Commercial Strategy for 2024-2029 - Section 2: What do we want to accomplish?

Aims and objectives

The strategy's primary aim is to deliver better financial, social, and environmental value for residents by behaving in a more business-like and commercial way. The objective is to deliver an additional cumulative financial return of £15m over the period 2025/26 to 2028/29.

A detailed set of commercial work programmes will be established and managed through service delivery planning processes, subject to annual updates. It will demonstrate a proactive and adaptive approach that contributes to the council’s financial objectives through commercial initiatives.

The initial objectives will be to:

• Optimise the use of council owned assets to deliver better financial, social, and environmental benefits for our residents
• Deliver a financial return to the council to help contribute towards statutory services or to invest in new projects
• Where possible, to assist discretionary services to achieve a break-even financial position, to reduce the risk of closure for these services and to assist the council in generating additional income
• Actively seek new business opportunities that will provide a financial return to the council
• Deliver services to new and existing customers from both within the local authority environment and beyond, particularly where we are uniquely placed to do so