Client: LB of Hammersmith & Fulham

The need:

The need to deliver council services differently, using new ways of working and different ways of delivering services to deliver more value and productivity for residents with a reduced challenging budget.
The council needed help in trialing for the first time a zero-based budgeting exercise to meet its planning and service redesign objectives, and to become an outcomes focused organisation in its service delivery.

What we did:

We assisted the council within a multi-disciplinary project team.
Leading on an outcomes-based service delivery and budget model we ensured resource, spend and focus were allocated to activities to drive the aspirational outcomes specifically for giving children the best start in life, ensuring differing resident needs were met and were at the heart of the service redesign of key services and that the council environmental services provided the right leisure, green spaces, and sustainable / green initiatives.
By taking multi service / stakeholder teams through several innovation and idea generation workshops, often held outside the council within rooms and spaces that were designed to nudge and drive innovation, we captured and backlogged a number of value driving ideas to spend further time to develop in the future, prioritising the top 20 ranked value driving initiatives that were developed and carried into business case development level.
We delivered at pace, in partnership with the services, the development of over 100 short business cases for the programme and executive committee to consider, with a shortlist approved to be taken further into full detailed business case and implementation.

How we delivered value and realised benefits:

The key business cases that were developed provided the roadmap to deliver over £50M in savings was a complete customer contact centre strategy, the reimaging of local public sector assets for front end delivery and the redesign of transport and education service offer for those children with learning difficulties, that drove efficiencies a higher productivity with a lower budget, whilst delivering educational and public health children’s services through the most optimal user journeys to ensure maximum impact.
Business cases developed for the council’s environmental services focused on better utilisation of its green spaces for income generation; initiatives to work and develop closely with its waste collection partners to reduce costs and increase recycling and waste energy generation whilst making multi use of its council owned housing and small green spaces.
We left the organisation with a clear roadmap, re-casted detail by service activity outcome-based budget that meet the reduced allocations, which would not of been achieved if a ‘salami slicing’ approach was taken as per other previous years. We also ensured current internal transformation team had the templates, delivered mentoring and know-how to repeat the zero-based budgeting process again in future.
Through innovative internal events such as market stall events, we contributed to greater staff input and feedback across all council services proposals and allowed the opportunity to engage regularly and more closely in a safe space with programme sponsors and executive committee members.