BASINGSTOKE council this week launched a three-year planning strategy for its budget and the running of the borough.

The radical change in style by the Labour-Liberal Democrat administration was revealed on Wednesday. Details of the three-year plan will not be made public until the next Cabinet meeting on December 9 but the council announced its four priority objectives would be:

to maximise resources and secure opportunities to support key areas of community need within a confirmed sustainable financial framework

to provide people with affordable decent homes within planned sustainable communities

to achieve a safe, clean and sustainable built and natural environment for residents, businesses and visitors

to improve opportunities in learning and training to support individual development, community organisations and local businesses.

Launching the new strategy, council leader Cllr Rob Donnelly said: "This is our first three-year plan. Instead of us having to write a plan and budget every year - using about six months of the year with all the Cabinet and senior officers engaged in the process - we will set a three-year plan and revise it each year, which is about a one or two-month process. So immediately you are releasing capacity within the organisation to more productive ends.

"This is an important reason for the change. You could spend nearly the whole year delivering plans and strategies - but we are here to deliver services and benefits to the whole of the borough. We don't know how many man-days it will free up in a year but I suspect it is going to be pretty significant.

"The other thing is that most of the projects we do cannot start and finish within a year. We can initiate projects now that we may not deliver until year three."

Cllr Donnelly said that within the four priority themes, targets would be set that could be measured over the years to see if they were achieving their aims.

He explained: "For example in the improvement of opportunities in learning and training, we know we have got something like 23 per cent of people with literacy and numeracy problems among adults in the community. We are looking to improve that in the three-year period by five per cent - that is five per cent of those people. We also want to improve the percentage of 16 to 24-year-olds in full-time education.

"In priority three, we want a reduction in the number of wards in the deprived areas category. We have four at present - Popley East and West, Norden, Buckskin and South Ham.

"We want a percentage reduction in the levels of homelessness and want more affordable housing to be built in the borough - whether that be for rent, keyworker housing, shared ownership or straightforward market housing for sale of a size and scale that might keep it affordable."

In priority one, Cllr Donnelly said the council was looking for reductions in costs and increases in income.

"We are not looking for service cuts," he emphasised. "Of course, we are looking for inefficiencies and opportunities for charging and reasonable opportunities for additional income. We are certainly not planning anything more than a two-and-a-half per cent increase in our part of the council tax."

After the draft three-year plan is published on December 9, it will go out for consultation with businesses, the council's partners in the health service and community organisations and the public until mid-January.

However, anyone with any comments before the draft plan is published can contact the council by November 17 for their ideas to be considered for the draft.

"This three-year plan is not just limited to the imagination and creativity of the councillors and council officers," said Cllr Donnelly.

"It should be the imagination and creativity of the whole community harnessed together."

Full details of the priority objectives and targets of the three-year plan can be seen on the Basingstoke council website at www.basingstoke.gov.uk