CFO Insights is an online financial analysis tool that provides local authorities with a three-dimensional view of financial information, outcomes, and their socio-economic context.
Fast facts
Wirral Council is a metropolitan borough council
The council has been a member of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority since 2014
Wirral has a population of around 320,000 residents
The council has been under no overall control since 2019, with the leader of the council belonging to the Labour Party
Wirral’s total expenditure per head in 2023-2024 was £1,962
Wirral Intelligence Services (WIS) led a project group to optimise the use of CFO Insights to support prioritised areas of service reviews and the budget-setting process, especially planning.
The challenge
WIS wanted to improve it's understanding of the interesting differentials in outcome measures of the council compared to other local authorities, which were identified through CFO Insights.
How we helped
WIS leveraged CFO Insights to achieve multiple outcomes:
- Review budget/actual service level cost-per-head data and outcome rankings
- Identify further areas for investigation – 'outliers'
- Review outcomes for chosen area and produce a ‘canvas’ to illustrate findings
- Speak to relevant departments for additional context on findings
- Speak to other local authorities identified through benchmarking as ‘efficient’ performers
- Collate evidence base of findings for reporting/presentation
This process demonstrated that compared to the other 36 metropolitan authorities in England Wirral was underperforming across key areas.
WIS used these insights to understand constraints in decisions and approval times, and how outlier authorities had overcome their own barriers.
The results
WIS contacted the outlier authorities to discuss findings and provide context in relation to their planning performance and steps they were taking around the impact of extensions and delegated authority for planning decisions, and validation schemes, as well as sharing their service review proposals.
This generated valuable information for the service review and focus areas for the transformation team. The insight also and raised the profile of the work being undertaken within planning.
