Our Supporting Strategies

Our supporting strategies

The following strategies will help us to deliver all of our priorities and make Devon an even better place to live:

Connecting with Devon’s communities

The administrative county of Devon is made up of hundreds of diverse and scattered communities built around 29 market and coastal towns and the city of Exeter. We aim to:

gain a fuller understanding of the diverse range of needs of Devon’s communities;
take the different needs of our communities into account in all our plans to ensure that everyone can share in Devon’s economic prosperity and enjoy a good quality of life.

We will do this by:

improving our arrangements for communicating and engaging with our citizens and communities including people who are marginalised or disadvantaged;
developing community profiles for each town in Devon so that we can identify gaps in service provision and needs which should be addressed;
Devon Town profiles
working closely with parish and town councils and the Devon Rural Network and carrying out “rural proofing” to ensure the needs of rural communities are identified and met;
assessing the impact of our plans and services on groups at risk of disadvantage such as disabled people and people from black and minority ethnic communities;
working with local communities and partner organisations to improve local services and facilities, particularly in disadvantaged areas.

Providing excellent customer service

We want everyone who contacts us to receive excellent customer service. We aim to:

create an organisational culture that always puts the customer first;
provide easy access to all our services and other public services;
resolve enquiries right the first time;
provide high-quality cost-effective services.

We will do this by:

implementing consistent customer service standards and training our staff in their use;
seeking regular feedback from customers and using this feedback to improve;
establishing a customer service centre to make it easier for people to contact the council and have their enquiry resolved;
seeking to join up with other public services to provide a better service for the customer;
redesigning the way we work around the needs of our customers.

Supporting Documents

Towards Excellence in Customer Services (445KB - pdf help)

Delivering through people

Excellent public services can only be delivered by skilled and committed staff. We aim to:

recruit and retain a high quality workforce;
develop our staff and inspire them to achieve high levels of performance;
make sure we have the right staff in the right place to meet the needs of our communities.

We will do this by:

delivering a workforce plan and training strategy to make sure staff with the right skills are employed to meet the needs of Devon people now and in the future;
developing a performance and reward strategy which ensures fair rates of pay, encourages high performance and tackles poor performance effectively;
developing new and more flexible ways of working to make sure we have the capacity we need to deliver our priorities.

Supporting Documents

Workforce Plan 2007-2008 (581KB - pdf help)
Workforce Plan 2005 (243KB - pdf help)
Workforce Plan Appendices 1 - 4 2005 (131KB - pdf help)
Workforce Plan Appendices 5 - 6 2005 (27KB - pdf help)

Providing better value for money

We want to be a top performing authority that makes the best use of our resources to deliver high quality and efficient services. We aim to:

achieve savings of £60 million over the next 3 years by becoming more efficient
embed new ways of working which will enable us to continue to become more efficient.

We will do this by:

using technology in innovative ways to become more efficient;
redesigning our business processes to remove unnecessary bureaucracy;
seeking better value for money when we buy goods and services;
making better use of our property;
helping staff develop skills to work more effectively and efficiently;
sharing resources and services with partner organisations where this will help us become more efficient;
monitoring our performance and encouraging scrutiny and challenge;
learning from best practice elsewhere.

Supporting Documents