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External expertise to assist City Council’s Five Year Business Plan

Aberdeen city councillors today approved the selection of an external organisation as the preferred bidder to provide professional services to help deliver the City Council’s Five Year Business Plan.

The organisation will provide specialist advice on a range of issues – including VAT and tax, legal matters, creating new company structures, and financial and legal advice,– to assist the City Council to make £120 million in savings over the next five years.

The company will only provide services in specialist fields in which the City Council does not have the necessary level of expertise or capacity.

The decision by today’s Urgent Business Committee to appoint the organisation follows key decisions on budget options which were taken by the Full Council at its Budget Meeting in February. Councillors agreed at that meeting that many council services would be delivered in different ways as part of a Five Year Business Plan.

Projects agreed at the Budget Meeting included:

• external delivery of Corporate Governance services;

• establishment of a local authority trading arm for older people;

• establishment of a property services limited liability company;

• new ways of delivering grounds maintenance and cleansing services;

• creation of a cultural trust.

The Finance and Resources Committee in April subsequently instructed officers to report back to the committee, or to the Urgent Business Committee, on securing external support to assist with the delivery of service options. Discussions on the Five Year Business Plan, meantime, are continuing with staff and trade union representatives.

Aberdeen City Council Leader Councillor Callum McCaig, who convenes the Urgent Business Committee, said: “Key budget decisions were taken by this council last February to accept a wide range of budget options which will be part of our Five Year Business Plan. Those decisions require us to commission external support to ensure that we take the right decisions on service delivery which are value-for-money and which allow us to achieve the level of savings that we must make over the next five years.

“The committee agreed today that we need to bring in the external support now, to allow us to get on with the job of providing services in new ways with no unnecessary delay. To postpone a decision would have risked holding up the progress of the Business Plan and potentially hampering our ability to make the necessary savings.

“We will use the wide range of skills that we already have within the council at every opportunity – but a whole range of projects to deliver services in different ways are now reaching the point where specialist advice will be needed from experts in the field.

“The work of the successful bidder will be under close and constant scrutiny by elected members and our corporate management team at every stage. We will ensure that the budgeted sum of money we are spending on this external support is money well spent and that we receive the best possible advice on how best to make the savings while at the same providing first-class services.”

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