Breadcrumb Trail
Council delivers improved services and value for money
Trafford Council is using technology to deliver even better value for money to local people. And as part of its plans to maximise the council's efficiency while delivering better services, it has set a target of finding efficiencies of £10 million over three years.
Savings
The council is making efficiencies by reducing the cost of purchasing. A number of contracts have been re-tendered using electronic procurement. This has resulted in savings of over £600,000 in the past 12 months from energy, food and catering supplies, telecommunications and mobile phones.
All the councils in Greater Manchester are working together to achieve even further savings. Trafford will be leading on purchasing projects for all Greater Manchester authorities. This puts Trafford in a prime position to influence and achieve further savings to get the best deals.
Cost-effective
Last year the council's highways department was the first to move towards vehicle tracker technology to bring greater efficiencies and improve public safety benefits.
As the service has to respond to emergencies to maintain public safety, this technology enables the highways department to pinpoint the closest repair team and remove the danger as quickly as possible.
This has resulted in reducing unnecessary travel between repairs and assigning the closest team to improve response times to emergencies.
Value
The council has also invested in technology that will make the collection of council tax and payment of benefits more cost effective whilst at the same time giving residents more flexibility around how they deal with these important services.
For example the introduction of paperless direct debits, electronic billing and online access to allow customers to view their own accounts have all helped to make efficiencies.
This has resulted in achieving the best ever collection results for recovering council tax and business rates.
Another example of improving services whilst reducing costs is how the council is now bringing together libraries and the customer contact centres to create a new service called Access Trafford - this service will provide people with a choice of how to contact the council and will provide a more streamlined and effective service.
Executive Councillor Alex Williams said: "We are already delivering quality services and are determined to make them more efficient whilst giving value for money to local people.
"The council has already made efficiency savings of £1m over the last 12 months, which helps to keep levels of council tax low, whilst delivering better services."
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