The Council Plan 2025-2029 outlines our vision and the outcomes we seek to achieve, along with employee values and customer commitments.
Council Leader Councillor Barry Lewis, who has written the foreword to the new plan with Managing Director Emma Alexander, said:
“We’re proud to unveil our new Council Plan which will form the bedrock of all we aim to achieve over the next 4 years, mapping out how we will do it and outlining how our plans will benefit Derbyshire’s residents and communities.
“A lot of hard work and preparation lies behind the plan which is robust and clear about the direction the authority will take up to 2029.”
The plan sets out our key priorities over the next 4 years, focusing on those services which residents and communities have told us are most important to them and driving improvements in efficiency, value for money and customer service, including:
- Delivering a safe, effective, efficient and innovative highways service that provides value for money and to invest a further £70m for highways maintenance and safety schemes.
- Working with health and education partners to deliver improved services for children with special educational needs and disabilities and their families.
- Ensuring there is a good choice of affordable adult social care support across the county and supporting people to live independently at home, connected to the community, for as long as possible.
- Working with the East Midlands Combined County Authority to drive inclusive and sustainable growth in Derbyshire, including creation of a new regional transport organisation and to develop and deliver programmes to drive skills development and facilitate routes to employment to support economic growth.
- Fully explore and seek to implement the opportunity to create a single unitary council for Derbyshire through Local Government Reorganisation as set out in the English Devolution White Paper.
- Improve efficiency and integration across the council through the centralisation and redesign of support services and digital and financial transformation.
Essential to the work undertaken to draft the new plan has been understanding the broader context within which we will be operating over the next 4 years, including any potential changes in government policy, financial and environmental pressures, key opportunities, risks and potential constraints on how services are delivered.
A key consideration has been the challenging and significant financial pressures which face the local government sector and that we continue to experience, with high costs and high service demand, coupled with demographic pressures currently forecast to continue into the medium term.
These financial challenges, faced by councils across the country, have been exacerbated by high operating costs driven by inflation and a provider-driven market, especially in adults and children’s social care.
The Council Plan sets out ways we will continue to drive forward improvements to services, to increase efficiency, value for money and to mitigate and overcome the challenges we face.
Key to this work is the introduction of a new vision and new outcomes we seek to achieve alongside partners, with newly developed ways of working, employee values and customer commitments, outlined in the plan.
The vision is 'working together to improve lives across Derbyshire', with the following outcomes:
- People: empowered communities where people live safe, happy, healthy and independent lives
- Place: prosperous, green and sustainable places with opportunities for all
- The Council: a resident-focused, efficient and effective organisation delivering value for money
In order to deliver the outlined vision and outcomes, a set of values and customer commitments have been agreed with the help of colleagues across the council, and which will help shape the culture across the authority and deliver consistent and customer-focused behaviour. Our commitments to our residents and customers are:
- we will be responsible, open and honest
- we will work together to achieve positive outcomes
- we will listen and be open to new ideas
Also included are 24 new strategic objectives which make up the activity which will be carried out to ensure the plan is delivered.
The plan is published alongside agreed service plans for each of the 4 council departments.
Councillor Barry Lewis added:
“Despite the well-documented challenges that continue to face the council and others across the country, we remain ambitious for Derbyshire, its residents, communities and places. Our new Council Plan sets out that ambition and how we will deliver improvements to key services and drive increases in efficiency and value for money for Derbyshire people.”