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around you and buy-in from the Leader and Chief Executive so they are absolutely behind it and owning it. We had 27 strands of the original transformation programme and every single one was sponsored by one of the senior leadership team. "We went big bang but while we were building the new ship, we kept the old ship sailing. That is important. You have to keep your services running and at some point bring the two together seamlessly." A new commercial model is helping close the £63m funding gap through the Council's whollyowned companies channelling profits back, whilst contracted services are increasing revenues through harnessing the capabilities of private sector providers. It has so far closed approximately £40m of its £63m funding gap and is on course to close the rest. But Kishinani is clear it was never all about money. "We definitely had a burning platform but we made sure this wasn't all about the money. If it had been we would have taken services and slashed them but we didn't do that, we thought about what residents needed to really change their outcomes and what the structure of the Council needed to be to deliver that." The launch of Community Solutions, one of the new services developed as part of the transformation programme, aims to resolve complex needs by tackling root causes rather than just signposting residents towards traditional service blocks to receive a service the usual way. Whilst the Council hasn't marketed the changes it has made to residents, it sees success in the evidence. Complaints have gone down, evictions have reduced, the number of residents in temporary accommodation has reduced, households are being supported with finance plans so they can get themselves out of debt, and residents are receiving quicker responses with a more efficient and informed response. "We don't have a housing department anymore but people don't know that, they just need someone to help with a housing issue, they don't care where it is coming from. We dissolved those hierarchies very deliberately so we didn't have the silos we had before in Adults, Children's, Housing, Environment etc." The Council has also invested in and revolutionised its social media presence, moving from 133rd in the country to 3rd in just two years (GovRank), communicating with residents in the way they want to communicate, about the things they want to talk about. In addition, the borough’s schools continue to go from strength to strength, with 93 per cent of them now classed as good or outstanding. The Council also holds Silver Investors In People status, with a recent assessment finding Council employees had a high degree of understanding and support for the organisation's vision, with the Employee Engagement Index score at 74 per cent and rising through a period of massive change. Whilst LBBD is a borough with a population on the rise, the Council continues to strive to reduce demand on its services and to seek new ways to make an impact on its communities. "One of our big areas now is predictive analytics. We have a small team of data scientists who have made a huge difference in a short period of time. We are now able to really understand where our demand is coming from and target our limited resources in the most effective way,” added Kishinani.
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LBBD scooped two further Gold awards: Community Focus Award and Intelligent Council COMMUNITY FOCUS AWARD: GOLD WINNER LBBD took the Gold award in the Community Focus category for its flagship transformation programme Community Solutions. Formally launched in April 2018, it brought together 16 distinct and traditional people-based Council services, comprising 500 staff. The service acts as the ‘front-door’ to the Council - a single integrated offer for early help, prevention and targeted support. Skills and expertise across a breadth of areas such as housing, welfare reform, children and adult social care, youth services, work and skills are pooled, supporting residents through blended teams, reducing hierarchy, streamlining referral processes and enabling stronger integration with services and wider partners. The Homes and Money Hubs show how Community Solutions is working. Provided in partnership with Citizens Advice Bureau, Job Centre Plus and other partners, it provides support for people experiencing or nearing financial difficulty and, in the worst case, crisis. Since its launch in early 2018, the Hubs have helped more than 2,500 people, 52 evictions have been prevented, 89 people have been supported into employment, and 217 people have been helped to manage their rent and/or council tax arrears. Community Solutions is also securing better outcomes for less. To date, £3.8 million in savings have been delivered, with a further £1.2 million on track for delivery by 2021. INTELLIGENT COUNCIL: GOLD WINNER The Intelligent Council Gold award was given to the LBBD Insight Hub - a team of data and behavioural scientists who are the analytical driving force behind the entire Council's operating model. First established in 2017 with a mission to 'turn data into insight-led action' the team’s projects have had global acclaim in the past two years. LBBD’s mission to 'leave no resident behind' is underpinned by an evidence base known as the Social Progress Index (SPI) produced by the Insight Hub; just one example of their pioneering work. The SPI has been instrumental in decision making around resource allocation and predicting area-based service demand. The tool is also currently being embedded into the Council’s social value policy. The SPI started as a global index comparing the social progress of countries against GDP. LBBD’s Insight team are the pioneers of a ward level application of this index, which brings together more than 50 datasets into the SPI framework. First published in October 2018, LBBD’s SPI includes four years’ worth of data across each of its 17 wards. Due to the world’s first nature of this project, the team is frequently asked to present its work on a global stage. In the past year, the team has presented its work in Iceland, Sweden and the United States. The project has inspired other cities and local governments to build the same model, with the latest local SPI being developed by the City of San Jose, California.
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