Our Vision

Coming soon - our strategic objectives for the next four years.

Council Performance

The Town Council continually strives for excellence and regularly monitors its performance to ensure that it responds to the needs of the community. The Council works in partnership with a number of other public and private sector organisations to improve its services.

We are continually striving to obtain ‘value for money’ from all our services in how we manage and use your money, time and people. In recent years, by making such comparisons, we have brought our costs down on various services e.g. staffing, photocopying, electricity and gas.

As part of our Annual Audit, we are now required to be audited on ‘value for money’ and in 2009-2010 received an unqualified audit opinion stating that we had acceptable arrangements to secure economy, efficiency and effectiveness in our use of resources. The 2008-2009 ‘value for money’ conclusion was qualified because a risk register was not in place for that financial year. During 2009-2010, a comprehensive risk register had been set up and now covers all the Town Council's key areas of activity.

Current and future challenges

The impact of the economic recession is reflected in a 50 per cent fall in our income, mainly from investment income due to falling interest rates.

In the next year, we will continue to improve our arrangements by making more use of comparative information with others and, over time, on costs in priority and high-spending areas.

We will set and monitor challenging efficiency targets and we will continue to seek a formal agreement with Central Bedfordshire Council for the Cycling Project and the maintenance of bus shelters.

Decentralisation and Localism Bill

The Town Council already works with Central Bedfordshire Council in the provision of some local services and is seeking greater devolution of services to the Town Council where it would be of mutual benefit to both authorities. This is in line with the Government's stated objective of seeking to decrease central control and increase power at a local level, proposals for which will be set out in the Decentralisation and Localism Bill. Town councils could have a key role in the changes that may arise. The exact nature of the costs and benefits for the Town Council from any such changes will need to be assessed following the publication of the Bill.