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One City 2008 includes the following initiatives aimed at allowing people to realise their aspirations:
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Health and Adult Services
Objective: To promote better health, well being and other opportunities; and to deliver increased satisfaction levels among Westminster’s older residents.
What will it involve? The year ahead will see the delivery over 50 council-wide initiatives to improve older residents’ health, well-being and access to information. This will include a new A-Z of services for older people, complemented by the new Westminster Plus quarterly magazine; new parking concessions for carers and people visiting older residents; an increased provision of seating in the public realm and pedestrian dropped kerbs; a continued investment in adult learning opportunities and an expansion of our network ‘community hubs’. We also aim to deliver a ‘Seniors Online’ project to reduce the digital divide and see over 280 older people trained to use the internet by March 2009; to invest an extra £50,000 in exercise opportunities for older people in leisure centres and the wider community; to launch an annual Caring for Older Neighbours Award; to provide more opportunities for help around the home, through a pro-active handyman service; and to publicise a ‘Fuel Switching Service’ so that older residents get the best deal on their fuel bills. Following the huge success of last year’s Tea Dance, we will deliver further free events including ‘Silver Sunday’ where we all pledge to help an older neighbour or family member, and work to elicit contributions from all our key partners to ensure every older person matters, whether it’s through contact with the NHS, police, fire service, voluntary sector or housing providers.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Health and Adult Services
Objective: To improve outcomes by working across organisations to deliver more joined-up, tailored and responsive services and to pursue better value for money for residents, delivering a healthier Westminster.
What will it involve? Working across organisations to improve health and well-being is important in terms of our new LAA improvement priorities, the upcoming Comprehensive Area Assessment and our own organisational efficiencies. Together with the NHS, we will be using the results of the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment to plan for and commission more cost effective, targeted services. We will look to take our partnership arrangements with the NHS further, with more integration and more multi-disciplinary teams co-located where possible. In 2008, we will work with the NHS to extend the concept of ‘individualised’ budgets, already available for social care services, to be applicable where possible for health services too. We will create new joint teams to address the needs of people with longer term conditions to prevent their deterioration and to enable them to better manage their own care needs, minimising the need for hospital admission. We will also review our relationship with the ‘third sector’, including taking forward our existing Compact agreement, working with Voluntary Action Westminster.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Health and Adult Services
Objective: To improve services for adult education to aid education, employment and the wider regeneration of the area and deliver better value for money.
What will it involve? We will be taking forward our proposals to deliver new facilities for adult education, including the option of a brand new, purpose-built adult education centre in Marylebone with three new satellite sites around the City. We will also be including the Westminster Adult Education Service (WAES) more fully in our strategic approach to worklessness and the employability and training agenda. As one of the biggest providers of adult learning opportunities in central London, WAES is well placed to support Westminster’s wider work to deliver economic regeneration, with more training for local people to take up local jobs.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Housing
Objective: To broaden our focus beyond ‘key worker’ housing towards a wider ‘intermediate market’, developing a range of housing products for low and middle income earners and assist households who cannot afford full market housing to remain in Westminster, which can help to create more mixed-tenure, mixed-income communities in the city.
What will it involve? We will launch a new intermediate housing service. This service will help Westminster households access affordable home ownership and other intermediate housing products, and will enable us to meet our target of 1,000 intermediate housing opportunities by 2012 (including over 100 new build intermediate homes in 2008/09). We will simplify complicated access arrangements, making it easier for residents to understand which housing options are available and to get advice on what is right for them. We will refer people to employment services or financial advice if they aspire to home ownership but need additional support to help them onto the housing ladder.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Housing
Objective: To continue to tackle the problem of overcrowding in Westminster through a range of initiatives; and to work with housing associations and CityWest Homes to publish and deliver a Westminster ‘Overcrowding Action Plan’.
What will it involve? We will provide more than 100 family-sized homes of 3 bedrooms or more, through new developments, ‘knock throughs’ and by incentivising ‘under-occupiers’ to free up their homes for overcrowded families. We will undertake a range of activities to support families living in overcrowded conditions including putting on additional after-school activities and homework clubs targeted at children living in council and housing association homes. More than 200 children will benefit from this programme. We will also help to provide space-saving, storage and home improvement advice and assistance to overcrowded families to relieve pressures on space, and we will hold neighbourhood ‘home swap’ days to encourage under-occupying households to exchange homes with their overcrowded neighbours.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Children’s Services
Objective: To continue to improve results for Westminster school leavers, making Westminster schools a first choice for local parents; and to respond to changes in the curriculum offer, including more vocational opportunities and better Special Educational Needs provision.
What will it involve? The council continues to work towards the delivery of Building Schools for the Future (BSF), the £152 million government funded project to rebuild and refurbish Westminster secondary and special educational needs schools. This year, work will begin on a new 14-19 centre at St Marylebone, with better library and IT facilities, and a new sports centre at Westminster City. The council will progress plans for a new future for Pimlico School and through BSF we will work to deliver new, energy efficient buildings for Pimlico School, including new spaces for adult learning and a new community library, due to be completed in September 2010. We will also work with our two special schools, College Park and Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee School, to develop a new, long term collaborative venture providing joint leadership across these two vital centres. We will also work with our wider Special Educational Needs units and aim to enhance outreach provision in mainstream schools. A £2m endowment will be provided to Quintin Kynaston School, to put it on an equal footing with our academies and voluntary-aided schools.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Children’s Services
Objective: To reach a new agreement with leading London universities and further education institutions to provide over 1,400 gifted year 12 students in Westminster schools the opportunity to improve their understanding of and chances of accessing further education.
What will it involve? The programme will inspire young people and give them a taste of life in further and higher education, for example through summer schools held at universities and led by lecturers, through skills classes to prepare them for specific academic routes, and through a guaranteed interview for students who qualify. The council will provide all the support it can to the help with the future development of the universities in the city.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Leader
Objective: In response to the expressed needs of the local community, to progress the provision of new community facilities in the Harrow Road area, specifically catering for the local Muslim community.
What will it involve? Taking forward our proposal for a new, multi-function community and prayer facility in an area of Westminster that is currently lacking in provision, particularly for the local Muslim population. In consultation with residents and local community groups, we will commission a feasibility study for a new, dedicated community hub, and to identify what kind of services and facilities are required.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Customer and Community Services
Objective: To increase the opportunities young people have to participate in art and culture based events or activities, providing inspiration for future generations and helping to channel their enthusiasm into stimulating and beneficial activities.
What will it involve? We will explore providing every secondary school child in Westminster with one free trip every term to an arts and cultural event, such as the theatre and music or dance events. This will provide a practical, tangible way of ensuring that young people have access to the wealth of artistic resources on offer across Westminster.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Finance and Support Services
Objective: To keep the council’s WorkSmart efficiency programme on track to deliver £60m cash benefits over the next 3 years, with annual benefits of £20m, allowing the council to deliver better services and value for money for our residents and customers.
What will it involve? Various initiatives will contribute to the continuing WorkSmart improvements, including the roll of out electronic council procurement, electronic records management, and better telephony for all council employees. Wider use will also be made of our innovative wireless network, including the greater use of wireless CCTV to identify problems on our streets and helping to look after older people in their own homes. With BT, an information portal will be developed to provide tourists and visitors with information about theatres, restaurants and local events in Westminster. Through other WorkSmart projects, by next year four of our libraries will have moved to self serve, so customers will not need to queue at counters, six floors of City Hall will have been freed up and Lisson Grove will be redeveloped, with touchdown centres being established across the city for the 1,500 staff now able to work flexibly.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Customer and Community Services
Objective: To build on our excellent customer satisfaction ratings and provide residents with the level of service that they deserve.
What will it involve? We will introduce a new standard of customer service- the Westminster Standard - which will ensure consistency, simplicity and quality across all our services. We will use the very best of our services to set the benchmark for the rest. We will make a commitment to our customers to measure our performance and improve our services through effective and responsive re-design.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Customer and Community Services
Objective: To continue to develop our 24/7 personalised online service My Westminster.
What will it involve? We plan to have 25,000 customer accounts for our residents and service users by the end of the year, where customers can notify us of changes to their circumstances, track progress of their transactions and keep in touch with all the issues that really affect them.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Customer and Community Services
Objective: To review and refresh our One Stop services (the very first of their kind, but now in need of a fresh approach) to become My Westminster Local – the place in the community where customers can go to resolve their issues, face to face.
What will it involve? We will start with a pilot in the Benefits Service and use the learning from that to expand and deepen the range of complete services available from our One Stops. Similarly, through our community libraries we will expand support for literacy and tackling worklessness, transforming the services we provide to residents. We will create a new library and community learning provision in Church Street and St John’s Wood with a major capital investment of £1.4m.
2008 Westminster City Council. Contact the Council
