Corporate business planning update

Report: 4
Date: 20 September 2007
By: Director of Strategic Finance and Director of Modernisation Strategy and Performance on behalf of the Commissioner and the Treasurer

Summary

This report updates Finance Committee and PPRC members on the progress of the development of the draft corporate business plan and seeks approval for submission to the Mayor of the interim budget response.

A. Recommendations

That

1. Members note the activities being undertaken in the integrated strategic financial/planning framework including the development of the draft corporate business plan.
2. Members approve the interim budget response for submission to the Mayor by 28 September.
3. Members approve the process for submitting the business plan and budget to the GLA outlined in paragraph 17.

B. Supporting information

Integrated Business/Financial Planning Framework

1. Members will be aware that work has already begun to integrate the business/financial planning framework reflecting a developing approach to strategic planning in the MPS aiming to ensure that financial planning and budgeting are driven by strategic priorities and business needs and that resources are allocated in line with the MPS objectives.

2. The MPS/MPA business plan outlines our strategic objectives and plans to deliver these, including: business group responsibilities; performance measures and targets; the anticipated funding to support the planned activities; as well as proposed efficiency savings.

The corporate business plan has three main purposes:

• To set out how the strategic objectives will be delivered over the next three years, and the way in which business groups will contribute to their achievement
• To present to the public and other stakeholders how the Policing London Business Plan will improve service delivery to Londoners, meet their needs and demonstrate that tax-payers’ money is being appropriately spent.
• To ensure the content of the plan meets the requirements of the budget and business plan submission to the Mayor as outlined in the Mayoral Budget Guidance.

3. The interim budget response at Appendix 1, fulfils the requirement of the GLA group budget guidance, provides an interim view of our policing London business plan and gives an overview of the MPS/MPA’s strategic objectives for 2008-2011 including financial assumptions and issues.

4. The full 2008/11 Policing London business plan will form the budget submission to the Mayor in November. The document will then be further updated for an external audience and will be published on the 31 March 2008. It will include updated performance information and the 2008/09 final budget position.

Key external stakeholders

5. The Government and Treasury are in the process of setting out the indicative budget and Public Service Agreements (PSAs) as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). As well as determining the budget, this sets out the Government’s priorities including targets that police services and partners are required to achieve from April 2008 to March 2011. These proposals are not yet finalised but have been considered in relation to the MPS’ priorities.

6. The Government’s approach to Local Area Agreements (LAAs), and in particular to the formulation of around 200 target areas across local government activity, is also being developed and is intended to give flexibility in deciding priorities in accordance with to local needs and allow for issues to be tackled collaboratively. These LAAs will include will include social, educational, health and other issues as well as policing needs. The MPS and MPA are organizing a major stakeholder session, which is taking place on 19tSeptember which will get to grips with this complex environment.

7. There is clearly a strategic challenge in ensuring sustainable alignment between local policing priorities set at the neighbourhood level, partnership targets set via LAAs, and the corporate requirements facing the MPS in policing London as a whole. In order to mitigate these risks, it is important to ensure that the planning and performance and the target setting processes continue to be both ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’.

8. This year the public consultation process has been broadened to include for example the views of Safer Neighbourhood Panels. The business planning process is continually developing in order to ensure that the information as far as possible reflects the views of a wide range of Londoners.

The corporate business planning process

9. In order to continually update the process a joint working group from Strategic Finance and the Strategy, Modernisation and Performance Directorate (SM&PD) are working to achieve the following:

• Business Groups are now requested to align their objectives with the corporate objectives, in which they demonstrate how they contribute to the overarching strategy
• Improved accountability where performance board will monitor progress against objectives at a corporate level and business groups contribution to the corporate strategy as articulated with the business group business plans
• Aligning the CPAs with the MPS wide objectives
• Actively looking to identify and ensure consistency in performance management terms for business groups and at a corporate level. The new work that Territorial Policing with SM&PD and Borough Operational Command Units (BOCUs) with regard to the Local Area Agreements (LAA) is an example of this
• Making steps to further integrate sustainable development, including diversity, into business group business plans
• Develop public consultation process to inform the business planning process
• Analysis of the Business Group business plans and the overall process to ensure learning is captured and improvements made to the business planning process in subsequent years
• A process which is inherently less bureaucratic

10. By having the CPAs identified from the strategic objective performance measures, the process will be more evidence-based and transparent. This will also allow the MPA to be engaged earlier and fully engaged in the process. However, members should note this will be challenging this year due to the late identification of the PSAs to be agreed in October.

Revised MPS wide objectives

11. In response to the drive to integrate the planning process and ensure the MPS strategy is clear to our external stakeholders, particularly the public, Management Board (MB) have reviewed the existing strategic priorities with a view to expanding the language to enable a clearer understanding of our objectives.

12. It was agreed that whilst the strategic outcomes would remain the same, the strategic objectives would be reviewed on an annual basis to ensure that the strategy remains meaningful and reflects the future needs of London. This process will be informed by the Corporate Strategic Assessment (CSA) an environmental scanning process identifying areas for consideration to the Service both internally and externally.

13. Taking account of steers from Members, Management Board has determined to split frontline service delivery objectives and enabling objectives to give more focus to the objectives that will impact on the service to Londoners.

14. The revised MPS wide objectives are as detailed below:

15. Members will note the number of MPS objectives has been reduced to six. The remaining corporate priorities of Together and Information Quality have been classed as enablers, which help the service to deliver our aims. This is not to reduce their importance to the organisation but help communicate to the wider public the corporate objectives. Details of the revised enablers to the service are below:

16. The GLA’s budget guidance is a reflection of the Mayor’s priority aims and objectives intended to achieve the Mayor’s vision of an exemplary sustainable world city. For 2008-11 the Mayor’s top priority is to use the budget development process to help ensure that London is able to mitigate and adapt to climate change. A detailed overview of Mayoral priorities, including the priorities for the MPA/MPS, cast within the framework of PSAs set by the Government for the Police and for Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, will form part of the draft corporate business plan.

Future key dates

17. The key forthcoming meetings and dates in relation to the development of the corporate business plan are as follows:

• 20 September - PPR & Finance Committee – approval of interim budget response
• 28 September - Interim budget response to the GLA
• end of October - informal scrutiny of draft Corporate Plan and budget submission by Chair of the MPA and Chairs of the Finance and Planning Performance and Review Committees.
• 19 November - PPR & Finance Committee - consideration of draft Corporate Plan and budget submission and response to Mayor's consultation on his draft.
• 22 November - Full Authority - approval to draft Corporate Plan and budget submission and response to Mayor's consultation on his draft budget proposals
• 27 November - response to Mayor's draft budget proposals submitted to GLA including completed draft corporate plan and budget.

C. Race and equality impact

As part of the ongoing integration of Business Groups business plans with the corporate strategy, equality, diversity and sustainable development will be even further aligned going forward and discussions with the leads for these areas has already taken place.

D. Financial implications

1. Work is continuing on the development of the 2008/09 to 2010/11 budget and MTFP. As indicated in the initial budget response, at this stage the budget requirement for 2008/09 falls within the higher limit of the Mayor’s guidance:

2. Work is continuing to determine the impact of narrowing the gap between the current budget requirement and the lower limit of the Mayor’s guidance. However, given the financial uncertainties and pressures facing the Service, the impact of moving to this lower level of funding is likely to have a significant adverse impact on the delivery of the front-facing services.

3. It should also be noted that at this stage of the planning process there is considerable uncertainty regarding some funding streams on which the Service depends. To the extent that funding announcements are less than current assumptions the pressure on the budget requirement and the need to identify more savings will increase, e.g. a 1% variation on general Home Office grant equates to £18m.

E. Background papers

• Draft Corporate Plan

F. Contact details

Report author: Sandy Manuel, Strategy, Modernisation & Performance Directorate and Adrian Lovegrove, Strategic Finance, MPS

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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