Reigate & Banstead Borough Council Productivity Plan
What is a Productivity Plan?
On 5 February 2024 the then Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, the Right Honourable Michael Gove, MP announced that all Local Authorities would be required to create a Productivity Plan that would be reviewed by a panel of sector experts including the Office for Local Government and the Local Government Association, confirming that:
“The panel will review productivity plans and advise the government on best practice, which will be monitored to inform funding settlements in the future”
Mr. Gove concluded his announcement by saying:
"We are committed to improving the local government finance system beyond this settlement in the next parliament and the minister for local government will be engaging with the sector over the coming months."
On 16 April 2024 the then Minister for Local Government, Simon Hoare, MP wrote to all Local Authorities stating that:
“Local Government has already done a huge amount in recent years to improve productivity and efficiency. However, lockdown and post-lockdown has proved challenging, and you are looking for new ways to go further. These new plans will help us understand what is already working well across the whole country, what common themes are, whether there are any gaps and what more we need to do to unlock future opportunities. We will share these important lessons across the sector”
Mr. Hoare went on to say that while central government would not be “…issuing a formal template or a list of criteria”. The Minister then went on to provide a list of questions that local authorities may wish to consider when creating their plan.
Our Productivity Plan
We have taken some of those questions posed by the Minister for Local Government, the responses to which form the basis of the Reigate & Banstead Productivity Plan: