With both political parties threatening or introducing rate capping at different times across the country, many councils have recently self-imposed rate capping with some of the lowest rate increases being struck in over a decade. The devastation of lives and livelihood caused by COVID-19 has seen councils freeze or even reduce their rates.
If your council is now striking rates at CPI or below, there is significant work to be done on service reviews to make your council’s operations sustainable.
Objectives of Service Reviews
Service Reviews may be designed to achieve some or all of these objectives:
Community Alignment
To align the service delivery against community needs and expectations and preparedness to pay.
Resource Allocation
To confirm the level of resources allocated across the council’s portfolio of service.
Improved Service
To understand the services delivered and enable improved management of the services.
Service Standards
To understand and better target its service level/standard to avoid gold plating services providing services that exceed community expectations, thereby wasting limited resources.
Benchmarking
To benchmark services against other councils, against KPIs or against “future self” as part of a continuous improvement program.
Inform
To inform elected members and executives, new and old alike, of what the council does and how it goes about doing it.
Shared Services/Partnerships
To capture relevant data to specify the service for the purpose of exploring the provision of shared services/partnerships with neighbouring councils, regional organisations of councils, government agencies as part of a joined-up approach, not for profit organisations or other like-minded parties.
Outcomes of Service Reviews
It is expected the Service Review process will:
- lead to a range of services being “tweaked”, which will result in quality improvements, timely delivery and/or savings;
- identify services that will require further consultation with customers and partners, benchmarking and a more thorough Business Case due to complexity; and
- identify services that will benefit from a more regional approach to delivery.
The Service Review process will result in alignment of service delivery against community needs and expectations thereby providing fit-for-purpose services the community can afford.
Community’s Preparedness to Pay
One of the main reasons behind the introduction of the rate cap revolves around the community’s preparedness to pay. Increasingly the community voiced that it was no longer prepared to pay more for council services. A few years back we reached a tipping point, where the community was making it clear it would consider reduction in levels of service rather than introduction of fees and charges or increases in rate.
As councils review current levels-of-service and consider new services they must take into consideration the community’s preparedness-to-pay in addition to how they will meet their needs and expectations.
Data Driven Reviews/Reforms
Service Reviews are data driven. Much of the initial work with council staff is centred on collection of information that will inform the service analysis. Service Reviews start with understanding community needs and expectations and aligning against them.
Service Review Projects
Ravim RBC consultants have recently completed the following service review projects:
- reviewed the entire service portfolio for a Shire in the Goldfields Region of WA;
- reviewed the management of community facilities and services for a Shire in the Wheatbelt Region of WA;
- reviewed the economic impact of the equine sector and demand for equine facilities and services for a Shire in the Peel Region of WA;
- reviewed City Strategy services for an inner-city Melbourne council;
- reviewed service delivery in the COVID-19 context and developed COVIDSafe service delivery plans; and
- assisted with reviews of the fleet and mechanical workshop services for councils in far north Queensland, northern NSW and metro Melbourne.
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Coaching and Development
Our Service Review methodology provides for development of staff and management. At the conclusion of the Service Review process, Council staff and management will have sufficient skills, knowledge and tools to undertake future service reviews of their own accord.
Performance Management
Time and effort is spent during the Service Review process on understanding and developing performance indicators for each service. It is also opportune to build a reporting and monitoring program around service KPIs that can be used to guide the ongoing performance improvement for each service.
Following consideration of Service Reviews the Council will be well placed to develop a performance management framework using the Service Reviews as its performance spine. While some of the Service Review recommendations will be implemented immediately, there are other recommendations that will require work over coming months and years.
The planning and timing for implementation of these Review recommendations could form part of the Council’s performance management framework moving forward to ensure all Council resolutions are implemented and service improvements and savings realised.
If you are interested in undertaking a service review or would like to discuss our methodology, please Contact Us.