Shared services will make savings

10:00am Sunday 20th July 2008

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SHARED services between south Worcestershire’s district councils are on track to deliver budget savings by next year, according to city council chiefs.

Roger Knight, Worcester city councillor in charge of finance, delivered a report to the council’s cabinet on the revenues and benefits shared service scheme set up in July, last year.

The scheme, due to go live from April 2009, is a collaboration between Worcester city, Wychavon district and Malvern Hills district councils in a bid to save money.

Earlier this month Malvern Hills backed out of a proposed merger with the cash-strapped city council prompting leader Simon Geraghty to warn Worcester faced “stark choices” on future service provision.

At cabinet on Wednesday, Mr Knight said: “If anybody says that shared services don’t improve service levels they should look at this document [the report].”

The South Worcestershire Shared Services project is still being finalised with staff transfers to a new head office in Pershore and the installation of a new IT system due to complete by the end of the year.

If the scheme goes to plan it could deliver city council budget savings of £222,000 by the end of the 2009/10 financial year rising to more than £300,000 by 2012/13.

Mr Knight said: “We have got an underspend and we’re on target to deliver savings over £200,000 by next year - that’s the value of two community centres in Worcester.”

He said the scheme had already delivered results with average times for processing new benefit claims down from 36 days to 27 and increases in the collection of council tax and business rates during 2007/08.

He said the cost of setting up the scheme had already come in more than £240,000 below predictions - a saving of more than 50 per cent.