Contact: Jenny Heath, ext 7402

1 Development of the Corporate Business Plan

1.1 Following the publication of the new corporate priorities `Looking after Hampshire, Looking out for you', ¹ work has progressed to develop the Corporate Business Plan. The business plan provides the means for officers to manage delivery against the priorities set by Members. It will be reviewed annually as it is the key element of the County Council's performance management framework.

1.2 The business plan links to key plans such as the Local Area Agreement, the Children and Young People Plan and the Local Transport Plan. It also informs the development of departmental service plans to ensure that they support the priorities and move towards alignment of resources.

1.3 A major innovation is the agreement to identify named officers at operational and chief officer level, as well as cabinet members responsible for the targets included in the plan.

1.4 Departments have contributed strongly to defining the outcomes and identifying activities and targets which form the main elements of the Corporate Business Plan. Throughout this period of ongoing consultation, understanding has grown about the role of the business plan as a bridge between the new corporate priorities and their delivery through service plans and individual performance plans. Final iterations are seeking to ensure there is a close fit with departmental priorities and with the 2007/08 budget.

2 Purpose of the Corporate Business Plan

2.1 The Corporate Business Plan provides our political leadership and senior managers with a top level plan of how the authority aims to achieve the Council's priorities. There is a strong emphasis on aligning the key outcomes and activities with the political vision that was expressed during the development of the three new priorities The detail is found in supporting corporate polices or plans, partnership plans and service plans, which also identify the standards of performance we aspire to in everyday operations.

2.2 There is a potential tension between keeping the corporate business plan succinct and ensuring it has bottom up ownership from those people whose day-to-day work contributes to the overall success of the Council. As the relationship between corporate plans and service plans unfolds, it may be possible to prune this top level plan in future years.

2.3 The Corporate Business Plan is designed to be used primarily by staff and managers throughout the Council. Auditors will also use the information as evidence of effective service and resource planning, while Members will want to understand the basis for performance management reports which flow from monitoring progress with the corporate priorities. The consultation has therefore also touched on how to make the plan meaningful to those who need to use it and clarified thinking about the information needed to support the improvement plan matrix.

3 Context statement and introduction to the business plan

3.1 External assessors repeatedly ask the Council to provide a general contextual statement about its community and to demonstrate its understanding of the issues that influence decision making. Since there is a good story to tell and in the interests of consistency, the context statement attached at Appendix one is closely drawn from the CPA Self-Assessment context statement. This will be published alongside `Looking After Hampshire, looking out for you' and aims to address questions about how the priorities were arrived at. This statement is particularly useful in identifying what is distinctive about Hampshire and the value a local authority adds in responding to local issues, as opposed to be the local delivery arm of Government policies.

3.2 The introduction to the business plan is intended to help people understand why there is a business plan, what it means for them and how it is structured. It is attached at Appendix two. To show the integration between strategic planning and resource setting, there is a brief explanation of the impact of the budget strategy on plans. It also covers the processes for performance reporting to embed accountability for delivery against the targets set.

4 Corporate values

4.1 In developing the corporate priorities, Cabinet also agreed principles relating to the way in which we aim to work. Although these have not had a high profile through the launch of the Corporate Strategy, there has been strong departmental support for their adoption and use in the delivery of service planning. They will form the basis of the development of the Council's corporate values:

· 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

5 The Improvement Plan

5.1 The master version of the improvement plan contains a full set of information about the outcomes which help define the corporate priorities, the activities which will deliver them and the performance measures which will be used to monitor progress. It also shows who is accountable both for overall performance and for projects or activities, along with many cross-referencing details. This is a busy and complex document and is best kept `behind the scenes'.

5.2 It is planned to produce three versions of the improvement plan, which are designed for different purposes and should be simpler to understand and therefore use:

· A schedule of the outcomes and people responsible for delivering them (Appendix three)

· A listing of the outcomes and activities under each priority, which maps the overall programme of council activity aimed at delivering the corporate priorities (Appendix four)

· A schedule of performance measures, which will be used to monitor performance (Appendix five)

6 The Management Plan

6.1 Although there are only three priorities, the improvement plan contains a fourth area for improvement, called the Management Plan, which is designed to capture significant projects and activities in support services, which by their nature support all the new corporate priorities, as well as business as usual.

7 Communication of the activities and targets within the business plan

7.1 The Corporate Business Plan, with its supporting context statement and introductory material, are essential ingredients for the delivery of the priorities in the political vision `Looking After Hampshire, Looking out for you'. For staff and Members who do not refer to these documents regularly, it is potentially confusing to label them differently: the distinction between the political vision in the Council approved published document and the action plan contained in the Corporate Business Plan is not significant to the majority of people. It is, therefore proposed that all these documents are referred to as a single entity, ie `The Corporate Strategy'.

7.2 At different times, people will want to access the specific aspects of the vision, goals, activities that comprise the Corporate Strategy. It is, therefore proposed that these are all published on the Council's internet and intranet sites: Hantsweb and Hantsnet, rather than as separate printed documents. This aligns with national proposals for replacing the statutory Performance Plan² and keeps to a minimum the effort to comply with requirements for publishing corporate ambitions and performance results.

8 Next steps

8.1 The Corporate Business Plan will be `race and equality impact' assessed and go through an `integrated sustainability appraisal'.

8.2 A scorecard of performance measures and activity milestones will be created in the new performance management system, Corvu.

8.3 The Corporate Finance Team and the HR Resources Group are currently working to identify costs and people associated with each of the activities. This is an embryonic process, since in many cases the emphasis is on re-directing resources and effort within a unit, rather than on new resources. It will help maintain the focus on efficiency and form a sound basis for developing service plans in the future.

Recommendations

1 That Cabinet approve the development of the Corporate Business Plan as described

2 That Cabinet approve the designation of the elements of the Corporate Business Plan, along with `Looking After Hampshire, Looking out for you' as `The Corporate Strategy'