Customer Strategy 2023 to 2028 (Plain Text Version)
Supporting the Corporate Strategies
The new Corporate Plan and Budget Strategy were created to address the most pressing issues and challenges for the council in the next five years, ensuring that the council meets its statutory obligations sustainably and protects the most vital and impactful services for local people.
Corporate Priorities
The council has identified five priorities for the period 2023/24 to 2027/28.
These reflect the areas that are the most important for the community and improving the quality of life for all living, working and visiting West Lothian.
The priorities have been set through consultation with our community, staff and partner agencies and identify and address the most pronounced, collective needs of the local area.
They will also provide a focus for decision making and resource prioritisation in the next five years, ensuring that we target our efforts towards the issues that matter most to the community. In the next five years, the council will focus on achieving outcomes in each priority.
- Raising Attainment
- Strengthening Care and Support for Children, Adults and Older People
- Investing in Skills and Jobs
- Helping Create Strong and Sustainable Communities
- Tackling Homelessness, Poverty and Inequality
The council is a high performing organisation because it holds the primacy of the customer as a key value.
That commitment to customers has influenced decision making and changes since the council was formed and consequently, has ensured that the council continues to prioritise customers in the design and delivery of all services.
Supporting the five priority areas in the Corporate Plan, this Customer Strategy will enhance that customer first culture and continue to promote the needs of customers as a key consideration in the way that we think about, and measure the success of, essential public services delivered by the council.
We recognise that a good relationship with the customer stakeholder group is essential to setting and meeting our strategic priorities, and understand the importance of an approach characterised by the involvement of local people in shaping the long-term direction and ambition of the council.
We will therefore continue to work to build a relationship with customers that is based on shared values and open dialogue to encourage understanding and cooperation.
The Customer Strategy will be an important lever for change in the next five years, aligning with the Budget Strategy and the Corporate Plan, to deliver a programme of transformational change in the council.
The strategy will provide a strategic framework that will support the council to improve service delivery and set out how we can create improved conditions for true cooperation and a mutually beneficial relationship with our customers.
Council Values
As part of the development a new strategic direction and the Corporate Plan 2023/28, new organisational Values were also identified that better reflect the character and ambitions of the council.
The council wants to work with customers, staff and partners to make services better and deliver our Purpose and Vision of a Thriving West Lothian.
In addition to a refreshed strategic direction, it was determined that the council needed Values that reminded staff and customers what the council stands for and the type of behaviours we want to promote across the organisation.
Our Values
- Caring and Compassionate
- Open, Honest and Accountable
- Collaborative, Inclusive and Adaptive
These Values have greatly influenced the development of the Customer Strategy as they relate to a culture that encourages our people to act ethically and create the right conditions for change and improvement.
In tandem with the other Corporate Strategies, the Customer Strategy has been created to support positive change in the council and those Values are a thread through many of the activities and actions in the strategy.
