Council and democracy

Pathfinder

Hertfordshire is almost half way through a 5 year enhanced two tier Pathfinder programme, which is a status awarded to all the councils in Hertfordshire by CLG. The status has also been awarded to Dorset, Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire councils. The focus of the Pathfinder Programme is on two tier priorities set by the district and county chief executives and leaders. The overarching aims are -

• Improving two tier working - which means piloting new ideas and building on our partnership successes prior to Pathfinder
• Raising the standards of services in Hertfordshire over the life of Pathfinder - and of course beyond the life of Pathfinder
• Driving out greater efficiencies - which means providing ourselves with the financial capacity and flexibility to reinvest in new ways of enabling services to the public - reducing duplication amongst the councils is key to this aim.

Key working groups have been established to help move things forward and share ideas and good examples of these are the Customer Access Pathfinder Group and the Hertfordshire Waste Partnership. One of the targets set in the original Pathfinder Bid is for us to find an additional £4 million in efficiencies each year (which is 0.5% above the annual savings target that county and districts already have to achieve). We are achieving more than our target at the moment and are approaching £11m since 2007/08 due to collaborations across the councils in Herts.