Way back in 2016, as Chief Executive of Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC), Andrew Grant spoke at a public event for public sector professionals.

He said in less than ten minutes everything you need to know about local government funding today:

“There is no point in half-hearted or ‘business as usual’ solutions. We have seen the future of tax and grant dependency. Politically
and managerially, the current trajectory is unsustainable for local authorities. If they cannot find alternative sources of income, it
will lead to service failure.”

“We figured we needed to change before change hit us, and that’s been the momentum for our transition to a more commercial footing. You can’t just do the wrong things more right for a few years.”

“We realised that if we were going to grow our way out, we would have to get in touch with our community’s discretionary spend. We have customers which we don’t have to acquire. They are on our doorstep and they know who we are, so the reward for good work will be not just payment, but their loyalty and a continued stream of work. We are positioning AVDC as an enterprise organisation which makes our citizens’ home and work lives easier.”

Grant’s philosophy, explained there in under 200 words, changed AVDC’s trajectory.

Between 2011 and 2019, savings and new income moved the needle on AVDC’s profitability by a total of £18.7M – or just over £2M per annum.

And since then, Grant has shared his successes at AVDC with over 60 other councils across the UK, worked as an interim Chief Executive in Cambridgeshire, and brought the public sector and technology industry together countless times to create new value and delivery models.