Castle Point Borough Council: aiming for excellence

After a poor comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) report, Castle Point Borough Council has been transformed. This involved setting clear priorities and involving staff and partners on its improvement journey. The council has strengthened its leadership, changed its culture, improved communication and focused on priority frontline services. Achievement is now strong, and the council has positioned itself as a community leader.

Key learnings for other councils

• Focus on the priorities and don’t get diverted. Dismiss the irrelevant – stick to what you say you will do.
• Develop a ‘can do’ culture among members, senior managers and staff.
• By breaking down the ‘silo mentality’ you can achieve much more, more quickly.
• You need a change in psyche: recognise that change is continuous.
• The key to success is ensuring single-mindedness in achieving your aims.
• It is also about staff engagement, taking people with you on your journey and allowing everyone’s input into decision-making.

Background to the council

Castle Point Borough Council started from a low base, with a ‘poor’ rating in its CPA report of December 2004. Key issues included:

• weak service performance, with the lowest performance nationally for 31 per cent of indicators
• lack of political direction
• poor strategic management.

At this point, there was a sense that the council lacked strong leadership, and the capacity to focus on priorities and to drive the organisation forward. Some service areas, such as revenues and benefits, were in a downward spiral – they had lots of complaints and were dealing with large backlogs of work. This was compounded by ‘silo working’ within departments, poor member officer relationships and low staff morale. The council had a lot to do to improve.

Who was involved?

Chief Executive David Marchant was appointed early on in the council’s improvement journey. With Leader Councillor Pam Challis, they embarked on a programme of intense change. The programme focused on key service areas that were important to the community.

“The challenge faced by the council was enormous but there was a compelling willingness and determination among leading members to support the change of anything that would result in improvement,” said Marchant.

The focus on service improvements, and developing the capacity to improve, delivered quick results. Early achievements included significant improvements in processing benefit claims while strengthening the financial position of the council.

Councillors spent a week with service directors to get an idea of which resources were being used where. They realised that the council was involved in too many areas and was not focused enough. Some tough decisions had to be taken to pull resources from certain activities and deploy them in priority areas.

The chief executive recognised that working with middle managers would be vital to making change happen. People were encouraged to talk, to offer opinions and feedback. This encouraged staff as they could see change happening and felt they were being listened to.

A positive culture began to pervade the organisation and improvements became more rapid. This helped to galvanise the organisation and make people feel they could get involved in change. In addition:

• a monitoring board was appointed with a lead government official to oversee improvement
• an improvement plan was drawn up, based on the areas of weakness highlighted in the CPA report
• a number of new heads of service were recruited.

The council set up a project board to regularly look at every project in the improvement programme and assess the risk of it not being completed. A strict timeline and a rigorous programme of regular assessments provided discipline and structure to the improvement process.

The CPA working group, consisting of heads of service, met weekly and focused on improving service areas. The group also focused on demonstrating what had been achieved. In addition, a database of 'evidence of achievements' was set up to share corporate successes and to use as part of the reassessment. All of this meant that operational matters were being addressed and helped keep council staff involved in the change programme.

Improvement activities were incorporated as part of the overall performance management process. The council introduced a scorecard to report progress against actions and a system of exception reporting to overview and scrutiny. These strengthened performance management processes.

Partnerships

The Leader recognised that the council must take a bigger role in external partnerships. This prompted closer working with the county council. In addition, the council took a leading role on the ailing local strategic partnership (LSP), which led to a revitalised LSP.

Member organisations had more incentive to contribute, as they believed the council would continue to provide leadership and change would occur. As a result, the sustainable community strategy (SCS) was rewritten and now has the agreement of all partners.

Castle Point has significantly improved its reputation and standing with partners. It is now valued as a key partner who can effectively influence and achieve shared priorities and objectives. For example, the perceived level of anti-social behaviour decreased significantly from 46 per cent in 2003 to 21 per cent in 2006.

The council provided such strong leadership to the LSP that it was invited to sit on the Essex partnership and to become involved with the Thames Gateway partnership. It is now also working with the East of England Development Agency around Castle Point’s regeneration.

Castle Point has developed a strong presence in regional and sub-regional partnerships. This has enabled the council to attract £12 million for a new road on Canvey Island. A further £2.3 million has been raised for business plans and feasibility studies for the regeneration of Canvey town centre.

Cultural change and communications

The council also recognised the need for cultural change.

Restructuring provided an opportunity to reorganise around new corporate objectives and to create roles that played to people’s strengths. New and clearer policies and strategies were developed in areas such as human resources and performance management. Changes in senior management resulted in stronger leadership.

With a legacy of mistrust and poor working relationships between officers and members, the leader and chief executive decided to speak with one voice and show support for each other at all times. The idea was to lead by example and this was at the core of rebuilding those relationships.

Member and officer working groups were set up, as well as joint training sessions and 'awaydays'. This helped rebuild confidence, trust and communication links. There is now a member code of conduct in place. Members and officers work more closely together and members are more involved in service planning and decision making.

The council communicated with staff regularly throughout the change process. The staff newspaper ‘The Grapevine’ communicated the latest changes. Senior management met with staff regularly to hear their views on proposed changes. This helped build confidence in senior management and made staff feel involved in organisational change.

A staff forum was set up early in 2006, which has improved communication between managers and staff. The chief executive worked with the forum to review and improve communications. Many felt this was the first time that management and members had wanted to hear their opinions. Previously, the organisation was dominated by appeals, grievances and challenges. However, the new consultative arrangements made staff feel more valued and listened to.

External communication has also improved through the quarterly borough newsletter, effective development of the website and more robust media management. The council has built up a relationship with the local press and holds weekly press briefings.

Implementing robust performance measures has helped to turn around poorly performing services. Previously, performance was not measured in any depth. Now, everyone has had Covalent – performance management system – training. There is a quality assurance and risk management framework in place. Different management teams work together instead of ‘in silos’. There is a greater focus on priorities, achievement and continuous improvement.

External support for improvement

"The IDeA has been used as a critical friend and the council has addressed the areas of weakness identified. Best practice is sought and used to improve services.[…] The council is learning from best practice and external challenge to improve the quality of services." Audit Commission, Corporate Assessment Report, December 2007.

The IDeA (now Local Government Improvement and Development) had been providing improvement support to the council before the CPA report of 2004. It was agreed by the council and the IDeA that it would be important to provide support to councillors without experience of political administration, as well as to newly-elected councillors.

This support included:

• political mentoring arrangements for the Leader of the council
• an elected member training programme
• attendance at the Leadership Academy.

Of particular value was the ‘ward walkabouts’. A number of neighbourhood visits were arranged for Ward members, accompanied by experienced member peers from other councils. The walkabouts highlighted:

• ward priorities
• priorities shared across different wards
• how ward priorities linked into corporate priorities.

The outcomes from the walkabouts were taken to neighbourhood forums and to the council’s executive to consider the overall picture.

These initiatives helped to provide the new administration with the skills and confidence to fulfil their new responsibilities, and to support the development of council priorities.

IDeA support included peer reviews of the benefits and leisure services. Additional support was provided on:

• strategic procurement
• officer participation in the advanced leadership programme
• facilitated workshops for members and senior officers, and senior and middle managers.

The IDeA delivered a corporate peer review in January 2007. This review served to establish the progress made by the council, to support the decision to apply for CPA re-categorisation, and to highlight areas for attention.

“[The peer review] was certainly a milestone in our recovery. […] We used the report as the building block for the self assessment and literally took it apart piece by piece pointing to how we had responded to its recommendations. For us, that was a powerful exercise of accepting advice and changing focus which led to our improvement,” said Chief Executive Marchant.

Challenges

Getting buy-in can be difficult. Castle Point managed this by having 'Chief executive and staff' focus groups. These helped to develop a shared vision of improvement and make staff feel part of the process. Workshops, 'away days' and greater involvement in developing strategy helped to keep councillors engaged.

There is the risk of being distracted from the agreed course by external factors and circumstances. The use of collective engagement and a project board, led by the Chief Executive and the Leader of the council, ensured the council maintained direction and achieved its key project and corporate plan milestones.

Public opinion can be hard to shift. The council is using the borough newsletter to set out progress and communicate good news stories. They have resurrected the Citizens’ Panel to feed people’s views back into the way services are delivered.

It has taken time to put the right skills mix in place. The council has achieved this in a number of ways, including the use of improved recruitment practices and retention arrangements.

Outcomes and impact

Finances are now aligned to priorities. Key services, like revenues and benefits, are now some of the best in the country.

Better performance management processes enable councillors to be more in touch with how services are performing. This makes it easier to refute incorrect perceptions in the community.

The number of people complaining about poor service from the council has reduced dramatically. Community perception of the council has improved. In street cleansing, satisfaction in three years has increased from 61 to 77 per cent. Revenues and benefits has seen a 20 per cent increase in satisfaction over three years.

The corporate focus on services like refuse collection and street scene, and the public-private partnership around grass cutting, has resulted in excellent services in these areas. Even the look of the borough has changed: street signage is different, the borough is cleaner and tidier and there are new gateway signs.

There is now a better understanding of Castle Point, its diversity and what needs to be done to reach out to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.

By putting in a cross-departmental strategic diversity group in place, the council progressed from level 0 in 2004 to level 3 of the Equality Standard for Local Government (ESLG) by 2007 – an impressive achievement.

As a result of partnership working, the council has attracted significant regeneration funding.

Next steps

The council continues to focus on improvement and is looking to develop its regeneration framework and improve customer services. The council has recently held objective-setting sessions. These were to clarify what excellence should look like, what the goals are for the community, how to engage neighbourhoods and how to get value for money. This has helped to keep the momentum going within the council.

Conclusion

Castle Point Borough Council achieved transformational change. The CPA rating in December 2004 was ‘poor’. The council applied for recategorisation and the Audit Commission rating in December 2007 was ‘good’. This was an improvement jump of three CPA categories, which at that time was unprecedented.

"Our improvement journey has called on the resources of everybody but the effort has led to real improvements for our residents who now enjoy some of the best services in the country. We learned that learning from others is a powerful force for change," said Councillor Challis.

Further information

Craig Watts, Assistant Chief Executive
Castle Point Borough Council
telephone: 01268 882419
email: CrWatts@castlepoint.gov.uk

Article published June 2008.