Policy and Improvement

What does the Policy and Improvement Team do?

The Policy and Improvement Team co-ordinates the management of the council's performance and ensures the whole council works towards continuous improvement. We constantly monitor progress and set targets to improve outcomes for local people.

The team is made up of the Research and Consultation Manager, three Improvement Advisors, an Improvement Officer, two members of staff from the Public Health Intelligence Team and a Improvement Support Assistant.

Areas of responsibility include:

• Co-ordinating the Plan for Change process
• Leading on the Corporate Planning and Performance Framework
• Collating and reporting data on all of the council's performance indicators
• Reporting back on the council's progress, both internally and externally
• Further development of the Team Bury approach to improvement of outcomes for local people
• Managing the council's Service Assessment and Improvement Review programmes.
• Greater Manchester Public Service Reform

What is performance management?

The council uses performance management to plan, monitor and direct activities so that services are delivered effectively and efficiently in line with our priorities.

The key parts to this approach are:

• A robust planning and performance framework;
• Council priorities that are clearly set out in the performance plans and linked into departmental and service plans;
• Performance Management;
• Service assessments and reviews.

Support for this work comes from the Improvement Team.

The Bury Council Corporate Plan 2012-2015

The Bury Council Corporate Plan 2012-15 demonstrates our achievements and our vision for the future as an organisation. It works in unison with the Plan for Change to deal with the changes and financial challenges we will face in the future.

The Bury Council Corporate Plan provides a brief introduction to the achievements and drivers for the council, and how they are linked to the three key Plan for Change outcomes over the next three years:

• Reducing poverty and its effects - The effect of the current economic climate and how we need to reduce poverty across households, families and age groups.
• Supporting our most vulnerable residents - We are committed to making a difference for people who need extra support and safeguarding.
• Making Bury a better place to live - We want to work with and empower communities to engage better with the democratic process and shape future services.

The plan provides an overview of the key organisational projects in place to deliver these outcomes. There are corporate performance indicators linked to each of the outcomes to enable us to monitor progress on a quarterly basis. Monitoring of the plan will continue with regular reports of the results to Executive and Internal Scrutiny Committee.

The plan will be reviewed in June 2012 when baseline and target data will be available following the completion of the year-end performance report.

Poverty Strategy

The Child Poverty Act 2010 requires local authorities to produce child poverty strategies and to work with local partners to reduce and prevent child poverty in the area. In Bury, we feel that in order to achieve this we must look at poverty across all of our communities.

The main features of the strategy are:

• Details of the background of the strategy, needs assessment and consultation process.
• Details of projects that have been provided by Team Bury partnership organisations to be monitored for progress.
• Robust targets in place to enable progress to be measured and to maintain the focus on the outcomes that affect Bury's residents. The baselines and targets will be available following the completion of the year-end performance report in June 2013.

You can access the latest version of the Poverty Strategy in the downloads box on the right hand side of this page.  

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