Senior Management Team restructure proposals

(Issued on - Tuesday 16th June 2009)

Carlisle City Council’s Executive members had their first formal discussion today (Tuesday 16th June) on the proposed new Senior Management structure.

Following consultation with the Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Committees, the Employment Panel and the Trades Unions, a further report will be submitted to the Executive on the Thursday 9 July and full approval will be sought by full Council on Tuesday 14 July. City Council staff will be consulted throughout the whole of the process.

The management team restructure is part of the City Council’s Transformation programme which has been put in place to meet the Council’s financial challenges and to protect and develop services linked to its proposed new priority areas of economy and environment.

The current management structure has a senior management team of six and 13 heads of service. There is a need to reduce this number of management posts as it is too top heavy and does not have the flexibility to meet the challenges the City Council faces such as the current economic climate and the likely reduction of Government funding over future years.

The proposed new structure has one strategic management team made up of the following nine positions:

• Town Clerk and Chief Executive
• Two Strategic Directors, with one designated as Deputy Chief Executive
• Six Strategic Managers who will be responsible for the following service areas: Economy; Finance/Resources; Governance; Policy; Community Engagement; and Local Environment.

A key role of the new strategic management team will be to review who delivers services and how they can be delivered in the future, ensuring efficiencies and effective performance management as well as addressing the imbalance of delivering too many internal support services.

The new management structure will provide an annual saving of £637,754 and additional savings will be needed to achieve the planned £1million revenue savings by 2010/2011.

Cllr Mike Mitchelson, Leader of Carlisle City Council, said:

“We are preparing to meet future financial challenges to ensure that we have the resources available to maintain and improve service delivery which will be sustainable throughout this difficult economic climate and into the longer term recovery.

“The restructuring along with the work on setting new priorities will provide a clearer focus and purpose for our organisation. The new management team will be smaller, more flexible and strategically focussed to lead on delivering our priorities and excellent services to our local communities.”