More changes needed at Falkirk Council to balance the books

The council is facing a budget gap next year of £18 million – and that could well increase, particularly if council staff get the pay increase their unions are currently pressing hard to get.

Senior managers told councillors that the Council of the Future (COTF) programme – projects that save cash by transforming how services are delivered – was absolutely vital to addressing the crisis.

Stuart Ritchie, director of corporate services, warned councillors that speeding up and expanding the COTF programme was vital.

He said: “There are still savings that need to be found and I think we’d all agree that its best to deliver these savings by transformation, rather than budget cuts.”

He reminded councillors of the budget meeting earlier in the year and said that a number of suggested savings had not been taken up by members for political reasons. “We could have been doing more if elected members had taken different decisions,” he said.

Last year, COTF programmes had a budget of £1 million to invest in such things as digital technology that would ultimately help cut costs and improve efficiency.

But during an audit of Falkirk Council this year, the auditors, PWC, had been critical of the lack of clear information on how exactly the programmes were saving money in the long-term.

Mr Ritchie said they had now taken that advice on board and developed a new system of reporting that made it very clear what stage each of the projects was at.

Chief executive Kenneth Lawrie agreed that it was “critical” to pick up the pace of change. He said: “We have made progress but we need to do more, and when we see the budget gaps going forward we can see the criticality of this work. But I think the work with PWC feels like a real turning point in terms of delivery, robustness and consistency and we need to build on that to make the programme work.”

However, he added: “The auditors will pick up on the fact that we haven’t taken up all the savings from Council of the Future and we still have a long way to go.”