South Ribble Borough Council
Officially Excellent - Striving to be Exceptional
South Ribble Borough Council has been rated 'excellent' by the independent spending watchdog, the Audit Commission. We were finalists in the LGC Council of the Year Awards 2008 and also the Management Team of the Year award. The Council won the prestigious LGC Challenge in 2007 and was a finalist in the MJ Tackling Health Inequalities award for 2008 as well as being commended in top team and our innovative waste partnership with Enterprise Plc. We have been rated 4 out of 4 for the way we manage our resources and have held the Investors in People accreditation for the past 10 years.
We are not resting on our laurels. We know there are areas where we need to continue to improve and we are getting on with them. Our stated aim now is to move beyond excellent to exceptional
Our Council
The Council is Conservative with 45 out of 55 councillors, followed by Labour with 8, Liberal Democrats 1 and Idle Toad 1. The next all out elections take place in May 2011.
Our pioneering Cabinet/Scrutiny model, adopted in January 2000, has evolved and improved over time. Cabinet comprises seven members who work collectively and also lead on individual portfolios which are aligned with Community Strategy and Corporate Plan priorities. Cabinet is supported and challenged by two strong scrutiny committees which play an active role in scrutinising decisions, monitoring performance, shaping policies and strategies, and reviewing the effectiveness of partnerships and external organisations.
Our six area committees have recently been reviewed and revitalised to reflect the diverse communities that exist in the borough. The area committees play an influential part in our decision-making process as well as providing community leadership at a local level with annual action plans. Examples of area committee achievements include deciding how section 106 money from developers is spent in their area, organising diversionary activities for young people, physical improvements to playgrounds and the streetscene with hanging baskets and Christmas trees to name a few.
We have strong corporate and ethical governance arrangements based on the principles of accountability, transparency, efficiency, and openness. All of our meetings have extensive and unprecedented public participation, with local people able to raise issues and ask questions at any point on the agenda.
Our Partners
We have a significant range of partnerships as a result of our location, the nature of our borough and the significant challenge of attracting external funding into what is a relatively prosperous borough. It is important that we continue to punch above our weight and we are very proactive in this respect, working in partnership to lead on a wide range of issues on behalf of others in the region and sub-region.
Our partnerships are also challenging from a geographical perspective as a result of the size and complexity of the County (12 districts, a county and two unitary councils covering 1.2 million people) and the lack of boundary co-terminosity among major partners such as the police and PCTs.
Nonetheless we have developed innovative partnerships more locally with Lancashire County Council (LCC), with neighbouring authorities and with other agencies on a broad range of issues to progress community leadership, service delivery and cross-cutting issues. For example we piloted the successful Lancashire Local initiative with LCC. We have played an active role in shaping the Lancashire Local Area Agreement and the way forward on enhanced two-tier.
We play a key role in South Ribble Partnership and its project teams/groups and we work together with partners at area committee, parish and town council and neighbourhood level.
We also recognise that, as a relatively small district council, our capacity is limited and others are sometimes better placed than ourselves to meet the needs of our local communities. We therefore work with a wide range of organisations to build capacity and deliver services including the voluntary and community sector and local communities themselves. We have also developed innovative private sector partnerships where our own resources are limited.
