The Corporate and Partnerships Overview and Scrutiny Committee are scheduled to meet on 29 September 2025 to discuss community safety, local services, and the council's transformation portfolio. As part of the transformation discussion, the committee will review the draft Customer Experience Strategy and the draft Corporate Property Strategy. Councillors will also consider and amend the committee's work programme for the remainder of the municipal year.

Corporate Property Strategy

The committee will review the draft Corporate Property Strategy 2025-2035. According to the report pack, the strategy:

...sets out our vision for managing and developing the Council's property assets in a way that supports our strategic priorities, delivers value for money, and enables highquality services for our communities.

The council aims to develop an optimised land and property asset base, which is managed in a professional, resilient and increasingly commercial way; supports excellent service delivery; serves our thriving communities and responds to climate and sustainability objectives. The strategy is built around four key principles:

• Corporate Landlord: This involves centralising property activity and management into a single model, with the goal of positioning Property Services as a key enabler for business change.
• Estate Optimisation: Ensuring that the council's assets are fit for purpose, appropriately sized and efficiently used.
• Sustainability and Carbon Reduction: Supporting the council's climate change strategy to achieve net zero operational emissions by 2030, or as close to that date as possible.
• Supporting Communities: Working collaboratively to empower communities, increase a sense of place, and contribute to wider development objectives.

The Corporate Property Board will be responsible for the delivery of the strategy, and will provide updates to the Corporate & Partnership Overview & Scrutiny Committee.

Customer Experience Strategy

The draft Customer Experience Strategy is scheduled to be discussed. According to the report pack, the strategy sets out the council's approach to achieving its vision for putting the customer at the heart of everything it does. The council aims to achieve this through staff development, culture change, improved use of data and insight, and the adoption of new technology to make it easy for people to access the services they need. The strategy is based on the council's CARE commitment, which means that services should be consistent, accessible, responsive and easy. The Customer Transformation Programme is intended to deliver this ambition, and a key focus of the strategy is transforming the organisational culture to become truly customer focused. The council is procuring a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform and Contact Centre as a Service to unify customer interactions across all customer contact channels, eventually providing a single view of each customer interaction. Senior managers have participated in dedicated Customer Experience Masterclasses to strengthen leadership and embed a customer-focused culture, and these will continue in October and November. The council will mark National Customer Service Week (6–8 October 2025) with a series of events and communications to celebrate and promote customer excellence.

Community Safety

The committee will receive a bi-annual update on the Community Safety Plan Delivery and Partnership Working. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 places a statutory duty on local authorities to create multi-agency partnerships to tackle crime, disorder, anti-social behaviour and other behaviours adversely affecting the local environment and to reduce re-offending. The report focuses on updates from across the priorities, including:

• Community Safety Hubs
• Serious violence
• Domestic abuse
• Hate crime
• Prevent
• Protect and Prepare

The North Yorkshire Community Safety Partnership Strategic Priorities (2024-2028) are:

• Community Safety Hubs (operational delivery of statutory duties)
• Preventing and reducing serious violence (statutory duty)
• Domestic abuse (statutory duty)
• Standing together to tackle hate crime, radicalisation and extremism (statutory duty)

Since the last update, North Yorkshire has recorded a 12% decrease in reported crimes. A Joint Targeted Area Inspection (JTAI) took place for North Yorkshire in January/ February 2025, focusing on the multi-agency response to unborn children and those aged 0-7 who are victims of domestic abuse. The final inspection report was published at the end of March 2025. Since the last update the partnership has published a statutory Domestic Homicide Review (DHR) named 'Ellie'.

Localities Update

The committee will receive a bi-annual update on projects and programmes undertaken by the Localities service and Corporate Volunteering. The Communities Team work collaboratively with other services; communities; public sector; and voluntary and community sector partners to deliver the following aims:

• Prevention
• Supporting people to live longer, healthier and independent lives within their community
• Supporting communities to become more resilient to respond to local challenges
• Social Regeneration

During the first five months of 2025/26 £79,574.96 had been awarded from the Stronger Communities Programme Inspire Fund supporting 84 projects. The team continue to lead and coordinate several work areas that are related to financial inclusion, including local food support, the North Yorkshire Local Assistance Fund (NYLAF), and the Cost of Living Communications Campaign. The Localities service is leading £500,000 investment of UK Shared Prosperity Funding (UKSPF) focussing on digital inclusion on behalf of the York & North Yorkshire Combined Authority (CA) across North Yorkshire and York in 2025/2026. Localities has been contracted to manage a capital fund for Village Halls and Community Buildings (£1.3m) and a revenue fund to support Community Wealth Building (£200k) which includes a small grants fund for local social and generative economy projects, support and training for social businesses and research to understand the contribution of social businesses to the North Yorkshire and York economy. Localities are a delivery partner for the national 'Get Britain Working' local Trailblazer programme which is supporting economically inactive adults to access employment, training or volunteering. The team continues to develop the ambition of supporting local partnership and multiagency working through the establishment of local Community Partnerships, focussing on principal towns and surrounding areas, and reflecting natural communities. The team has been supporting colleagues from Regeneration on developing the Town Investment Plans (TIP) programme, a co-ordinated approach to regeneration and investment across the county. The Parish Liaison, Local Devolution and Community Rights (PLDCR) Team works alongside the county's 572 Parish Councils offering a range of support. The team supports a representative Parish Consultation/Engagement Panel that is consulted on a regular basis on PSO matters of interest. A dedicated Parish Council website will be launched in Autumn 2025. The work to progress local devolution has focused on the agreed pilot proposals. Transitional arrangements to fulfil the Council's statutory responsibilities for Community Rights has been in place since April 2023. The work of the Migrant Programme is reported in a separate detailed annual North Yorkshire Resettlement update to Corporate & Partnerships Overview and Scrutiny Committee, the last report was considered on 10 June 2025. Over the next six months key areas of work for the Localities team include the designing and embedding across the Council a comprehensive 'deal' for Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector, to be known as the VCSE Offer. The Corporate Volunteer Project relates to all volunteering activity that takes place by members of the community to support NYC services. The number of registered volunteers in June 2025 stood at approximately 4305.

Transformation Portfolio Update

The committee will receive an update on the progress of the transformation activity within the council. Work in the portfolio is spread across three key areas; Cross-Cutting themes, Delivering the Target Operating Model and Service Specific programmes of work. Delivering excellent customer experience remains central to North Yorkshire Council's ambitions, and the new Customer Experience Strategy sets out a clear vision. Since the last committee update, the council has continued with the procurement of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform and Contact Centre as a Service. Since the last report, a large number of system consolidations and upgrades have been completed, including:

• Launch of a new Destination Management System to support the strategic change to the management of Tourism across North Yorkshire and the promotion of North Yorkshire as a destination.
• Implementation of a new Library Management system that manages stock, borrowing records, payments and transactions.
• Replacement of the council's Concessionary Travel system to support the management and issue of travel permits to eligible residents.
• Migration of all 7 legacy Revenues & Benefits systems onto a single system with aligned processes, procedures and reporting.
• Launch of a new online form for housing tenants to report mould, damp and condensation, ensuring that the council complies with Awaab's Law.
• Completion of the implementation of a single case management system in the Legal Services team with all historical data transferred.
• Consolidation and rationalisation printer contracts.

Work is also underway on a large number of other projects, including:

• Procurement and implementation of new Parking Machines as well as a new Parking Permit and Enforcement system.
• Migration of Planning services onto a single system.
• Consolidation of Environmental Health and Trading Standards onto a single system.

The organisation wide upgrade to Windows 11 is now almost complete achieving 97% completion with over 7200 users upgraded. A number of programmes are in place to help the council achieve its Target Operating Model. Detailed work has been completed in designing the new finance system that is due to be in place for the start of the 26/27 Financial year next April. A project to have a centralised GIS database to store assets has now been completed. Consolidation of sport and active wellbeing activity under the Active North Yorkshire banner has continued, with the Richmondshire Leisure Services brought in house in the spring. The adoption of a 4-day working week is continuing to be rolled out in the Waste Programme. The activities of the Scarborough Museums Trust were successfully transitioned into the council on 1st July, now sitting within the Culture & Archives Service. Within Health and Adult Services the implementation of a cost modelling tool is providing detailed insights into market rates for building-based care placements. Roll out of a new Translation tool that both reduces the cost of translation and speeds up the process for providing documents to customers. Good progress continues to be made on the Property Programme and consolidation of the council's property assets.

Work Programme 2025/26

The committee will consider, amend and adopt its work programme for the remainder of the municipal year.