Recommendations
The following are the peer team’s key recommendations.
3.1 Translate your vision into a distinctive ‘unique selling point’ for North Tyneside with four or five top priorities and outcomes for your people and your place, acting as visible proactive place ambassadors and advocates for them. To achieve this, it’s essential to:
- Tell your story through a clear, concise set of priorities consistently communicated across the organisation, the place and the region.
- Establish a compelling growth narrative leveraging the opportunities along the coast and river corridor, including renewable energy, a strong skills pipeline, and a diverse sector mix.
- Harness your heft to enhance your place leadership presence to maximise the benefits for North Tyneside from the huge opportunities ahead in the council, in the place and with the combined authority.
- Ensure prioritisation of spend within the Medium-Term Financial Plan to deliver on this vision.
3.2 Deliver the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy (CIFPA) Finance Review recommendations with pace and focus through a clear action plan, ensuring it is collectively owned by the cabinet and senior leadership team.
It will be essential to extend the discipline and focus North Tyneside brings to statutorily regulated services to the management of budget and savings delivery to secure financial sustainability and improve financial resilience.
3.3 Position the Plan for Change as a lever to enact your public service reform agenda and align this to the Medium-Term Financial Plan with a focus on outcomes, people and place. To succeed it will need to:
- Be collectively owned, gripped, and with dedicated core resources, and capacity.
- Establish a ‘one council approach,’ with everyone playing their part.
- Leverage governance and be underpinned by a coherent and embedded performance framework across the organisation.
- Be focused on community power and improved outcomes for people and places, moving to coproduction by default.
- Turn the neighbourhood ethos and learning from ward specific Pride in Place, into a neighbourhood delivery model.
3.4 Channel your culture of intrinsic kindness, commitment and passion into an organisational culture also grounded in prioritisation, accountability and readiness for greater challenge.
This will help drive North Tyneside’s ambitions and meet changing demands by fostering a culture of prioritisation, resilience, constructive challenge and test‑and‑learn.
In addition to the key recommendations section five of this report captures our detailed feedback and additional recommendations within each of the CPC’s core areas of focus.