Efficiency Narrative
Direct Employee (£93k)
The direct employee saving of £85k relates to a reduction in Prevention and Protection staff with the £43k recurrent saving arising from a restructure and the £42k non-recurrent saving from temporarily switching between grey and green book staff. While the other £8k saving arises from a reduction in Support Staff relates to the restructuring of the Strategic Leadership Team.
Indirect Employee
No savings identified in 2025/26
Premises (£121k)
£57k of business rates savings have been achieved following the sale of the old headquarters and a permanent reduction of the maintenance / replacement budget following review of our replacement policy has generated a further £16k premises saving.
£48k efficiency has been realised from improved cost recovery through service charges at our shared premises.
Transport (£7k)
As reported as part of the 2024/25 savings a contract has been renegotiated to remove a 35% uplift on the supply of Scania parts used for fleet repairs, where £73k of savings were recorded in 2024/25 and the remaining £7k achieved in 2025/26.
Supplies & Services (£143k)
Local procurement savings of £134k have been achieved through the retendering several of the authority’s contracts, the £130k recurrent savings relate to procurement efficiencies within the following contracts:
- Various ICT contracts (£87k)
- External property valuations (£7k)
- Estate various contracts (£22k)
- Recycling defective hoses (£6k)
- Other smaller contracts (£8k)
The non-recurrent local procurement saving relates to a one-off saving of £4k relating to mobile data for body cameras and making use of existing contracts.
The £9k decreased usage savings is made up of 3 smaller efficiencies including introduction of reusable water bottles, cessation of FireStoppers and reduction in online human resources support.
Capital Financing
No savings identified in 2025/26.
Other
No savings identified in 2025/26.
Future Efficiencies
The Service’s Efficiency Strategy 2025/28 identifies the following themes and workstreams that will be undertaken to improve efficiency and productivity:
Efficiency Strategy 2025-2028
The activities to deliver the workstreams are included in the Annual Delivery Plans which support the delivery of the Community Risk Management Plan.
Collaboration
The Service has established several agreements with partners to share premises. These arrangements focus on the effective use of resources, service integration, and enhanced resilience. This generates income for the service and is included as shared premises income in the income table.
Assessment of Efficiencies
The Service’s previous Efficiency and Productivity Plan identified £312k of cashable savings that were planned for 2025/26, split between £93k relating to Direct Employees and £219k relating to non-employee efficiencies. The shortfall in planned savings mainly relates to the following efficiencies not being achieved in 2025/26:
Cyber security software where a saving of £36k was forecast but due to changes in risks and requirements this saving has been removed from the 2025/26 target.
Business rates saving from the old headquarters had forecast a saving of £80k, due to delay in completion the actual saving achieved in 2025/26 was £60k with the balance built into the 2026/27 efficiencies.
During 2025/26 additional efficiency savings have been achieved of £127k, resulting in total efficiency savings for 2025/26 of £365k (2.50%), with £93k relating to Direct Employees and £272k (1.86%) relating to non-employee efficiencies.