Organisational strategic priority

Our corporate values underpin everything that we do as an organisation, including the decisions we make and the way that we deliver services for the people of Luton.

These values were developed by staff across all parts of our organisation, reflecting the personal and professional values of our workforce. These values demonstrate our determination to be a council that cares about our residents, our partners and our colleagues.

To uphold these values, we will be:

Collaborative: we will work together across the teams within our organisation and with partners and our community to deliver on our strategic priorities. We demonstrate this commitment through our work to achieving Luton 2040, which is a shared vision being delivered through collaborative work across the Luton system.

Ambitious: we believe that Luton 2040, our shared vision for the town, which we are delivering with partners, is one of the most ambitious programmes anywhere in the country. Our staff are delivering on these ambitions every day and we are always striving to scale-up these ambitions wherever we believe we can go further.

Respectful: we recognise the challenges that are faced by people of all backgrounds throughout our diverse community and the structural barriers that we must overcome to build a fairer town where everyone can thrive. Respect for one another is at the heart of our decision making and our engagement with residents, colleagues and partners. As part of this respect, we will always strive to be open, honest and constructive with everyone we work with.

Empowering: we will empower our staff and our partners to make decisions and carry out interventions that have a positive impact on the lives of our residents, placing trust in the knowledge and expertise that they bring to their roles. We will also empower our community to be active, resilient and socially responsible in supporting one another, while doing all we can to promote the voice of all residents, including children and young people, to shape the future of our town.

Supportive: supporting everyone in Luton is at the heart of our mission to enable everyone to thrive. We will support our staff and our partners with the resources they need to provide high-quality services for residents. We will also support all of our residents and our staff with the opportunities they need to reach their full potential and support those that are struggling in our community.

Maintaining a financially sustainable council provides us with the solid foundations that we need to continue providing good quality and value-for-money services to residents and to be able to make long-term investment decisions to achieve our priorities for Luton 2040.

The context for this objective is a persistent challenge, following more than a decade of reductions in the revenue support grant from government and future funding settlements only made over three year periods.

Following the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis are both likely to further impact local government costs, such as energy prices, while also having a negative impact on council tax, business rates and other revenue streams for the council. The council also continues to operate into 2022/23 without the annual dividend paid by Luton Rising, while the aviation industry continues to recover.

Medium Term Financial Plan

To maintain a solid financial position, the council takes a longer-term view through the Medium-Term Financial Plan (MTFP). The MTFP sets out the council’s approach to financial planning over a period of several years, including all capital and revenue expenditure.

The council has approved the following aims as the principles which underpin the MTFP:

• to maintain a balanced budget position, and to set a Medium Term Financial Plan demonstrating how that position will be maintained
• spending plans will be closely aligned with the council’s aims and objectives
• the council will maintain a prudent level of reserves
• budgets will be continually reviewed and modified to ensure that resources are targeted on key objectives

This plan is aligned to a number of other financial strategies including:

Financial Strategy: sets out how the council structures and manages finances over the medium term to achieve a balanced budget.
Investment strategy: sets out how the council will invest to support or improve services, earn investment income or invest surplus cash ahead of its use for expenditure (treasury management).
Investment property strategy: sets out how the council will use capital expenditure to invest in properties, as well as the disposal of properties, for the purpose of generating investment income.
Treasury management strategy: sets out how the council manages cash flows to achieve a balanced budget and minimise the level of risk in investments.

Annual budget and savings programme

The council sets an annual budget for each financial year which aligns with the principles of the MTFP.

To achieve a balanced budget, the council has had to find savings of around £160 million since 2010, due to a reduction of around £120 million in government funding as well as the loss of £50 million of commercial revenue and the airport dividend during the pandemic. During the first two years of the pandemic, the council managed to find around £25 million of savings, putting us in a stronger position, with relatively lower levels of savings now required.

Despite this, a number of variable factors remain, including the possibility of impact of new variants of Covid-19 and the impact of the cost of living crisis on council costs and finances.

The council’s budget for 2022/23 totals £596 million. This money is spent on services for the people of Luton and long-term investment in the town. The largest proportion of this money is spent on services that support the most vulnerable, including adult social care and services for children, families and adults who are in need.

Along with money spent on education, these services make up nearly 60 per cent of all council expenditure. The current budget also includes an increase of £2 million for services such as street cleansing, enforcement and highways, which residents have identified as priorities in recent years.

Capital strategy and investment in Luton 2040

The Medium Term Financial Plan and a balanced annual budget, puts the council in a sound financial position to make long-term strategic investments that can help us to achieve our aims for Luton 2040.

The council’s capital strategy sets out the framework and principles for how these long-term capital investments are made. The capital strategy is governed by a set of investment principles which are aligned to those of the MTFP, including investing to improve service delivery, maintaining and improving council assets, delivering on our 2040 priorities and meeting our statutory responsibilities as a council. These principles also include making the best use of funding and mitigating against risk in all investments.

The council’s capital programme is updated and agreed annually alongside the budget, based on these investment principles. This programme includes major capital projects which have been approved or are underway over the medium term and these are included within the Council’s Green Book.

The current capital programme for 2022 to 2027 includes major investment in 19 regeneration projects, including the delivery of The Stage (part-funded by £20 million Levelling Up Funding), the redevelopment of Library Road carpark, construction of a renewable energy generation park, the introduction of a park and ride service at Butterfield Green, as well as other upgrades to schools, highways, community buildings, playgrounds and the Town Hall.

Our People Strategy sets out how we intend to recruit, develop and enable our workforce to deliver on our strategic priorities to achieve the Luton 2040 vision.

Having an effective, efficient and engaged workforce is the heartbeat of our organisation and essential to driving everything that we do.

Our people strategy aims to meet the broader aims within this corporate plan and the Luton 2040 vision by:

• ensuring that we have a strong workforce that delivers high quality services to our communities
• leading by example as a key anchor organisation in Luton as a good employer
• developing a workforce reflective of our community
• providing quality jobs pathways for local residents
• inspiring and providing opportunities for our young people and acting as corporate parent for our looked after children
• building an empowered, representative workforce whose voices are heard
• fostering a culture of innovation, continuous improvement and values-led behaviours

As an employer, we are committed to ensuring that everything we do to support our workforce is underpinned by:

• our corporate values
• qualities, diversity and inclusion
• employee wellness
• effective leadership
• quality service delivery

Our people strategy is delivered through an implementation plan which focusses on the following five key areas:

1. Recruitment and career progression

To achieve our priorities and deliver high-quality services, we need to attract and retain the brightest and the best people to work in our organisation.

The relationship between employees and work is changing and we must continue to adapt our offer to meet be an attractive proposition for current and potential staff. As an organisation, we also believe in growing our own talented people to be successful in their roles and to progress in their careers.

We will achieve this by:

• Increasing the number of ‘recruit for potential’ opportunities, providing career progression through a range of schemes, such as our career pathways programme, secondments, our mentoring and coaching programme, and access to higher-level apprenticeships.
• Investing in our talent pipeline through a range of early talent initiatives, including our first steps to employment programme, work experience and support for years nine and ten, college and university students, as well as recruiting new apprentices and graduates.
• Continuing to provide a Guaranteed Interview scheme for care leavers and progression opportunities for underrepresented groups and care leavers.

2. Reward, recognition and benefits

Providing a competitive benefits package is important to recognising and rewarding our staff for their hard work, while also helping to attract and retain great people.

We will achieve this by:

• enhancing our already attractive health and wellbeing offer
• ensuring our pay and rewards strategy remains fair, equitable and competitive
• continuing to develop modern recruitment and on-boarding processes that respond to labour market challenges, including targeting hard to recruit areas, modernising our job descriptions and building career structures through job families.

3. Actively listening to and learning from our workforce

Fostering a culture of fairness, positive engagement and transparency is essential to empowering our staff and ensuring they feel valued and listened to.

We will achieve this by:

• undertaking regular employee surveys and ‘pulse’ surveys
• supporting our existing staff networks to create a culture of engagement, giving staff a voice that is listened to and heard with ideas acted upon
• encouraging staff to use online platforms to learn, discuss, debate and support each other
• ensuring exit interviews are undertaken for all leavers where feedback is analysed, reported and acted upon
• exploring different methods of inclusive engagement with our front-line staff

4. Supporting our workforce with accessible, timely and inclusive learning opportunities

Enabling our workforce with the learning and skills to work in a more modern and efficient way is an important focus. This includes supporting new ways of working, including the use of new technologies, digital skills and hybrid working.

We will achieve this by:

• improve access to data and information among our workforce
• developing internal communication channels and creating an information dashboard to support planning and decision-making
• developing employees digital skills to use digital technology confidently

5. Ensuring managers are able to lead, manage and improve performance of individuals, teams and services

Our plan also sets out how we will develop leadership among managers and staff in our workforce. Effective leadership at all levels of our organisation is important to driving better performance and decision-making throughout our workforce.

We will achieve this by:

• creating the space for our managers to carry out their leadership roles effectively and by developing a culture of inclusion and fairness
• creating time and space for managers to come together to reflect, collaborate and develop
• communicating our expectations clearly with managers and staff
• providing up to date and clear policies, procedures and toolkits to empower good leadership
• providing effective training and development to support leadership and management that is based on our values
• developing an accountability framework to model consistent performance management
• promoting ‘good work’ principles of happier, healthier, more productive and fair workplaces that support quality work for all

The first three objectives within this priority the corporate values that underpin all of our work, financially sustainability providing strong foundations for our organisation, and an effective, efficient and engaged workforce that is the heartbeat of all that we do gives us all of the tools that we need to deliver high-quality services.

The final objective within this priority is focussed on designing and delivering modern, efficient and high-quality services that meet residents’ needs and help to achieve the Luton 2040 vison. This requires us to do different things and work in different ways.

The council’s strategic change team leads our transformation strategy, working across departments to optimise all of our processes and structures, adapt our organisational cultures and utilise technology and data in the best ways possible to deliver better and more efficient services that meet the needs of residents.

Our transformation strategy is built on a number of key principles, including:

• a focus on delivering services that deliver our Luton 2040 target outcomes
• investing in new technologies and better integrating technology to support easier, faster and more effective services
• developing more efficient processes, to give customers what they need quickly and enable self-service, while reducing staff time spent on repetitive, low-value tasks
• utilising new ways of working, to enable the right balance between office-based work, home-working and hybrid working for all our teams to perform at their best
• understanding and managing demand for services and identifying opportunities to intervene to prevent long-term pressures
• promoting the voice of residents, service users, children and young people, partners and staff within the design of services through consultations and engagement
• delivering savings and taking advantage of commercial opportunities where possible
• using joined-up data and business intelligence to better understand our residents and their changing needs
• monitoring performance of services in an intelligence-led way with meaningful measures and performance indicators for all services
• ensuring strong governance is in place for all corporate services and at all levels of the organisation, including elected members, the senior leadership team and within each directorate

Our approach to transformation is delivered collaboratively, with all of our people to ensure that their expertise in their role is used to inform change and to ensure that all of our staff have the tools they need to do their jobs effectively.