Annual Report 2014/15
Value for money
35
Value for money
The vision for Manchester is to be a world-class
city, to grow and sustain the economy of the
city, and to translate that growth into better
lives for Manchester residents. Manchester has
always been a city of innovation and change
but achieving this vision in times of austerity
requires even greater emphasis on improving
the way we work to deliver better services and
the best possible value for money. This means
redesigning services to make better use of
resources: in essence, ‘doing more with less’.
We have an established track record of
achieving savings by developing and adopting
more efficient ways of providing services while
maintaining prudent levels of reserves and
maintaining low council tax increases.
Public Service Reform remains at the heart of
Manchester’s commitment to secure the best
possible outcomes from public spending. We
have designed and rigorously tested new delivery
models for public services designed to reduce
dependency on high-cost public services and help
Manchester people gain greater independence.
This will realise savings for us, our local partners
and the public purse more broadly.
In addition, to obtain the best outcome from
each pound spent, we:
were 376,215 online transactions in 2014/15,
an increase of 17% on the previous year.
The value of online financial transactions
increased by 9.8% to almost £21.5million.
Visits to our website also increased 10%
to 6,669,688.
→→ Analysed benchmarking data in detail,
→→ Procured a new combined street cleansing
showing how our spend differs from other
and waste and recycling service through
similar local authorities to inform work to
competitive tendering. The new service will
target the development of savings proposals
operate from autumn 2015 and enable work
and innovative service redesigns.
to be carried out more efficiently, as a single
→→ Reduced the operational estate from
consistent team of workers will now be
363,000m2 at June 2010 to 295,000m2 by
responsible for collecting waste and recycling
March 2015, reducing costs and emissions.
as well as keeping our streets clean.
Sharing premises and capital with partners
→→ Improved the level of information we have
has been an important factor in achieving
regarding the evidence of success from
this, supporting effective partnership
the services we deliver and commission,
working as well as reducing overheads.
so we can get maximum use out of the
→→ Carried out more of our transactions online,
services proven to work best and safely
enabling people to report issues, request
decommission those services that are not
services and make payments when most
having the necessary outcomes and are
convenient to them at the same time as
no longer needed.
saving money by reducing the number of
more expensive interactions, such as
face-to-face or on the telephone. There
*DECC Local Authority CO2 Emissions Estimates 2005–12