North Tyneside Council – Transport Review

North Tyneside, like other Local Authorities, is working to meet national challenges and continually striving to improve service whilst reducing costs. Provision of transport services was considered to be an area of significant potential improvement. In a phased approach we were selected as the Council’s partner to first identify and then support delivery of significant savings.

The Challenge

• Fleet utilisation was not monitored, data quality was generally poor, and the Council lacked a corporate level fleet strategy.
• The Council needed to significantly reduce costs, and had existing overspends in some of its key transport budgets.
• The underlying service requirements were in many cases unclear, due to the wider spending and value for money reviews in progress.

Our Approach

• Initially we developed a detailed, validated assessment of the opportunities for cost savings, within an 8 week Review period in Spring 2010.
• Following a further public Tender process, we were selected to support implementation of the savings over a 12 month period to October 2011, working on a “risk/reward” model to demonstrate our commitment to achieving the required outcomes for the Council.
• We supported establishment of a Project Board, representing all Service vehicle users, & a series of work-streams to deliver specific savings.
• Throughout implementation, we acted as the Council’s “critical friend”, challenging and coaching the Council teams until savings were achieved in each area.

The Results

• The Council’s fleet was reduced in size by >20% without impacting on service delivery.
• We improved data quality & developed user-friendly management information.
• Total delivered savings were approx 10% of the baseline fleet budget.
• The project is one of the most successful in the Council’s Value for Money Programme.