The annual budget council meeting might be more than seven months away, but Lib Dem-led Stockport Council has already started working on our plans. As in previous years, we’re doing everything we can to make sure the whole process is as open and transparent as possible, giving everyone as much opportunity as we can to scrutinise every part of the process.

On top of the savings made in previous years, we have to find over £39 million savings from our revenue budget over the next two years. That means overall, from 2010 to 2017, we’ll see the money we can control almost halve! We can’t halve our income and continue to provide all the same services in the same way – we need to do things differently.

The Investing in Stockport programme is a radically different approach to tackling the challenge of operating with far less money.

Instead of asking the question “What can we cut to balance the budget?”, we are asking “How can we spend the money we have most effectively to achieve the best outcomes?”

As we look across the wide range of services the Council has traditionally provided, we see a variety of answers.

In many cases a service the Council provides now is the best way to achieve the outcome we want, perhaps with minor changes. In others we find that we can get better outcomes with radically different ways of working.

That might be a change in our relationship with other councils – more partnerships. It could be pooling budgets with our public sector partners in Stockport, or working more closely and collaboratively with voluntary and charity organisations. It may be more locality working – passing control down from the Council to communities. We will also look at whether the Council’s relationship with our partner companies – Stockport Homes, Life Leisure and Solutions SK – needs to change.

None of this should be taken to suggest that the task is easy. As budgets reduce, finding further savings becomes more and more difficult. Radical change can produce better outcomes, but we underestimate the time, effort and work required to bring about that change at our peril.

The Investing in Stockport programme can deliver the outcomes we want: people able to make informed choices and look after themselves, getting support when they need it; a thriving economy; a place people want to live; and safe and resilient communities. And it can – must – do it with greatly reduced budgets.

The first of the two documents published today is the Medium Term Financial Plan. It looks forward as far as 2018/19 and sets out in detail the financial challenges we face over the next two years.

The second document is the Executive’s response to those challenges, exploring the outcomes we want to achieve and the approach we will take.

In making these proposals public at the earliest opportunity we seek not only to be as open and transparent as possible but also to solicit views from both inside and outside the Council on whether this approach is the right one, or whether there is an alternative we should be considering.

We intend to bring forward more detailed proposals to meet our budget challenges at the Executive meeting in August 2014, which will allow well over six months to fully examine, consult on and, where appropriate, modify the proposals.

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