the project had been "allocated and approved" – even though the full council did not meet to agree the budget until 10 days later.
[] Who's in charge?
The BPR programme board comprises Gray (above) as the programme director; Rachel O'Reilly (see see above) as programme director; Cannon (see above); Mole Valley's head of revenues and benefits, Richard Burrows; its human resources head, Jane Middlemiss; IT head Bob Thomas; customer services head John Cawdell; and Dave Parr and Andy Bircher, both of 'customer facing service'.
Neither Cllr Horden nor any other elected member of the council was involved in drafting the programme description, nor are they members of the BPR programme board.
[] How will we know if BPR works?
Nowhere does the council set out the details of its CRM strategy, how in detail it will allow a 10 per cent staff reduction, or any clearly measurable parameters to measure its progress and success: for example an increase in the number of cases handled, or the use of customer or staff satisfaction surveys. Is it proposed to use calling line identification (CLI) to see whether issues were resolved with a single phone call? Without measures like these MVDC will not know if the strategy has succeeded.
More to the point, however, is that Mole Valley seems blind to the idea that we are not its 'customers' – we own this 'business'. So, once again, where's the money coming from, and where's it going?
What do you think? Tell the editor.
Article updated August 4, 2009 | | |
| | Mole Valley's U-turn leaves CAB's future still in doubt | | |  Council proposes further band D council tax rises to make up the moneyFebruary 8, 2009: The future of Mole Valley's Citizens' Advice Bureau (CAB) is still in doubt – despite a U-turn by the Conservative council over their funding.
According to District Councillor David Walker (Con, Bookham North), whose Housing & Community Support portfolio includes the funding of the CAB, MVDC provides a total of £170,000 support for the CAB. This is made up of a £120,000 grant plus rent and other assistance for both the Leatherhead and Dorking premises. (See Cllr Walker's letter to the Bugle, below.)
But the insiders says even this leaves them struggling. The CAB has not had a funding increase for two years, they say, and have had to rely on using up reserves or on donations to keep going.
Mole Valley's original proposals would have cut funding to the two CAB offices in Dorking and Leatherhead by £10,000* for the year 2009-10 and £10,000 the following year. The Council also said it would not continue to pay the rent on the CAB's Leatherhead office. Conservative councillors told CAB leaders earlier this year there was no alternative to the cuts.
In a statement on February 6, however, Conservative Councillor Ben Tatham (Con, Mickleham, Westhumble & Pixham), portfolio holder for finance, said, "We have decided to ensure that the CAB gets the funding it needs in the coming year, so that it can continue with its excellent work.”
The U-turn means reverting to the present level of funding. Tatham's statement, provocatively titled "Conservatives save CAB", does not say whether Mole Valley will continue to fund the CAB's Leatherhead office. The Dorking office doesn't have a premises problem. In 2005 it moved from the High Street to hold its sessions in Dorking's Mayflower day centre. (See Cllr Walker's letter, below.)
The CAB's concern now moves to funding for the year from March 2010, when the lease on the Leatherhead building runs out. Mole Valley has said it will not fund the renting of another building. Unless this changes the Leatherhead CAB will no longer have anywhere to operate, so funding will become irrelevant.
The CAB provides a vital service, especially in economic hard times. Last year saw a big increase in demand for help from CABs all over the country.
Here in Mole Valley the CAB says that, in the first three quarters of the financial year, its 80 volunteers helped residents with more than 12,000 problems. Those residents gained about £375,000 in corrected state benefits, back pay and debt write-off. "In the present economic climate," says a local petition, "such help is even more essential."
Mole Valley will find the new money for funding the CAB and its other second thoughts by increasing Band D council tax by a further £2 a year on top of the the 3.5 per cent increases already announced.
The statement also lists further proposals for Mole Valley’s forthcoming 2009/2010 budget, to be discussed by the full council on February 19.
[] Car parking charges – the charges for Dorking and Leatherhead will be 60 pence per hour for each of the first 5 hours, but the 2 hour charge will be reduced from £1.20 to £1.
[] Citizens Advice Bureau – there will be no reduction in Mole Valley’s grant to the Citizens Advice Bureau for the coming year.
[] Allotments – (see item below) allotment charges for 2009/2010 are already agreed for the next 12 months. However Mole Valley is considering a modified concession scheme for 2010/2011 which will be extended to those in receipt of benefits.
[] Use of Park House, Leatherhead – the new charge for using Park House will be limited to £47 per session.
Councillor Tatham said: “We never stop listening to what our residents are saying. Our car parking charges have remained steady for the last few years, but we recognise that more needs to be done to help our local businesses. These are difficult times, but we’ve tried to strike a balance between savings and higher charges so that Mole Valley remains a top quality council. To fund the above changes, we are proposing to increase the Band D Council Tax by a further £2 per year. We will continue to have the second lowest rate of Council Tax in Surrey.”
What do you think? Tell the editor.
* An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that the 2009-2010 reduction would be £12,000. Article updated February 18, 2009
 'CAB knew cuts were coming three years ago and hasn’t reined in its own costs' Letter from District Councillor David Walker (Con, Bookham North), whose Housing & Community Support portfolio includes the funding of the CAB:
[To the editor, February 13, 2009]
When the current level of funding was set at a new high level (by my action) nearly three years ago, it was made very clear to the CAB that they would henceforth need to find additional funding sources themselves. I have repeated that message frequently since.
MVDC provides over 80 per cent of the CAB’s funding, whereas the average provided by other Councils is 45 per cent, and that is a situation that neither the CAB nor the Council Taxpayer should expect would continue ad infinitum.
It can thus hardly have been a surprise when, with the existing agreement coming to an end and the Government publicly continuing to insist on Council costcutting (reinforced by grant starvation!), MVDC asked the CAB to accept a reduction of £10,000 - NOT £12,000 – in their support level. I emphasise this would still have given the CAB 94 per cent of their current grant level.
The grant reduction proposal for 2009/10 was to a large extent founded on the CAB’s indication that they were to carry out certain cost cuts themselves. It appears that this action is now in doubt, and that that together with the evident increase in workload argued strongly for the MVDC grant cut not to go ahead.
Given that MVDC’s increase in central government grant for the year amounted to just £20,000, to decide to (in effect) devote half of that total increase to supporting this one organisation indicates the importance the Conservative Administration attaches to the work of the CAB. I comment that I do not find that in any way reprehensible – rather the reverse in fact.
In March 2010, the lease expires on the Georgian House office in Leatherhead occupied by the CAB. No decision has yet been finalised on the lease renewal by MVDC, who pay the cost of the leasing. MVDC will be looking to make significant savings on the office rental costs from that point on, and the market will be tested. Again, this is not new to the CAB whose management discussed this very point in my presence in 2006 when, as I repeat, I told them that the high level of support they enjoyed could not be guaranteed to continue once the new high level of support I had obtained for them was due to elapse in three years (ie now).
You indicate the Dorking office doesn’t have an accommodation problem. This is because MVDC moved the CAB to the Mayflower Centre (and paid for the conversion work) when it wished to divest the High St premises (which were owned by MVDC NOT the CAB). The [Mayflower] Centre was transferred to [Mole Valley Housing Association] at the time of the Housing Stock Transfer and thus MVDC pays the rental on that office too.
It is undisputed that the CAB provides an excellent service. But not everything that the CAB does replaces or directly enhances the work or chosen aims of the Council. It is therefore correct for the Council Taxpayer to require (and he does) that the Council does not fund an unreasonable proportion of the CAB’s costs. The Administration’s mandate from the public has clearly included the general requirement to reduce costs wherever possible. To ask the CAB to effect economies and/or to increase its own fundraising was thus something we were bound to do, especially given the preceding circumstances. Fundraising for ongoing (rather than once-off or new) projects is indeed hard work – I know, I’ve been doing it for 50 years !
Your article makes mention of the (proposed) MVDC increment to Council Tax from April. It amounts to just under 2p per day for the average (Band D) CouncilTax payer.
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| | Angry allotment holders attack MVDC's 'unfair' rent rises | | |  Pensioners and over-60s hardest hitJanuary 13, 2009: Angry allotment holders have written to Mole Valley (MVDC) council members and MVDC's deputy chairman to protest at a threatened rise in allotment rents.
The allotment holders already face a rent increase from £39.50 to £50 per plot. If the proposed changes are accepted, the rent will rise to to £52.20, nearly a third more than the current level. The increase for pensioners and the unemployed will be over 47 per cent.
The rises are part of a raft of measures agreed by the MVDC executive on January 6 (see below or click here). The 2009/10 budget will be discussed by the full Council on 19 February.
The secretary of Eastwick Allotments and Gardens Association, and MVDC's agent at Eastwick, John Humphreys, says he is particularly incensed by the loss of concessions to the over-60s and those out of work. Allotments are, "a healthy amenity particularly valued by pensioners and the unemployed… For pensioners this news could not come at a worse time. [We] cannot see a good reason to discontinue the concession."
In his open letter, Humphreys says the increases, which if accepted will take effect from April 2010, "are far higher than can be either fair or necessary." Even if an increase is needed, says Humphreys, "the level of increase is far beyond that foreseen and promised only two years ago.
Humphreys and his association have joined Dorking Allotment Association to protest against the rises, over which there was no consultation. He is contacting members of the Eastwick allotments association to ask them to sign a petition.
Meanwhile, Mole Valley is only one of many councils feeling the credit crunch pinch, according to The Times.
Comment
Mole Valley is among the country's top ten most prosperous areas. But that does not mean hardship is unknown here, and Mole Valley District Council's (MVDC's) planned funding cuts seem designed to hit hardest those least able to ride out the recessionary tide.
As first reported here, Mole Valley is cutting grants to the local Citizens' Advice Bureaux, which will now rely on funding from either the Royal British Legion or, with strings attached, central government. In the deepest recession in living memory, the CAB is a lifeline to people who suddenly find themselves in financial difficulty. CAB advisers have told the Bugle repeatedly of a large sudden increase in the numbers of people who face homelessness because they can no longer pay mortgages or rent. They turn to the CAB as the only source of independent advice they won't have to pay through the nose for. This cut is deeply wrong. (For more information, see the story in the current Leatherhead Advertiser).
The cut to the East Surrey Rural Transport initiative is from the same cloth. The point of the ESRT is, "to improve access to transport services for those who through age, physical disability or lack of public transport cannot make the day-to-day journeys most would consider normal."
Now we learn not only that allotment fees are to be increased, but that concessions to pensioners and those out of work are to be abolished. It's an outrage, and gives rise to the no doubt unworthy thought that the Conservative administration is trying very hard to keep the funding burden off the shoulders of its natural supporters at the expense of those who, probably, would not vote for them anyway. That can't be it, can it?
What do you think? Tell the editor.
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| | Mole Valley hits the financial skids | | |  Council majority sneaks news through over Christmas hols MVDC faces £2.2m funding gap
December 25, 2008: Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) faces a £2.2 million funding gap in the next financial year. And the gap will grow to over £3m by 2012, says the local Tory group. The Tory council majority proposes increases in council taxes and property income to meet the deficit.
The announcement, released by the Conservative group of councillors at 4.30pm on Christmas Eve, says the 'big hole in its Budget' arises partly because MVDC's Government grant, including its share of the business rates, will rise by only 0.5% a year, even though it faces steep rises in costs. The interest on its balances in 2009 to 2010 will be £600,000 lower than predicted. The over-60s are taking to more expensive, national free travel in large numbers. Ironically, collapsing property values also mean the fees MVDC collects from planning applications and land searches will be about £200,000 a year short.
But the statement doesn't tell the whole story - and that doesn't just mean its decision to spend £250,000 on a new reception area at Pippbrook. The council faces an extra bill of £1.3m a year because of the transfer of its housing stock to Mole Valley Housing Association (MVHA), plus another £135,000 to meet a shortfall in the pensions of former council staff transferred to the MVHA.
What's more, the government has replaced its planning delivery grant to the council with a housing and planning delivery grant. The size of the grant depends on Mole Valley's reaching milestones in the progress of its local development framework (LDF). Mole Valley's grant is £355,000 lower than before because, "we have yet to have our LDF Core Strategy approved and our new housing build is relatively low."
Also glossed over is that MVDC had a funding crisis a year ago, before the credit crunch and property collapse hit home. In February last year the Surrey Advertiser reported an MV council budget meeting which noted that rising costs and falling government grants would "cast a long shadow" over Mole Valley's spending plans "for years to come."
At that meeting the Council's Conservative leadership said the costs of contracts for street cleaning and wheelie bin emptying had increased by 7% and energy costs had risen 75%. But the Liberal Democrats had attacked the budget as a continuation of "relentless and unfair rises in fees and charges that hit the most vulnerable."
In the latest statement, Cllr Ben Tatham (Con, Mickleham, Westhumble & Pixham) MVDC's current portfolio holder for finance and assets, says "drastic changes" will be needed to fund the gap.
Even if council tax rises 5% in each of the next five years, the council's deficit will rise from £2.2m to £11m by 2012 if it doesn't try to balance the books. At the Council meeting on 19 February 2009, the Conservative administration will set out such budget aims as:
[] devising ways to deliver services more efficiently
[] making savings in the way the council buys goods and services
[] increasing income from MVDC's property
[] reducing spending on some services
[] increasing fees and charges
[] increasing Mole Valley’s share of the Council Tax by 3.5%.
Part of the council's solution is to 'invest' £2.3m in IT systems and external consultants as part of a 'business process review'.
A separate property review will examine council officials' belief "that our assets could and should be contributing significantly to our financial position."
Other detailed measures include:
[] increasing car parking and dial-a-ride charges
[] savings on the waste services
[] stopping the current grant to the East Surrey Rural Transport initiative
[] reducing staffing in day care centres
[] reducing the grant to Citizens' Advice Bureaux (even though the service is an important lifeline in times of economic hardship) – See Bugle story, and local newspaper report.
[] scrapping the post of economic development manager, currently vacant
[] other cuts to funding for Dorking Halls, parks, leisure, the arts and sports development.
The council's executive will discuss the proposals at its meeting on January 9. The budget proposals are Item 11 on that meeting's agenda. The document there ( click here to download a 68kb PDF) says rising costs will take the total budget, currently £12.6m, close to £16m by 2012.
Mole Valley is holding a meeting in Fetcham on Monday, January 12 to allow residents to discuss both the council budget and backyard development in Bookham and Fetcham.
The meeting will be held at St Mary’s Church Hall, 10A The Ridgeway, Fetcham KT22 9AZ at 7:00pm.
More information from Simon Trevaskis, coordinator for democratic services for the Bookham and Fetcham area, on 01306 879384 or email simon.trevaskis@molevalley.gov.uk.
Article updated February 2, 2009
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