Performance Plan 2006/07

Vision, Values and key priorities

Background

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the pyramid of visions, values and key priorities under which the Council operates. Using our planning process (see chapter 3), the Council ensures the top priorities of the organisation are clearly linked, through a range of plans and strategies, to the work of individual members of staff. The chapter also includes an assessment of the policy context which forms a backdrop to the decision-making process.

Our vision for Lewisham

The vision of the Council is long-standing, ambitious and forward looking. It is predicated on partnership working and focuses on Lewisham as a place to live, work and learn within the broader London economy. The Council’s vision is a well-known ‘purpose statement’ throughout Lewisham and, because of this, in 2003 it was included in the Community Strategy as the vision statement for the Lewisham Strategic Partnership (LSP).

‘Together we will make Lewisham the best place in London to live, work and learn’

The Council operates in two key areas: as a securer of services, where it seeks to sustain and improve service performance standards; and as a means of community self-governance, where it seeks to work alongside service users and citizens in solving local social problems. This dual role drives the Council to focus on both the quality of its services and the quality of its community engagement.

The Council has developed a focused approach to service improvement. Services are subject to thorough performance scrutiny by managers and elected members, with a view to achieving top-quality performance standards across the board. Lewisham’s residents deserve the highest standards of public services from the Council and the Council is determined to deliver the highest possible standards through improved efficiency and heightened effectiveness.

However, public services are not simply ‘provided’ or ‘delivered’; they are co-produced, with the service users themselves playing an active part (in their own education, health, housing and environment). The aim of public services should not be about capturing customer loyalty. Rather, the best public services should aim to empower citizens to gain independence of action. Local problems such as fear of crime, health inequalities, low educational attainment and environmental decay have many interrelated causes and can only be solved through strategies that are responsive to service users and broader citizen interests. Of course, there are very many occasions when the Council is engaged in determining complex public interest questions – when it is involved in balancing competing claims for resources or in moderating between minority and majority interests on a particular issue. In these respects, the Council recognises that its legitimacy to make hard choices in the public interest is enhanced, if its own service delivery is valued by the public more generally.

The Mayor and the Council therefore place a high priority on working in partnership with others in the public, private and voluntary and community sectors. The Council believes this cannot be achieved without an ambitious approach to modernising services and governance arrangements. Lewisham has recognised that delivering performance improvement and achieving £6.7 million of efficiency gains will require changes, both cultural and structural. To help achieve this, a new directorate structure was introduced on 1 June 2005. This new framework will enhance Lewisham’s organisational capacity to deliver, building on a strong base of service improvements and enabling the Council to fulfil its ambition to move from ‘good to great’.

Our values

We have a series of core values which provide a benchmark for behaviour across the organisation.

• We put service to the public first.
• We respect all people and all communities.
• We invest in employees.
• We are open, honest and fair in all we do.

The above values provide a simple message for us all in how we act and behave in our dealings with each other and with the community we serve. They are particularly relevant when we need to resolve a problematic situation with competing interests; values guide us in our response to how we seek to resolve such situations.

Our priorities for action

Vision and values alone are insufficient if there is no clear strategic direction, no path forward, and there are no priorities to deliver on the way. This document outlines a clear approach that seeks to achieve excellence in service performance and exemplar status in terms of the quality of both corporate governance and community engagement.

Figure 2.1: Achieving the vision

The following sections outline the priorities of the Council and how they operate at different levels across the work of the organisation.

Community Strategy priorities

The following ten partnership priorities were agreed by the LSP as a basis for concerted public action locally. These priorities are in practical areas where combined efforts between LSP partners will accelerate progress towards delivering real change in the years ahead. The Community Strategy sets these out under three main themes:

Improve the well-being of the people of Lewisham

1. crime: reduce crime and the fear of crime and make Lewisham a safer place
2. health: sustain and improve the health and well-being of local people
3. education: raise educational attainment, skill levels and employability
4. enterprise and business growth: foster enterprise and sustainable business growth, including the creative industries
5. cultural vitality: develop cultural vitality – building on Lewisham’s distinctive cultures and diversity
6. regeneration: secure sustainable regeneration of Lewisham as a place – its housing, transport and environment
7. welfare dependency: reduce welfare dependency, promote independence and increase the life chances of vulnerable members of the community

Develop and engage local communities

8. engage local communities: help local communities to develop their own capacity for mutual support and independent action and ensure the centrality of community involvement in public service decision making processes

Improve public sector performance and delivery

9. ensure equity in service delivery: design diversity into local institutions and design out discrimination
10. improve effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of local public services: optimise investment in infrastructure and improve the stewardship of assets.

Lewisham’s corporate priorities

In 2004 the Council agreed a set of headline priorities. These Council priorities focus on the needs of local people and are geared towards ensuring that, in delivering services, the Council focuses on its citizens, functions coherently, is transparent and responds to changing needs and demands. The ten priorities were adopted as the corporate priorities and also determine what contribution the Council will make towards delivery of the Community Strategy priorities outlined above.

The corporate priorities are as follows:

• community leadership and empowerment – developing opportunities for the active participation and engagement of people in the life of the community
• young people’s achievement and involvement – raising educational attainment and improving facilities for young people through partnership working
• clean, green and liveable – improving environmental management, the cleanliness and care for roads and pavements and promoting a sustainable environment
• safety, security and a visible presence – partnership working with the police and others and using the Council’s powers to combat anti-social behaviour
• strengthening the local economy – gaining resources to regenerate key localities, strengthen employment skills and promote public transport
• decent homes for all – investment in social and affordable housing to achieve the Decent Homes Standard, tackle homelessness and supply key worker housing
• protection of children – better safeguarding and joined up services for children at risk
• caring for adults and older people – working with health services to support older people and adults in need of care
• active, healthy citizens – leisure, sporting, learning and creative activities for everyone
• inspiring efficiency, effectiveness and equity – ensuring efficiency, effectiveness and equity in the delivery of excellent services to meet the needs of the community.

Lewisham Strategic Partnership (LSP)

As we have mentioned, many of the objectives outlined above can only be delivered through partnership working.

The LSP was established over four years ago and brings together the key representatives from the public, private, voluntary and community sectors. It is chaired by the Mayor of Lewisham. Its purpose is to promote and sustain joint working across these sectors and to secure meaningful ways of engaging the community at all levels. The partnership is able to take a strategic look at the many issues that affect life in Lewisham and which concern you. Crucially, through being a partnership of all key sectors, it can meaningfully assess and address how each issue impacts on the others.

In September 2005, following an assessment and review, the Government Office for London reported that the LSP is strong and provides an effective framework for partner activity. It also noted that the various organisations that make up the partnership work well together and understand the importance of working together in tackling disadvantage.

Local public service agreements

Local public service agreements (LPSAs) are partnership agreements between individual authorities and the Government. They bring together national and local targets, creating a performance agenda that focuses on key priorities and difficult challenges. Lewisham’s first-round LPSA ran from April 2001 to March 2004. Following on from this, the Council has now progressed a second-generation LPSA, which runs from 2005 until 2008. Here improvement targets are focused on:

• improving the outcome of pregnancy by reducing factors that contribute to infant mortality
• reducing teenage conception
• smoking cessation
• increasing educational achievement at Key Stage 4 GCSEs
• improving secondary school attendance and educational attainment at Key Stage 4 GCSE for Children Looked After by the Council
• reducing crime, the fear of crime and public concern about anti-social behaviour
• reducing the numbers of people killed or seriously injured on Lewisham’s roads
• improving living standards for vulnerable people living in private sector accommodation
• increasing the numbers of lone parents in sustained employment life
• improving adult basic skills
• increasing the stability of placements for Children Looked After by the Council
• reducing youth re-offending.

Local area agreements

Local area agreements (LAAs) are partnership initiatives intended to give boroughs greater control over how priorities are determined and outcomes delivered in their areas. Through LAAs, partners will be able to pool existing area-based funding streams and target resources where they are needed most. The LAA framework builds upon local priorities for improvement, as set out in the Community Strategy, Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy, Crime, Anti-Social Behaviour and Drug Misuse Strategy, the Children and Young Peoples Strategic Plan and the Health Improvement and Modernisation Plan.

As part of the national roll out of LAAs, in June 2005, Lewisham was amongst 66 areas invited by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to participate in the second phase of the scheme. All agreements, in the second phase, are focused on the following priority areas:

• children and young people
• safer, stronger communities
• healthier communities and older people
• economic development and enterprise.

The development of Lewisham’s LAA is progressing well and is built upon the following key principles:

• narrowing the gap in outcomes for our citizens
• building stronger communities
• improving the quality of life for all.

Drawing upon the Community Strategy, Lewisham partners have agreed the following headline priorities for improvement as the basis for identifying specific LAA outcomes, performance indicators and targets:

• make Lewisham a safer place and reduce the fear of crime
• secure sustainable regeneration of Lewisham as a place
• help communities develop the capacity to support themselves, act independently and participate in providing services and wider support to the borough
• sustain and improve the health and well-being of local people
• reduce welfare dependency, promote independence and increase the life chances of vulnerable members of the community
• foster enterprise and business growth
• raise educational attainment, skill levels and employability.

Lewisham is now negotiating, with Government, the administrative and working arrangements for our LAA. As part of this, we are seeking freedom to aggregate, into one pot, various funding streams currently allocated into separate funding streams by Government departments. We are also seeking a reduction in the monitoring arrangements currently tied to the funding streams to be aggregated.

Last year we reported that Lewisham had developed a safer stronger communities (SSCF) mini local area agreement. This agreement is currently being redeveloped and will be integrated into Lewisham’s full LAA, once complete.