Reshaping Parks: How It Happened

08 October 2025

With increasing pressures on resources and rising costs, we’re constantly striving to make sure that the services that we provide run as efficiently as possible.

Sometimes, we have to take a step back to assess how our services are doing and how we might be able to work differently to best serve our residents.

These kinds of exercises form a key part of our wider programme of Reshaping work as a council, and also aligns perfecting with our aims within the new Brilliant Basics Charter.

 Reshaping sets the direction of how our services are delivered and helps identify new opportunities to generate much-needed income and seek to overall improve service efficiency.

In January 2025, the Transformation team brought together colleagues in the Parks service alongside other departments to take a fresh look at how the service operates.

We caught up with Emily Woodley, who leads the Transformation team, to get a behind the scenes preview of that journey - including how they approached it, what they learned, and what it means for the future.

Emily explained: “We undertook a zero-based budget review in collaboration with the Parks team to fundamentally reshape how the service operates. 

“This process involved a detailed examination of all costs, contracts, and income streams, and through this collaborative approach, the team identified a wide range of savings opportunities as well as income-generating changes - many of which have already been implemented – and has amounted to roughly £280,000 in predicted savings.”

Emily added: “It was truly a collaborative effort, and we were well-supported by Adam, Martin and other colleagues in the Parks team through the entire process. 

“These actions helped colleagues to understand the situation as it stood at the beginning of this project, and helped us all to become aligned with our shared vision for improving the service for the future.”

The process of achieving operational savings isn’t always an easy task, especially within structures as large and as complex as a local authority, but if successful, it can allow for funding and resources to be redeployed to where they are most needed.

In the case of the Parks service, this meant a reduction of Parks service vehicles to be transferred to the council’s cleansing teams – which not only created a financial saving - but also helped reduce the service’s overall carbon footprint to align with our broader Project Zero aims to become carbon neutral by 2030. This decision alone created a £60,000 saving for the service.

Identifying income-generation opportunities within the Parks service also allowed the team to consider ways to expand our offer for residents and visitors at our parks without increasing the Council’s financial burden. 

Together with the expertise and support of colleagues in Parks and Properties teams, a number of new income streams were devised.

There was a push to explore new or expanded contracts for work provided by the Council to its partners.

Additionally, colleagues suggested the introduction of new concessions opportunities within our parks.

A new approach to trial concessions was subsequently approved by Cabinet, making it easier to introduce new income streams into our parks. This, alongside the contract expansions, resulted in nearly £42,000 in additional income.

As the Transformation team reflected on their experiences during this exercise, they reported that the cross-departmental collaboration was a key factor in the success of this Reshaping work, and they hope that this coordinated approach to working will continue, driving positive outcomes in future Reshaping projects.