Hands-on Transformation for Luton Borough Council

Case Study 5 – Supporting the development of a shared vision for transformation

Local Partnerships have supported a variety of councils, and transformation projects through the LGA’s Sector Support Improvement programme funded by the UK Government. These case studies explore the key activities and learnings from these projects and highlight both best practice and common challenges.

Hands-on Transformation

Luton has an ambition for 2040 to be a healthy, fair and sustainable town where everyone can thrive and no-one has to live in poverty. It is driven by the council but is very much a partnership approach across the borough, recognising that success is achieved through collaboration. 

Whilst there is commitment to the ambition from officers, members and external stakeholders, there is a journey to take through transformation.  The activity with Local Partnerships aimed to support the borough council in its next steps, particularly informing its governance linked to using data as evidence to drive the change needed.  The objectives of the work were to:

• Work with you to review your governance framework for transformation
• Consider the robustness of your benefits management framework
• Challenge your use of data and evidence required to support your transformation pathway.

The challenge

The council acknowledges it is at the start of its transformation journey.  The council had certainly been involved in other change programmes and along with other local authorities has needed to adapt its services to a challenging budget position.  Whilst there has been a proactive and concerted effort to create a stabilised budget in some instances this has led to services becoming siloed.

Therefore, the council was focused on any new transformation being based on joint working and collaboration to get the best results for residents.  This was not just within the council, but taking a borough approach in maximising its work with the different sectors.

The council was also conscious that it needed to improve its use of data to understand the change needed and then shape the action required.  Whilst it collected a range of information, particularly population profiles to support its JSNA (Joint Services Needs Assessment) it was not making the most of service data or apply insights to the information. 

It was not the case that change was not happening, there had been some turnaround results in Planning and Street Cleansing, which had created performance improvement with direct and indirect savings. Also in some of the key functions improvement was part of business as usual driven by necessity.

However, there was no framework or governance specifically for transformation and though having a starting position based on the 2040 vision it was unclear on how the governance structures interacted.  Whilst this was an important element to introduce, the council also did not want to create another set of hoops to go through which took up resources – so governance flows were important.

The solution

The council had already created the foundations for its transformation programme and had been building these with the support of independent consultants.  The next step was implementation – again some of this had already started with some urgency to create savings and instigate long term change.

Input from people delivering the change was really important as part of the priority to be inclusive and collaborative.  This meant Local Partnerships running a series of group interviews with frontline and middle management staff, representatives of the voluntary sector, politicians and key influencers.   This was followed through with three on-site, half-day workshops to test, explore and form solutions based on the three themes of governance, benefit realisation and use of data as evidence.

The outcome was a set of practical actions to form the next steps of the council’s transformation programme.  This included:

• What was wanted from governance and how it fits with existing decision making structures
• Using established objectives linked to the 2040 vision as the basis of measuring success through key performance indicators
• An approach to using data insights to understand the change needed and shaping interventions to deliver future change.

The impact

The outputs were important to support the council in the next steps of its transformation, but an underlying purpose was to create consensus on those steps and create an inclusive approach to shaping key elements of transformation.

Mark Fowler, Deputy Chief Executive, said “the approach by Local Partnerships was incredibly valuable to listen, reflect, guide and advise.  We have to work at pace with conflicting demands so having that time to collectively shape our future approach means there is investment in making our transformation work across the council.  A few days of investment have created a strong foundation for the future”.

The council is also left with an outline method and methodology for its transformation governance and use of data, including following a KPI journey:

How is the new approach being sustained?

The challenge is embedding long lasting change when there is the pull of operating services and savings to make.  However, the council is aware that meeting the 2040 vision needs time, resource and commitment. The new leadership team is committed to transformation, with a decision to invest in a portfolio management office, and an overhaul of how the Business Intelligence Unit operates to create capacity for insight and knowledge sharing.

Lessons learned

Key lessons learned and information sharing:

Setting aside a few days for workshops and discussion can create consensus for future operation, using the experience of participants to shape what is best for the council.

Establishing the steps and stages of a KPI journey was useful, starting with a vision, following through with measurable objectives to then use results to shape and inform future operations.

The Business Intelligence Unit has evolved over time, often pulled in different directions by funding available rather than business need.  The focus of the work needs to evolve to use layers of information to create data insight.

The Leadership Team forms the Transformation Board.  The team will also be involved in programme and even project boards.  The objective will be to create the mechanisms and culture where trust and confidence leads to greater delegation of transformation, creating capacity for the Leadership Team increase to its strategic role.

More transformation case studies

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