We are a council with big ambitions because we want the best for all our citizens. We want Dundee to be the best place to grow up, study, work and live long and happy lives.
The last Council Plan progress report, in 2021, showed that the Council has for over a decade or more transformed the city economy and quality of life in neighbourhoods, despite the many challenges and financial constraints. It showed that 60% of the performance indicators across services had improved since the baseline in the plan in 2017.
A Best Value Assurance Review of the Council was undertaken by Audit Scotland in 2020, with the findings being published in September 2020. The Auditors recognised “a decade of improvement” and that the Council was improving at a faster rate than its peers in many of the national benchmarking measures. Many strengths, including the Council’s clear vision, effective leadership and effective partnership working, were also highlighted within the report.
However, it also highlighted that the city had major social challenges to overcome. The Council and its community planning partners therefore committed to ensuring that, as the new City and Council Plans were developed in 2022, the social transformation would be even more strongly focused upon.
This Council Plan sets out Dundee City Council’s main priorities, key actions and how we will measure progress. The targets are bold and ambitious but so are the challenges to be overcome along the way. The Plan was informed by a range of consultation with our citizens during 2020 and 2021, including the Engage Dundee process, as well as consultation with our partners and also our employees.
The Council has a vital role in enabling transformational change to meet the needs of the city and at the same time maintain the financial sustainability of local services. Over the next five years, the Council will continue to work with partners, businesses, citizens and communities to tackle challenges and grasp opportunities.
Many uncertainties still remain about the impacts of the UK withdrawing from the EU, the COVID-19 pandemic and now the cost of living crisis. We will pay particular attention to the impact on the local economy; on the funding of employability, social inclusion, regeneration and support for key business sectors; and on the work of our universities and colleges, which play such a key role in the city.
As a Council, we will continue to provide best value and are committed to continuing to change for the future. Given the ongoing financial uncertainties we will need to look again at how we design and deliver our services. That will also affect how we design our budgets and income, our service structures and workforce planning to ensure that we are working in the most efficient, effective and innovative ways to deliver on the priorities set out in this Plan. The people who work for the Council, organisations across the city and community groups that work with us, have shown their resilience and creativity in particular through the pandemic and we need to harness that spirit and ‘can-do’ approach.
We commit over the next five years to work with our city partners, Government and communities to deliver on the key priorities in this plan.
We will ask each Council Committee, Service and employee to help us deliver these priorities.
We will produce a progress report every six months to assess the evidence that we are making progress on our priorities.
 Councillor John Alexander Chair of the Dundee Partnership & Leader of Dundee City Council |
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