An Efficient Council

Keeping Council Tax down
o Since 2005, Gloucestershire has had the lowest council tax increases of any county council in England. They were less than half the increase that Labour and the Liberal Democrats pushed through in the four years before, when they ran the council.
o In the next 4 years council tax will increase by less than in the last 4 years.
o If there is a Conservative Government, Gloucestershire will freeze council tax for at least two years.
o We will keep council tax down by making the council run more efficiently.

No pensions for councillors
o Labour and the Liberal Democrats want to introduce gold-plated pensions for councillors, paid for by the taxpayer, at a cost of up to £100,000 pa. Conservative councillors blocked their plans to introduce pensions only last year.
o We don’t believe in council taxpayers paying for councillors’ pensions. A Conservative administration will not introduce pensions for councillors.

End permanent contracts for the Chief Executive and top 2 tiers of county council staff
o The most senior council staff should be accountable for their actions. In the private sector if senior staff don’t do the job they are paid for, their contracts are terminated. The same should be true at Shire Hall.
o Currently the council’s top staff do an excellent job – but that doesn’t mean that this will always be the case.
o The council’s constitution would be amended to prevent permanent contracts for any new appointment to the post of director, group director or Chief Executive.

A smaller council
o Gloucestershire needs a slim-line and efficient council, which provides the services people expect effectively and efficiently.
o We will increase efficiency across the council. Through our Building our Future scheme we will cut up to £30m pa off the cost of running the council, whilst protecting essential frontline services.
o We will reduce the number of councillors. We will ask the Boundary Commission for England to reduce the number of councillors by at least 10%. This would save over £200,000 in 4 years.

Scrap Government targets
o Councils spend far too much time chasing Government targets which mean nothing to local people. Council staff should be working to the targets that people in Gloucestershire set, not ones set by London bureaucrats. We will stop council staff from pursuing Government targets or wasting time with Government inspectors.
o This doesn’t mean that we can’t take part in Government initiatives that benefit Gloucestershire – only that we will pick and choose only those which do.
o Protecting children and vulnerable elderly people are a top priority – we would continue to participate in national programmes around safeguarding.

Large-scale trial of open-source software
o Open source software, such as Linux and Open Office has the potential to save the council many hundreds of thousands of pounds per year in licensing costs for software. It could also lead to better and more secure software being used on council computers. There are concerns, however, about how easy it is to use and how well it works with other computer systems.
o In line with a pledge in the last Conservative manifesto, there has already been a successful -scale trial of open-source software in the county’s Archives and plans for a larger trial in a library.
o We will run a full-scale trial of the open-source software in an office-based environment.
o The trial should cost in the region of £10,000. Potential savings could be as much as £400,000pa.