Helen Briggs says: ‘The balance of operational and strategic management is great.
It’s like running a small business.
£4.9m by 2018/19, down from £9m now dwindling away.
Just like so many small business's this Tory run council is losing money fast such a success story
Small can be beautiful
Michael Burton
06 August 2014
http://www.themj.co.uk/article/default.aspx?id=197824&typeid=13
Everyone has heard of Rutland. Fewer perhaps have visited the rural county or can identify it on the map other than knowing it as ‘in the Midlands’ – apart that is from Prince Charles who spent three hours in the county last week.
It has the smallest unitary county council in England with a population of 37,400 in 16,250 properties, and which before 1997 local government reorganisation, was a district in Leicestershire.
The council now has just 490 non-teaching staff based in one site and 26 councillors with a Conservative administration. The area’s biggest tourist attraction is Rutland Water, created in the 1970s with a 25-mile circular track and which hosts the annual British Birdwatching Fair.
Rutland’s main market towns are the picturesque Oakham, Stamford and Uppingham, home of the famous public school, founded in 1584. In fact only last week Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall visited Oakham, inspecting one of the local almshouses, meeting residents and seeing Rutland Water.
So what is it like to be chief executive of a unitary scarcely larger than a district?
Helen Briggs says: ‘The balance of operational and strategic management is great.
It’s like running a small business. It has the benefits of a district but also a strategic role. We have 32 looked-after children and I know every one of them. If I go to Tescos I know everyone there.’
A further benefit is the ability to move swiftly, such as when the council boldly bought a redundant prison site from the Ministry of Justice to create a new business
park and leisure centre.
Rutland will be the first county to complete its superfast broadband roll-out led by the
council’s digital Rutland project.
Council tax has been frozen for the past four years and it has high reserves. This year’s budget is £32.79m with minimum reserves of £4.9m by 2018/19, down from £9m now.
The council assumes that grant funding will reduce from £5m this year to £1.7m in 2018/19 meaning further savings of £3m will be needed to break even.
As with all unitaries and counties, social services is the big spender consuming 47% of Rutland’s budget and the council is currently reviewing every single contract. Its
own Better Care Fund is investing in dementia support and the county shares its public health director with Leicestershire CC. But one drawback of being a small unitary is police, fire and health are not co-terminous and even its CCG straddles part of Leicestershire.
Helen was born in Swansea and studied home economics at Cardiff University, thinking of becoming a teacher. Instead she joined Doncaster MBC as a clerical officer, later training as an accountant with CIPFA, and worked on competitive tendering contracts as well as running the council tax team.
Later she became director of neighbourhood management and streetscene. Her
husband, based on Norfolk, spotted the vacancy for Rutland. Its size attracted her ‘as it gave me not just the chance to be chief executive but to be hands on and to see the results’, and she became its chief executive in 2006.
While the unitary average per head of population for RSG funding was £269 in 2013/14, Rutland’s was £155, leaving £666 to be met from local resources as opposed to the unitary average of £554.
Retained business rate is £108 per head, so economic development is important, but of the £10m business rate it collects, only £4.2m is retained – barely enough to match the expected £5m loss of grant over the next five years. In addition demand for elderly care and children’s services is expected to rise by £2m.
One of the council’s biggest projects is a new 25-acre business park at Ashwell based on the site of a former prison which the council bought from the Ministry of Justice in 2012 backed by an interest-free loan from the Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough LEP.
The old prison sports hall is being developed into the Active Rutland Centre with £500,000 funding support from Sport England. Rutland has long had a military presence with soldiers returning from Cyprus and Germany to Kendrew Barracks, formerly RAF Cottesmore.
In 2012 Helen signed the Armed Forces Community Covenant which pledges the council’s support for the local armed forces.
There is one other vital statistic from Rutland: it is the only English county not to have a McDonalds…
It’s like running a small business.
£4.9m by 2018/19, down from £9m now dwindling away.
Just like so many small business's this Tory run council is losing money fast such a success story
Small can be beautiful
Michael Burton
06 August 2014
http://www.themj.co.uk/article/default.aspx?id=197824&typeid=13
Everyone has heard of Rutland. Fewer perhaps have visited the rural county or can identify it on the map other than knowing it as ‘in the Midlands’ – apart that is from Prince Charles who spent three hours in the county last week.
It has the smallest unitary county council in England with a population of 37,400 in 16,250 properties, and which before 1997 local government reorganisation, was a district in Leicestershire.
The council now has just 490 non-teaching staff based in one site and 26 councillors with a Conservative administration. The area’s biggest tourist attraction is Rutland Water, created in the 1970s with a 25-mile circular track and which hosts the annual British Birdwatching Fair.
Rutland’s main market towns are the picturesque Oakham, Stamford and Uppingham, home of the famous public school, founded in 1584. In fact only last week Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall visited Oakham, inspecting one of the local almshouses, meeting residents and seeing Rutland Water.
So what is it like to be chief executive of a unitary scarcely larger than a district?
Helen Briggs says: ‘The balance of operational and strategic management is great.
It’s like running a small business. It has the benefits of a district but also a strategic role. We have 32 looked-after children and I know every one of them. If I go to Tescos I know everyone there.’
A further benefit is the ability to move swiftly, such as when the council boldly bought a redundant prison site from the Ministry of Justice to create a new business
park and leisure centre.
Rutland will be the first county to complete its superfast broadband roll-out led by the
council’s digital Rutland project.
Council tax has been frozen for the past four years and it has high reserves. This year’s budget is £32.79m with minimum reserves of £4.9m by 2018/19, down from £9m now.
The council assumes that grant funding will reduce from £5m this year to £1.7m in 2018/19 meaning further savings of £3m will be needed to break even.
As with all unitaries and counties, social services is the big spender consuming 47% of Rutland’s budget and the council is currently reviewing every single contract. Its
own Better Care Fund is investing in dementia support and the county shares its public health director with Leicestershire CC. But one drawback of being a small unitary is police, fire and health are not co-terminous and even its CCG straddles part of Leicestershire.
Helen was born in Swansea and studied home economics at Cardiff University, thinking of becoming a teacher. Instead she joined Doncaster MBC as a clerical officer, later training as an accountant with CIPFA, and worked on competitive tendering contracts as well as running the council tax team.
Later she became director of neighbourhood management and streetscene. Her
husband, based on Norfolk, spotted the vacancy for Rutland. Its size attracted her ‘as it gave me not just the chance to be chief executive but to be hands on and to see the results’, and she became its chief executive in 2006.
While the unitary average per head of population for RSG funding was £269 in 2013/14, Rutland’s was £155, leaving £666 to be met from local resources as opposed to the unitary average of £554.
Retained business rate is £108 per head, so economic development is important, but of the £10m business rate it collects, only £4.2m is retained – barely enough to match the expected £5m loss of grant over the next five years. In addition demand for elderly care and children’s services is expected to rise by £2m.
One of the council’s biggest projects is a new 25-acre business park at Ashwell based on the site of a former prison which the council bought from the Ministry of Justice in 2012 backed by an interest-free loan from the Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough LEP.
The old prison sports hall is being developed into the Active Rutland Centre with £500,000 funding support from Sport England. Rutland has long had a military presence with soldiers returning from Cyprus and Germany to Kendrew Barracks, formerly RAF Cottesmore.
In 2012 Helen signed the Armed Forces Community Covenant which pledges the council’s support for the local armed forces.
There is one other vital statistic from Rutland: it is the only English county not to have a McDonalds…
