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Our strategic and financial framework

The Surrey Way – our strategic framework

The Surrey Way explains the way we do things at the council. It breaks down our ambitions and objectives, and provides us with a clearer, more joined up picture of what our ways of working should be across three key areas:

The three parts:

Use this guide below to see how your work fits into the bigger picture.

  • Our purpose: what we are trying to achieve, our vision and priorities
  • Our organisation: what sort of organisation we need to be to achieve our purpose
  • Our people: what culture and behaviours we will need to live in order to support this

Our purpose – what are we trying to achieve?

No one left behind

Our purpose as a council is to tackle inequality and make sure that no one is left behind.

This purpose flows from the Community Vision for Surrey 2030. Created with residents, communities and partners, it sets out how we all want Surrey to be by 2030. The Council plays a big part in the joint effort to realise this vision through the delivery of services and through partnerships such as the Health and Wellbeing Board.

Our purpose should inform our decisions and all that we do in our work. No matter what your role, your input will help us to meet our aims. Your work may directly help us to reach 1 or more of our 4 priorities. Or it may help us to be a high performing council, delivering excellent council services for all.

A high-performing council – excellent services for all

Our main duty as a council is to deliver high-quality and sustainable services for all, with a focus on supporting our most vulnerable residents.

Transforming how our organisation operates and the culture and behaviours our people embody will enable us to add more value, make a greater impact and improve services so they deliver the best possible long-term outcomes for residents while balancing our budget and better managing demand.

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)

EDI is at the heart of how we are going to deliver on our organisational purpose; it is how we will deliver on the promise of 'no one left behind'.

In order to improve equality of opportunity for our residents, we need services that understand the diversity of needs in our communities and have the right staff in post to deliver them in inclusive ways. This is the right thing to do, and it will make our services more effective, efficient and responsive.

We work to 4 equality objectives and have an annual EDI action plan that helps us measure the progress we are making. We are developing a longer-term EDI Strategy that will help us continue to develop this work alongside the Community Vision for Surrey.

Organisation strategy

Our Organisation Strategy 2023 to 2028 reinforces our commitment to no one left behind and sets out our 4 priorities.

These reflect where we think we can most improve outcomes for people in Surrey:

Our guiding principle: No one left behind

Our priority objectives

  • Growing a sustainable economy
  • Tackling health inequality
  • Enabling a greener future
  • Empowering communities

The change we hope to see

We have a clear purpose at Surrey County Council (SCC) which sets the ambition of what we want to achieve.

How we do things as an organisation and the culture and values we possess represent how we're going to get there.

Our organisation – what sort of organisation do we want to be?

Our organisation's ways of working shapes how we work and how we organise ourselves.

  • We organise ourselves around outcomes and make it easy for others across Surrey to collaborate with us.
  • We help people and communities to help themselves and devolve decisions and service design as close to them as we can
  • We maximise the potential of digital and data to transform the way we work and improve accessibility
  • We seek out preventative, commercial and efficient approaches to help us be financially sustainable

Our people – what culture and behaviours will we need?

These are our culture commitments, and they describe how it should feel to work at SCC. They sit alongside the values which show what we care about.

  • We are an inclusive and compassionate place where we value diversity and can be ourselves at work
    • Being an inclusive employer is crucial to helping us deliver on our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) goals.
  • We are a collaborative and inviting place where we are open, trust each other, and work as one
  • We are an ambitious and outcomes-focused place where we are passionate about our purpose and take accountability for delivering great results.
  • We are an inventive and dynamic place where we promote a learning mindset and adapt to new insights and opportunities
  • By embodying these culture commitments, we can become the kind of organisation we need to be (our organisation) to achieve our purpose.

Our values

Our values show that we care about:

  • Our residents
  • Being excellent
  • Being open
  • Working together
  • Respecting others

Performance Framework – how we check our progress

We measure our impact as a council in both what we do and how we do it. This lets us check how we're performing against our strategy. That way, we can see if we're on track to do what we aim to do.

On top of this, we measure the county's joint efforts on the Community Vision for Surrey 2030. We do this using the Surrey Index.

Performance Framework

We are developing a framework for how performance will be measured and reported. The approach will include the following key pillars:

  • How we are performing on our organisational priorities: We are developing arrangements for measuring our progress as an organisation against our 4 Priority Objectives. We expect to do this using the Outcomes that sit beneath each of them. You can view these in the Outcomes Framework.
  • Service effectiveness: How are we performing on service delivery: For services, we measure how we perform on operational delivery. Services and directorates also set their own priorities in their plans. Teams measure their progress on these using key performance indicators.
  • Organisational effectiveness: How are we performing as an organisation: Outcomes related to our organisational effectiveness underpin our service delivery. We are developing our approach to monitoring and tracking progress on how we are working as an organisation.

People Workforce Strategy

To enable us to deliver for Surrey residents, we need to ensure we have the right workforce with the right skills. Our Workforce Strategy (PDF) sets out how we will develop the capacity and capability of our workforce to achieve the changes we need.

Our budget

We need to ensure the council has a balanced budget, while investing in the services that matter to our residents. Read more about our budget for 2023 to 2024 agreed by Council on 7 February 2023.

Files available to download

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