Establishing a new council
We are one of the UK’s newest, largest and most sparsely populated unitary councils We were established on 1st April 2023, and comprise the areas previously served by three district councils (Eden District Council, South Lakeland District Council and Barrow Borough Council) and half of Cumbria County council. We are working to unlock the benefits of becoming a unitary council, bringing different budgets, processes and cultures together into one cohesive and high performing council that delivers for its communities.
With a net revenue budget in 2024/25 of £272m (Gross Budget of circa £600m) and employing over 3,500 people we are one of our area’s biggest anchor organisations and have a central role to play supporting residents and businesses to thrive, working alongside our local partners and national government.
Delivering the best possible outcomes for our communities whilst ensuring value for money is achieved alongside financial sustainability is essential. The points below set out our approach to achieving these goals and how we are increasing our productivity.
Financial reality
Financial sustainability is paramount. Unitarisation has created opportunities for efficiencies and reducing costs, but as a consequence of Local Government Reorganisation there are also additional costs incurred to harmonise and stabilise the new council. Particularly in Westmorland and Furness’s case this stem from splitting a county council, and the complexity and loss of economies of scale that this brings.
As a result, our 2023/24 budget included an estimated £26m of Exceptional Financial Support which took the form of a capitalisation directive. Of this, £10m was allocated to facilitate transformation and integration and improvement of services, £7.5m to support direct pressures from Local Government Reorganisation and £8.5m to support general revenue budget pressures. The new leadership team for the council was not in place until post April 2023 and the 2023/24 budget was set by the Shadow Council. The capitalisation enabled a balanced budget to be set giving breathing space for necessary efficiencies and savings to be identified.
A balanced budget was delivered for 2024/25 which included both temporary and permanent savings. It also included growth and new pressures as part of the overall approach to pivoting the budget towards the priorities set out in our council plan and delivery framework.
So far, we have identified nearly £14m of savings through service efficiencies and improvements some of which are directly linked to becoming a unitary council. As with all other councils we are maximising the opportunities the impact of our treasury management approach and are constantly reviewing what technical savings are possible. This has resulted in no significant changes to frontline services.
The table below shows the permanent (recurring) savings that have been included already within the revenue budget.
| Permanent (Recurring) Savings | 2023/24 £m |
2024/25 £m |
2025/26 £m |
*2026/27 £m |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Treasury Management | 2.100 | 2.300 | 2.300 | 2.300 |
| Technical Savings | 1.551 | 2.059 | 2.168 | 2.168 |
| Service Efficiencies & Improvements | 5.802 | 11.889 | 12.648 | 12.736 |
| Unitary Council Efficiencies | 0.300 | 0.650 | 0.850 | 1.293 |
| Total | 9.753 | 16.898 | 17.966 | 18.497 |
* The savings recur at this level for 2027/28 and beyond.
Looking forward to the 2025/26 budget, a further savings programme of £12.5m will be required to deliver a balanced budget. Due to the temporary nature of some of the 23/24 and 24/25 savings this is a significant budget gap to resolve. In future years, as some of the initial pressures start to ease, this reduces in 2025/26 onwards to circa £9m of permanent savings required. In order to continue to pivot the budget to deliver on our priorities additional savings will be required to enable growth and investment.
Future savings will come for changing how we work, reviewing where harmonisation and stabilisation can continue to bring efficiencies and driving through the benefits of being a unitary council. We will also pursue greater collaboration and maximise the potential of our partners across the community, business and public sectors to ensure value for money delivery across all of our services.
Creating the conditions for success
Foundations for change
Unitarisation has given us the opportunity to set aside past approaches and think and do things differently, maximising efficiency and effectiveness to provide excellent services to residents and businesses.
This means moving from a collection of legacy councils to one truly new organisation. This requires whole organisational change and over the last year we have been establishing the foundations for that change process.
We have a clear Council Plan with a compelling vision, a Council Plan Delivery Framework setting out 10 bold missions that will help us achieve that vision and the priority activity that will we deliver each year. The Medium Term Financial Plan supports that vision, but we know more work is needed to ensure the budget truly supports the delivery ambition of the council. We need to develop our budget prudently and over time, but we are confident we can make the changes we need.
We have developed a suite of foundational strategies setting direction on key cross-cutting issues for the organisation like ICT, customer services, commissioning, procurement, data and community power.
We have agreed our Performance Management Framework, providing clarity and transparency about whether we are achieving our aims and delivering for our communities.
We have agreed our capital strategy, asset management strategy, carbon management strategy and community asset transfer policy and disposal policy all geared to ensuring we maximise value for money across our assets.
These documents describe and measure what we are doing. They go hand in hand with our target operating model which explains how we will work – putting communities first, making our services simple to access, quality delivery, efficient back office and supported by the right technology and data and assets.
The operating model provides a consistent framework that will help embed new ways of working that encourage efficiency, continuous improvement and clear focus on meeting the needs our residents, businesses, and communities.
Delivering change
Having built our foundations we are now embarking on an ambitious council-wide change agenda that will see fundamental shifts to how services are organised and delivered, and move us towards our target operating model. The programme aims to build our critical infrastructure, improve key services, and unlock the benefits of becoming a unitary council. Our intention is to make our services more efficient, more effective and simpler for residents, businesses, communities and visitors.
The change agenda includes a formal change programme for the priority ‘big ticket’ items but also includes the continuous improvement that is ongoing across all directorates to deliver on our 10 delivery framework missions.
The formal change programme includes six organisational wide programmes covering resource optimisation, culture, community power, customer and digital, technology, and data. Getting these things right has impact across all our services. They are critical for improving our productivity.
Alongside these we are focusing on four priority services - planning, waste, adult social care and children’s services. These have been chosen because of the benefits to be realised through integration of services from the four legacy councils (planning and waste) or because of the financial significance and need to focus on improvement as a consequence of splitting what were previously county level services (adult social care and children’s services).
Priority service improvement
- Planning - developing our new Local Plan and creation of a single planning policy and development service
- Waste - creating a single waste service for our whole area
- Adult Social care - promoting independence and wellbeing
- Ambition for every child - ensuring all children get the best start and opportunity to thrive
Cross-organisational foundations
- Resource optimisation - improving financial stability and resilience through optimising our income and assets, improving productivity, streamlining commissioning and procurement
- Culture and organisational development - creating the culture we want to help achieve our vision
- Community power - working differently with communities and building on their strengths
- Customer and digital - improving the experience of our customers, making it quicker and easier to get what you need
- Technology - developing the right technology and systems to get what you need
- Data and intelligence - making best use of data to inform and guide our decisions
Our change programme is managed through a Cabinet level assurance board, ensuring alignment and consistent focus on benefits realisation. It is about creating a distinctively Westmorland & Furness way of working based on our values, our target operating model and commitment to achieving best value from public money.
Maximising productivity through digital, data and technology
The effective use of technology, digital delivery and harnessing the power of data are key routes to improved productivity. They are a priority focus for our new organisation.
Technology - Local government reorganisation has created significant and wide-ranging ICT challenges but also opportunities. Our ICT Strategy sets out how we are working towards a unified, future-ready Westmorland and Furness ICT system. This requires disaggregation of major county-wide systems such as the adult social care and children’s social care case management systems, the finance system and human resources and payroll system. In addition to disaggregation, bringing together the large number of council systems and different types of infrastructure will be a key focus and challenge. Alongside facilitating basic operational effectiveness as one organisation, establishing the right infrastructure will allow us to deliver our digital ambitions, including enhanced self-service, process automation and adoption of artificial intelligence tools.
Digital – harnessing the power and potential of digital technologies is a priority focus. We have already started on this journey with the use of robotic process automation in some service areas and are exploring further opportunities for increasing our virtual capacity. Alongside this we are reviewing our customer access channels to create a simple unified digital offer to residents that is more efficient and reduces cost and looking at the workforce skills and culture we will need to become a digitally enabled organisation. To drive that change we are now growing our in-house staffing capacity and capability, creating a dedicated team at the heart of the organisation.Digital – harnessing the power and potential of digital technologies is a priority focus. We have already started on this journey with the use of robotic process automation in some service areas and are exploring further opportunities for increasing our virtual capacity. Alongside this we are reviewing our customer access channels to create a simple unified digital offer to residents that is more efficient and reduces cost and looking at the workforce skills and culture we will need to become a digitally enabled organisation. To drive that change we are now growing our in-house staffing capacity and capability, creating a dedicated team at the heart of the organisation.
Data – growing our organisational data maturity provides a further route to productivity gains and service enhancements. Our Data and Intelligence Strategy sets out our approach, including strengthening our data management and implementing a new Integrated Data Platform. This will facilitate a step change in our ability derive value from our data, including integrating diverse data sources and developing a ‘single-view’ of the customer across key systems. Early work has already established the potential for significant efficiency gains, and we expect these to multiply.
A high performing workforce
Creating a new organisation and bringing together four organisations was disruptive and challenging for our workforce.
For teams with functions previously split across the county and districts, we are progressing a process of service redesign. This will enable services to change how they operate, allow teams to come together with consistent processes, standards and performance, customer experience, technology and staff training and skills.
During 2023/24 our spend on agency staffing was high, as our legacy councils transitioned to a single
unitary council and a period of stabilisation was required. During our first year there were also a number of vacant posts as a result of both disaggregation and aggregation, and an increased workload to manage the transition and stabilisation of bringing four authorities into one.
To address this, as part of our 2024-27 People Plan (workforce strategy) we have invested in our recruitment and retention approach, and apprenticeship programme, to develop and grow our in-house workforce.
Additionally, We aim to build a diverse and inclusive workforce and have agreed a 2-year Equality
Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan to guide us through the work required to embed equity, diversity and inclusion across our services, working closely with partners and communities to ensure we meet our statutory and moral duties.
Barriers to productivity
We believe there is huge potential in Westmorland and Furness, and we want to realise that potential for the benefit of our residents and for the whole UK. From clean energy, carbon capture and advanced manufacturing to nature recovery, agriculture and our world class visitor offer, the scope to develop and grow is huge.
Achieving that potential means tackling the challenges presented by our super-ageing and reducing working age population and the below average productivity in our local economy. These present difficulties for us, both as a place and a service provider. To be able to move forward strongly, as a service provider and place leader, in a way that is socially, environmentally and economically sustainable, we need support from central government.
Our ask of central government is echoed across all Local Authorities:
- Providing multi-year funding settlements, to include council tax referendum limits, to enable local authorities to plan for the longer term
- Stop the ‘begging bowl’ culture of bidding for funding and allow greater freedom to spend ring fenced grants to allow more local decision making
- Stop the culture of bidding for capital investment and enable local and regional decision making to determine priority schemes
- Clarification of Social Care Reforms, including charging and ensure adequate funding is provided
- Allow for additional council tax premium on second homes to support more affordable housing development
- Compel DWP to share their data to enable more automated processing in areas such as blue badges, benefit claimants etc.
- Address SEND (High Need Dedicated School Grant) issues – increase funding to meet eligibility criteria or reduce eligibility criteria to match available funding
- Reform home-to-school transport entitlement to make it more proportionate and affordable
- Provide Information as soon as possible on the potential income, and obligations, for LAs from Extended Producer Responsibility (Packaging) reforms
- Review the ICB boundaries for Cumbria recognising the complexity for both new Unitary Councils to work with two ICB’s
- Recognise that investment in preventative approaches including community power and promoting independence programmes are essential to put local government onto a financially sustainable footing in the medium and long term
To help us move forward despite these issues we will work in partnership, both within both our own place boundaries but also within Cumbria and the wider region, particularly with our two Integrated Care Board and other key anchor organisations. We are also committed to widening and deepening the relationship with our Parish and Town Councils as important delivery partners.
Conclusion
We are clear about who we are and where we are going. Productivity is at the heart of our approach and critical to us achieving our goals.
But we are operating in a context of continuing financial constraints where increased demand is not matched by increased funding from central government and local decision making is constrained. We have increasing service demand from people needing our support, and ever greater expectations from our residents. We want to invest, and are investing, in preventative approaches to manage demand on formal services, but that is challenging within the existing financial constraints.
Like most councils we are walking a fine line to ensure the continuation of essential services and achievement of a balanced budget. In this scenario, efficiency and productivity gains are not just desirable but essential.
We are doing all we can locally to achieve this, but we require government to genuinely recognise the barriers to our further progress and support us to ensure we can continue to deliver for our communities and the UK.