Agenda item

Report of the Town Clerk.

The Sub-Committee received a Report of the Town Clerk concerning corporate and business planning.

Members thanked the Town Clerk for the update; it was critical we retained momentum over the coming months and part of that was to ensure clarity in the process was prioritised. They added that it would be useful for the Town Clerk to include a cover note that framed the finalised versions of the high-level summary Business Plan (a template of which was presented to Members as an appendix of the Report).

The Chairman stressed that a key question was to ask Chief officers what they were planning to do less of; if their answer was “around zero”, then “we should draw our own conclusions”,  although as he pointed out, some departments, such as Community and Children’s Services, may legitimately find it difficult to identify many areas, given their legal obligations to deliver certain services. Nevertheless, it was vital that the process needed to be an enabler to drive choices.

A Member added that the process and any related documentation had to “grab people’s attention”, we needed to avoid plans going through “on the nod” and subsequently being left on a “shelf to gather dust”; to assist preparation they proposed road testing the template with a “mature department”.

RESOLVED – that the Sub-Committee noted the Report.