What is Value for Money?

• Getting the maximum benefit for our customers for the minimum cost
• Getting the right balance between cost and quality

Achieving:

• Efficiency – improving performance against our current performance
• Effectiveness – achieving our aims (what we value)
• Economy – in comparison with our peers
• Doing more for the same resources
• Doing something differently and at less cost
• Doing the things that our customers want, rather than what we think customers want

Why is it important?

• It is something that all public services are asked to achieve
• It is making the best use of our resources – budgets, staff and equipment

That's why it is one of our strategic priorities in the Business Plan:

“ensuring we deliver value for money by making best use of our resources”

What have we done in St. Leger Homes?

We have a Value for Money strategy, agreed by the Board in December 2009

The supporting action plan covers:

• Value for Money in Procurement – making better use of our purchasing power with outside suppliers
• Our annual efficiency improvement target for the 2010/11 financial year is a net saving of £1.5m from the previous year. The level of efficiencies is agreed annually between Doncaster Council and St. Leger Homes
• Setting up a programme of Value for Money service reviews – coming to a service area near you soon!
• Setting up an efficiency register to record details of all savings in the business – and it’s a lot!

Some specific examples:

• Introduced solid fuel servicing for tenants, using existing resources
• Introduced lower cost text messaging
• Expanded the Estate Caretaking service
• Reduced production costs for “Houseproud”
• Brought gas-servicing in-house at a lower cost
• Extended the rural property MOT to all dwellings
• Running a mystery shopping test of our service quality in house
• Introduced e-learning for tenants within existing tenant training resources
• Renegotiated on cost and quality delivered through service level agreements with Doncaster Council
• Better use of electronic document management (scanning) to save paper and time