The Council and democracy The draft budget proposals 2017-20

Budgets that keep the Council running

1. Reduce information technology (IT) saving £1.15million. Modern IT systems underpin many of the new ways of delivering Council services. We could save £890,000 by cutting maintenance, reducing printing, and scaling down the renewal of IT systems, equipment, and product-licensing. We could save another £260,000 by cutting vacant posts and reducing supplies and services.
2. Change legal and statutory services, saving £205,000. We could provide mortuary services in partnership with hospital trusts to save £55,000. Legal services could save £100,000 from 2019 if the number of children’s services referrals reduced. We could also review business support across these services to save £50,000.
3. Save £750,000 on contracts. We could save £750,000 by reviewing existing contract spend and contract management arrangements.
4. Change employment policies and processes, saving about £3million across 2018/19 and 2019/20.
5. Reduce costs of financial management, saving £603,000 over three years. We could reduce the team that provides financial management information and advice to support the Council. We could lose vacant posts, amend the service offer and change how we work through ICT developments and changes to finance processes.
6. Make efficiencies in running our internal and support services such as audit, human resources, procurement, customer services, and policy and reform, and innovation teams saving £473,000.

What people said when we asked about this between 3 November and 15 December 2016

People said:

Strongest agreement was with the options to save £750,000 on contracts, with seventy-six percent agreeing, and to reduce financial management costs with seventy percent agreeing. Disagreement was highest with the option to reduce numbers of prosecutions, with seventy percent disagreeing. Thirty-seven percent called for less bureaucracy and more efficiency. Forty-nine percent of people said these options would have a negative impact because, for example, of the effect on communities and on the city's growth and image. Twenty-nine percent saw a positive impact because of improved efficiency.

We said: Following consultation we will not go ahead with proposals to:

• reduce prosecutions
• reduce voter registration activity
• reduce communications support
• reduce performance research and information staff and services by £360k.

Consultation on our proposed budget closed on 10 February 2017. We listened hard and considered all responses before finally setting our budget at our council meeting on 3 March.

Thanks to the thousands who joined the conversation.