Looking after Hampshire, looking out for you

Welcome to Hampshire County Council's Corporate Strategy. These pages set out clear improvement priorities and targets looking foward and progress and performance looking back. The site is intended to inform the public, staff, Members, partner organisations, inspectorates and central government.

These pages aim to do two main things:

Set out the Council's priorities to address the needs and aspirations of Hampshire's residents

Provide a summary of the Council's overall performance

Hampshire County Council is a top performing authority, rated as 'four star' through the CPA process by government. Our ambition is to keep it that way, while we continually improve our performance in the interests of the communities we serve.

Looking after Hampshire, our job is to ensure the county is safe and secure and to work towards enhancing the County's quality of place. Looking out for our residents, we want to work with them to feel safe and secure and maximise their wellbeing. Our aim is to lead and work in partnership with other organisations to remove barriers and improve choices whilst encouraging people to make their own decisions on the way they access services

Our priorities are:

• Hampshire safer and more secure for all

• Maximising wellbeing

• Enhancing our quality of place

These three priorities are designed to reflect the political vision and direction of our publicly elected councillors and give a clear statement of what the Hampshire community can expect in terms of service delivery and the focus of our work as a local authority.

The following set of values explains the way in which we aim to work:

• Removing barriers to opportunities and improving choice for all

• Responding to the improvements that people say they want

• Planning for and investing in the future

• Encouraging partnership, participation and contribution

We measure and monitor our performance against these priorities and progress reports can be found within these pages. You can also see national performance targets and results which are used to compare our performance with other local authorities.

These pages also constitute our Best Value Performance Plan

Hampshire safer and more secure for all

This is our top priority and is about developing and supporting stronger, safer communities for all by protecting vulnerable people, maximising safety in the places we live, helping young people to live positive lives and helping diverse communities to feel secure.

Although most people do feel safe in Hampshire, there are some groups of vulnerable people such as older people or those with learning disabilities, who may need additional support to live their lives, in the way they want to live, safely and securely.

Maximising safety in the places we live involves planning and building facilities that physically make Hampshire a safer place to be.

Helping young people live positive lives means providing the best start possible through our education system as well as providing other opportunities for young people to get the most out of their lives and to help them make positive choices for the future.

In helping communities to feel secure and in promoting good community relations, one of our most recent examples has been through being the first authority in the UK to introduce Accredited Community Safety Officers (ACSOs).

Maximising Wellbeing

This priority is about maintaining and improving quality of life and ensuring everyone has the opportunity to support themselves, be active in their community and have access to the services they need, whilst knowing that should things go wrong we are there to support them.

Residents tell us that generally quality of life in Hampshire is pretty good. However, there is still a job to be done in maintaining this standard and there is always room for improvement. Person Centred Planning helps people with learning disabilities to make their own choices and live as independently as possible by understanding their wishes and ambitions and then helping them to achieve them.

Being active in your community can mean different things to different people, but often the physical and mental health benefits are the same. For older people, we want to increase the number of community services so they can live independent lives for longer. For younger people youth groups and activity centres provide opportunities to try out archery, rock climbing and windsurfing. For people of all ages, we have arts centres, museums and country parks to be explored.

We make an excellent contribution to ensure that children and young people enjoy life and achieve. The Tellus2 survey of children and young people showed that on the whole they enjoy school and are proud of their achievements. This view is supported by school inspections where almost all children and young people are judged to enjoy school.

Having the opportunity to support yourself often requires access to jobs, skills and training. We have a number of initiatives which include establishing childcare in disadvantaged areas, helping people get back to work and promoting links between skills and training and business need.

Fair and equal access to services for residents is vital and it's our job to ensure that we make it as easy as possible, particularly for those that might otherwise have difficulty. When providing one service, there maybe others that can be offered at the same time. We have our first two Discovery Centres in Gosport and Winchester now open. Visitors dropping in to renew their books can also get online, visit a museum, meet friends for coffee or browse an art or local history exhibition at the same time.

Enhancing our quality of place

This priority is all about making the county a good place to be by protecting local distinctiveness and diversity, ensuring excellent facilities, respecting Hampshire's heritage and planning proactively for the future.

Having a distinct and diverse landscape and attractive towns and villages is what makes Hampshire a beautiful and interesting place to work, live and visit. Schemes such as the Market Towns Project are working with local residents to help them get involved and have their say on the future of their own communities.

We play a big role in protecting and conserving our heritage by providing excellent facilities such as our country parks and museums and supporting nature reserves, wildlife and historic places. Accessibility schemes ensure these places are available to all, including those less mobile and in wheelchairs.

By looking ahead and planning for the future, we can be sure Hampshire remains as good a place to work, live and visit in the future. We want to ensure Hampshire continues to prosper without risking our environment. For example, we are currently working to help schools recycle more, cut energy and water consumption and source food from healthy, local sources. Not only is this of benefit to the schools but it helps get the message across to residents of all ages, both children and parents that when it comes to protecting the environment, Hampshire means business.

Through our involvement in the South East Plan, we are seeking to ensure we have the housing we need, in the right place with the right level of investment in infrastructure such as water, waste and roads

How we reached our priorities

The Corporate Strategy priorities are based on a detailed understanding of the needs of the county's communities and supported by effective partnerships. Through our market research programme, we have listened to what residents of Hampshire have to say and what their priorities for improvement are. These have been considered alongside a wide range of other information which has also helped shape our priorities, including the demography of Hampshire and factors such as the financial resources and constraints of the Council.

Strong links have been made with partners with mutually supportive priorities across a number of key partnerships including the Local Area Agreement, Hampshire Strategic Partnership (Community Strategy) and the Children and Young People Plan among many others.

Priorities Timeline

In 2004 the Hampshire community strategy was published and work began on the partnership Local Public Service agreement Two (LPSA2); follow this link to view them both. We also revised the Corporate Strategy to make a clearer link to the issues highlighted in the community strategy, LPSA stretched targets, Cabinet priorities and the Hampshire Improvement programme. A further MORI residents survey was also carried out.

In 2005 following the election, work was carried out with the new Cabinet to understand the priorities for the new administration and we began to discuss the priorities and process for the Local Area Agreement.

During 2006 the Local Area Agreement and LPSA2 were signed as separate agreements and then brought together in a single performance process. In parallel the new corporate priorities were developed and published. These provide us with a clear vision for the four years of the administration and priorities to help develop service planning through high level outcomes measures and longer term targets. It gives a clear message to Hampshire residents of what they can expect from the County Council.

In 2007 the Corporate Business Plan was published, which can be viewed on these pages.

In 2008 the new LAA has been agreed as well as the move to the new 198 National Indicators against which we will set targets and monitor our performance.

About Hampshire and its issues

For most of its residents Hampshire is an attractive place to live, full of opportunities. It is relatively prosperous, has a wealth of natural and historical assets and the arts thrive. Crime is lower, people are healthier, and educational standards are higher than the UK average.

This can often mask the fact that Hampshire also has its problems - some of these are national, some common to the South East and others are unique to the county.

Hampshire's population is growing and ageing. While better medical services are enabling more people with significant social care needs to live longer, this creates a sharply increasing need for social care services. This is a problem we share with many authorities across the UK, but suffer more severely than most.

Like many south eastern counties, Hampshire can suffer from its own success. Rising prosperity and a rising population make increasing demands on the environment, on transport and on housing. Business surveys show that the key difficulties facing Hampshire businesses include the high cost of housing, skills shortages, transport congestion and a shortage of space to grow. At the same time, finding acceptable locations for new housing development and providing the appropriate infrastructure is a major concern for residents and the planning authorities.

Hampshire is a large county in terms of both population and area and this can hide important differences between communities and locations.

Although crime is relatively low, surveys show that fear of crime and security in general is a key concern for the residents of Hampshire. This includes serious crime such as burglary and robbery and also extends to antisocial behaviour and activities ranging from drunkenness and vandalism through to aggressive doorstep selling. Again it is important to understand the problem in detail. While more deprived areas do tend to suffer more crime, antisocial behaviour is also a problem of affluent areas.

More demographic and economic information is available from our Hampshire statistics web pages.

Our Partnerships

We use a wide range of partnerships and networks to enhance our capacity and jointly deliver improved outcomes, including the private sector, the voluntary and community sector, health, the police and fire services, district, parish and town councils as well as other local authorities. The following outlines some of our key strategic partnerships:

Local Area Agreement

This LAA is a 3 year agreement between partners in Hampshire and the Government to improve lives and conditions in Hampshire communities. The Agreement focuses the attention of partners on 8 priority outcomes drawn from the Hampshire Community Strategy and the 11 District Community Strategies. The original agreement,was signed in February 2006, and submitted along with the original action plan. The LAA will be replaced by a new LAA from June 2008, based on indicators drawn from the new National Indicator Set.

Hampshire's New LAA will include targets aimed at delivering the longer term Hampshire Sustainable Community Strategy. This document is in draft and subject to approval of the County Council. The draft strategy is based on:

• What is important to quality of life of people in Hampshire

• A picture of quality of life in Hampshire today

• Key challenges to quality of life for the future; and

• Ambitions for a sustainable Hampshire

View our Local Area Agreement on these pages.

Partners in Hampshire have agreed to 'stretch performance' in specific areas under the 'Local Public Service Agreement 2'. This separate agreement with government brings with it additional funding and potential to earn performance reward grants.

Hampshire Strategic Partnership

The Hampshire Strategic Partnership is a multi-sector/ multi-organisation partnership, which has been established as the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) for the County of Hampshire. Consisting of over 30 members, its role is to oversee the development and implementation of the Hampshire wide Community Strategy.

Financial Context

Our priority in delivering services is to ensure that Hampshire is a safe and secure place to live. This is a time of unprecedented demand on our services and constrained Government funding. The goal of ensuring that all council taxpayers and especially those residents most reliant on our services are protected from these budget pressures is the biggest challenge facing the County Council today.

The County Council continued to be a floor authority in 2007/08, which means that the County Council received the lowest increase in government grant of 2.7% paid to upper tier authorities. Services were required to achieve savings of £18.9m from increased efficiency and from reviewing priorities and these targets have been met.

2007/08 was also the second year of the Adult Services financial recovery plan, based on the modernisation of services, in response to overspends above budget of £11.1m in 2005/06 and £7.5m in 2006/07. The plan has been successfully implemented and also achieved a planned carry forward of £3.5m to 2008/09. In conjunction with improvements in five of the national indicators for adult social care, this demonstrates increased effectiveness in the use made of resources. Spending has continued to increase by 5.1% on the waste management contract in 2007/08, but this has been accompanied by a further increase in recycling levels and landfill diversion of household waste.

For the first time, the Government has agreed its funding levels for individual authorities for a three year period. It has given us a 2% increase for 2008/09, well below the current rate of inflation. The increase in the following two years will be even lower: 1.75% and 1.5%. This is the smallest percentage increase for any county council in England. We receive only a third of the Government funding per head of the best-funded county council in England.

The main budget pressures for 2008/09 result form changes in life expectancy and landfill tax:

An ageing population and an increasing number of young people with disabilities living into adulthood are adding progressively to the demand for care

·Our waste disposal costs are under pressure as a result of national policies to increase taxes to reduce the use of landfill

·The demand for the numbers of children to be looked after by the Council increases, despite a declining child population.

In 2008/09 increased spending on services above the level of inflation is mainly being financed from efficiency improvements, from savings within service budgets, or on a non-recurring basis from reserves or improved council tax collection performance. The County Council is however investing an additional £6.5 million primarily to meet increased demand for social care, and an additional £1.2 million on children’s services.

For 2008/09 the County Council's budget increase was 4.4% and the council tax increase was 4.5% ensuring that the council tax remained one of the lowest amongst county councils in England. Future council tax increases and service budgets are still provisional at the moment, but the best estimate for future council tax increases is around 3.0% for 2009/10 and 3.0% for 2010/11.

We aim to provide council taxpayers with high-quality services, while maintaining one of the lowest council tax rates. To do this we are continually looking at new ways of doing business and saving money. We are planning another £15 million efficiency savings for 2008/09, on top of the savings identified in previous years. We are looking at how our buildings use of technology and support services can help us make savings. For example, we are carrying out our biggest ever review to match the number and location of County Council buildings with the changing needs of residents and service users. We will sell or lease any surplus land and buildings identified in the review, generating capital that can be used to fund improvements in service delivery and pay for maintenance of the remaining property.

We are also changing the way we deliver our services to make sure we meet your changing priorities and needs while ensuring cost efficiency and effectiveness. When fully operational our new Contact Centre, Hantsdirect, will save £1 million a year and make it easier for you to contact us. As more residents need more services, our challenge is to adapt and innovate so we can continue to provide high quality services and support within our resources.

Delivering our Priorities

The Corporate Business Plan

The Corporate Business Plan identifies the key projects and activities which will deliver the three priorities. It is a tool to be used by managers when developing departmental and service plans. Ultimately these three priorities should find their way into individual performance plans (IPPs). This is how we will ensure that the political vision and three priorities set by Cabinet are driven through the organisation through departments and services right down to individual members of staff.

Download a full copy of the Corporate Business Plan

How it works

The Corporate Business Plan also provides Cabinet and the Corporate Management Team (CMT) with a framework for managing the performance of the authority against the priorities which have been set.

• Broadly, performance management happens on an exception basis, so that energies are focused on addressing areas for improvement. This includes celebrating significant achievements as well as identifying areas for further improvement.

• Results against targets and activities are reported regularly to departmental management teams (DMTs) and their relevant Executive Members.

• DMTs identifed areas of concern and propose actions taken to address any potential problems. Where appropriate, the Executive Member took action to address them.

• Cabinet and the Corporate Management Team receive twice yearly summaries of performance results at the end of the half year and full year, which highlight areas of concern and proposals to address them.

• At least once a year, information comparing Hampshire results with those of other top performing authorities is compiled, providing useful information on our progress.

Although the vision and three priorities of the Corporate Strategy will remain in place until the elections in 2009, the business plan will be reviewed and updated annually, reporting on our performance against these priorities.

Structure of the Business Plan

The business plan element of the Corporate Strategy is a tool to ensure that actions are taken to implement our corporate priorities - something that managers get to know and refer back to. It is arranged in four sections. The first three relate to each of the corporate priorities i.e:

• Hampshire safer and more secure for all

• Maximising wellbeing

• Enhancing our quality of place

The fourth section, called the management plan, is where we identify the key outcomes which relate more to internal projects and activities than to external service delivery. These are the things which ensure that we are a well-run organisation and are well-equipped to maintain and improve performance. So, for example, this is where work on the employee Pay & Benefits project and our Risk Management Strategy are recorded.

Outcomes

Under each of the four sections we have identified a number of outcomes which tell us what it is that we are aiming to achieve and how we will know that we have done so.

For example, the first outcome under 'Hampshire safer and more secure for all' is:

• There is a reassuring, visible uniformed presence

We have also identified the Cabinet Member and Chief Officer (manager) who has overall responsibility for ensuring the delivery of each outcome. Very often this means working across departments and with external partners to achieve a common goal.

Activities

At a greater level of detail again we have identified what key activities or projects will support the delivery of the outcomes. Here we have identified which manager is responsible for leading the project or activity and once again, in many cases, they will work closely with managers in other departments or with partners in other organisations who are also making a contribution to the desired outcome.

Performance Indicators

To give us more detail, and to help with performance management, we have identified specific performance indicators that we will use to judge our progress. There are a small number of performance indicators which relate directly to the corporate priorities and which will help Cabinet and the Corporate Management Team to manage the performance of the authority as a whole.

For example, the top level performance indicators for 'Hampshire safe and secure for all' relate to:

• Fear of crime

• Actual Crime

• Low level crime indicator/ antisocial behaviour

At a more detailed level, we have also selected performance indicators to judge our progress against each of the outcomes and named the executive member and Chief Officer (manager) responsible for delivery against the target.

For example, the performance indicator for 'There is a reassuring, visible uniformed presence' is:

• Percentage of people stating that Accredited Community Safety Officers (ACSOs) and Police Community Safety Officers (PCSOs) have made a difference in making the area a safer place to live.

Wherever possible, we have aligned targets and performance indicators with those that relate to our key partnerships, such as the Local Area Agreement and the Children's and Young People's Partnership.

We have shown a benchmark of current performance and a target for the progress we want to make. In most cases we are looking for performance improvement in each year. Where we have set longer term targets we have also identified milestones so that we can monitor whether we are on track. Targets are reviewed annually and results reported at least twice a year.

Our Performance

These pages provide an overview of how the Council’s performance is judged both by us and also from the perspective of external interested parties.

They explain how our performance is judged by:

• The people of Hampshire

• Ourselves, through Self Assessment and internal reviews of our services

• Government's Inspectors

They also contain our annual review of performance, reporting our progress in 2007-8 under the following headings:

• Progress against our priorities

• How well we perform compared to other county councils

• Departmental Performance

• Our local Performance Indicator results

• Our national Best Value Performance Indicator results