EAST Ayrshire Council boss Eddie Fraser has vowed to move quickly to scrap ‘innovative’ schemes if they aren’t having an impact.
Last Wednesday, EAC cabinet agreed to fund five projects from its Innovation Fund.
These include spending £86k on robot cleaners at two secondary schools - including the Barony Campus in Cumnock - and upgrading care at home from paper to digital systems, at the cost of around £1.5m.
READ MORE: Innovative council projects approved to help with financial savings
Councillors also agreed funding for East Ayrshire HSCP's technology enabled health and social care project (£900k), a cashless catering system in the council’s facilities and property management service (£106k) and the expansion of digital reading support programme in schools (£178k).
The fund was set up to allow services to look at ways to reduce costs and carry out preventative and early intervention work.
Labour group leader, councillor Maureen McKay, welcomed the move, but raised concerns around the sustainability of the fund.
She said: “I’m glad that we have stimulated the need for innovation and innovative thinking and ways of doing things differently.”
“When you set up this fund this was to be a self-perpetuating fund in that funding given for innovation and what are effectively spend to save measures would ensure that this fund would be topped up.”
She pointed out that two of the projects did not seek repayment to the fund.
Cllr McKay said: “There is no requirement to actually generate savings for those and pay that investment from the fund back into the fund which would indicate that there would be the potential there for depletion of that fund over time
“I know that that wasn’t what the original expectation was when the fund was set up.”
Chief executive Eddie Fraser responded: “Although there’s no direct payback to the fund that’s simply because the financial benefits that are coming out of these initiatives are actually going to mitigate significant overspends in some of our services.
“If we look at some of the work around the the proposals for education, we reckon that should reduce some of the additional costs in terms of one to one classroom support that may be required there.
“We want to see the investment driving like savings for us."
He added: “But the reality of that saving is it’s going against an overspend just now, rather than going against a flat baseline where we’re actually able to take money out the the budget
“We will absolutely monitor these every one of them.
“Everybody’s clear here. If things are not working we’re going to stop.
“If it doesn’t make a benefit for us – I think they call it fail quick- we will stop things and we’ll move on to do something actually does make an impact.”
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