A REVIEW of backroom services at Dorset County Council could be on track to save up to £1.75m, a report says.

A shake-up of support services – work ‘behind the scenes’ which includes IT, finances and human resources – is underway as the council seeks to save money.

A number of options were considered in order to carry out the changes, but moves to outsource services or let a contract to a commercial partner to deliver the work were rejected.

Instead, DCC’s Cabinet decided to establish an in-house programme to develop support services and to deliver a minimum of £1.5m of savings by 2017/18.

It is not yet known how many jobs are at risk at the county council, or if anyone will be made redundant.

An update to Wednesday’s cabinet meeting gives an update on this work, which has been supported by PA Consulting.

A report by Assistant Chief Executive Patrick Ellis says a programme has been developed with three workstreams: initiatives which affect all support services; substantial projects in one service likely to require major investment or change; initiatives confined to one service.

The first workstream aims to ensure staff are working effectively in everything they do and whether services can be arranged in a different way.

Substantial projects mainly affect the digital technology strategy and proposes the ‘cloud first’ approach where equipment is rented rather than owned and is hosted and supported by others rather than on the premises.

Also included are a review of the ‘starters, movers and leavers’ process and a review of the HR process. The third workstream is more ‘tactical’ in nature and includes a restructure in finance.

The report says: “The main aim of the programme is starting to address the issues identified in the PA report – the weakness in transactional processing, the creation of a customer focussed culture and the refocussing of the professional services.

“However, Cabinet has also set a saving target for the programme of a minimum of £1.5m deliverable in 2017/18. The projects are still being developed and some of the projects have not yet had savings identified for them. However, the current range of savings is between £900,000 and £1.75m so there is good confidence the target of £1.5m can be met and hopefully exceeded.”

The report says it is a ‘complex’ set of projects being worked on and it is important they are managed together as a programme so they are properly scoped, progress is kept and tracked and all the benefits realised.