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Out of more than 50 Council of the Future projects that are currently underway 10 have been identified as key to our transformation – and if they don’t deliver other projects could fail.

The priority projects will not only generate a collective £20m by 2024, they will enable other projects to move forward and help drive culture change across the organisation.

The top ten projects are:

  • Bright Starts, Bright Futures
  • Closer to Communities
  • Closer to Home
  • Delivering Modern & Digital Services
  • Investing for Inclusive Growth
  • Reimagining Secondary Learning
  • Strategic Property Review
  • Support & Learning for All
  • Transformation of Environmental Services
  • Transformation of Roads & Grounds

These projects will be monitored closely by individual Workstream Boards, the Make it Happen (MIH) Board and the Council of the Future (CotF) Board.

At the last CotF Board meeting in August, Stuart Ritchie, Director of Corporate & Housing Services, and Senior Responsible of the CotF Programme, explained how a dashboard, that uses a traffic light system to highlight progress, had been created to show progress and pinch points each month.

Status updates on each of the 10 projects were then given which highlighted a number of projects were still being scoped to “make sure we are doing the right things”.

He said: “Examples of those not yet started include Bright Starts, Bright Futures and Reimagining Secondary Education. These are now being scoped and it will be interesting to see their status during the next reporting period now that the Project Managers – two head teachers – are back after the summer holidays.

“Another project yet to be given a status is Delivering Modern & Digital Services. This currently has a handful of sub projects but nowhere near the breadth and depth that we need to become the digital council we want and have to be. A workshop with all the key players is being arranged to generate new projects that will deliver the necessary change.”

Kenneth Lawrie, Chief Executive, stressed the essential role of the ten projects.

He said: “The sum of savings allocated to these projects is £20m over the life of our business plan. If any one of these slips we suddenly have a budget pressure. We all need to be on top of these projects, and it is fundamental that we understand progress being made and the actions being taken to rectify any slippage. The dashboard will be presented at every meeting of this board and will be at the heart of our discussions.”