Barnet Council is a major organisation, employing around 7,000 staff. Our annual gross revenue budget in 2007/8 was around £790 million, plus an annual capital budget of over £100 million.  We therefore have to be managed using sound and efficient business principles constantly seeking to improve value for money.

The principle of ‘more choice and better value’ underpins everything we do.  Our medium-term financial strategy will help us achieve our vision of “a smaller entity with a smaller, but more efficient corporate support function and a greater concentration of resources on outcomes”. This will require a radical approach to service delivery including looking afresh at possible structures for delivering services, as well as ensuring that we obtain the outcomes we want through more targeted commissioning and enhanced contract management. We will use shared services to identify and achieve increased efficiencies across the council. We will deliver high quality services but keep our Council Tax increases below the rate of inflation.

We intend to improve customer satisfaction in the coming year. Using the implementation of our customer relationship management system, we are improving the information we know about our customers and their needs.  We want to meet the differing needs of our customers, make it easier for them to access the council and provide wide choices of access. As a result we have invested in developing a service centre for the west of the borough, based at Burnt Oak Library. We want to offer customers the chance to interact with us in ways that best suit them, including electronic and self-service transactions. We want to use technology to deliver services as close to customers as possible and we have ambitious plans to make Barnet a wireless borough.

All property assets held by the council are reviewed regularly to ensure that they support the effective and efficient delivery of council services and functions.  By extending, improving, acquiring or disposing of assets we make sure that we provide the range and location of assets that fits the changing way that people wish to access services.

The use of properties by a range of services and partners helps to achieve best value from every asset and the use of new technology and different ways of working provides a more flexible use of property by more users.

The performance of all of our operational assets is monitored and managed with regard to reduction in energy usage and carbon footprint and all major works and new buildings are designed to high standards of sustainability and energy efficiency.

We are committed to having transparency, integrity and accountability in our governance arrangements and intend to review our governance structures to ensure they are fit for purpose given the significant changes in our ways of working and our increased joint working with partners. We will work to further promote awareness of good governance both within the council and with our partners.

We want our staff to be skilled and adaptable to meet the future challenges of modernisation. We value innovation, risk taking and acting in an entrepreneurial way. We will develop and nurture talent within the organisation and with partners.   In this way we hope to become an employer of choice.

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