For information on sponsorship opportunities at the 2013 CIPFA Scotland Conference, please contact James Duncan on 0131 550 7530 or james.duncan@cipfa.org.uk

Sustaining energy efficiency projects

How do public sector organisations finance energy efficiency and carbon reduction projects whilst absorbing budget cuts, maintaining service delivery and complying with relevant legislation. This workshop will review available funds and financing models for energy efficiency and renewable projects as well as provide examples of these. The workshop will be interactive in order for delegates to pool their own knowledge of funding mechanisms.

Delivering Health and Social Care Partnerships - key challenges to integrated provision

Proposed reforms to the Community Health Partnerships articulate a radical vision for integration of health and social care services across Scotland. The vision will be supported by national legislation but designed and delivered locally. The extent to which reform is driven locally allows for a range of solutions as to how integrated provision is achieved. This workshop will explore the key challenges faced when designing and delivering integrated health and social care services with a focus on how to develop and manage an integrated budget effectively to deliver financial and administrative efficiency.

This workshop will share emerging approaches to delivering integrated care provision and the financial mechanisms that underpin them, across a number of Scottish authorities as well as findings from work supporting local and health authorities in England.

The True Cost of Owning Assets?

Local authorities own numerous assets which are put to many and sometimes diverse uses. From schools to swimming pools, from libraries to bowling greens. These assets are expensive to maintain and run, but do we know what the true cost of owning these assets is?

Our valuers provide us with a book value to include in our asset register but are we aware of the:

• reason why we hold each asset?
• opportunity cost of holding our assets?
• value that is ‘locked’ in to our assets?
• council’s liabilities both now and in the future?
• benefits to the community through the use of the council’s assets?
• assets which are ‘the most expensive’ to hold?
• true rate of return we achieve through our investment portfolio?

In this workshop we will explore all of these issues and more.

Shared Services – More Havering!

At the 2011 conference we told the story of the Oracle t-Gov implementation at the London Borough of Havering and how it formed the technology platform for the Council’s internal shared service centre. Things have moved on rapidly since 2011 and this year we are going to tell the next part of the story. What was achieved in terms of efficiencies, savings, reorganisation and currently how this internal shared service centre is playing a significant role in Project Athena a shared services project involving 6 London Boroughs who have agreed to use the same chart of accounts, the same configuration of Oracle and the same hosted service. There are some valuable lessons to be learned from the London Borough of Havering.

Sponsored by:

A risk too far?

This interactive session will challenge attendees to consider that a generic risk transfer solution in the context of newly emerging risks and dependencies is becoming obsolete. We will focus on how consideration of total cost of risk particularly within the insurance procurement process can drive greater long-term savings and help you avoid short term financial issues. We'll also provide some practical examples of what could change and some useful tools and techniques to help you communicate the connection between insurance and strategic risk to your board.

Sponsored by:

How safe is your cash?

Against a recent background of numerous bank downgrades, this workshop examines how money market funds can help you protect the credit quality of your cash investments.

In the current environment, the biggest problem for local authorities may be how to balance the service and relationship they have enjoyed with their longstanding banks on the one hand, and the credit standards specified in their Treasury policy on the other, in the event that one or more of their banks is downgraded below the minimum contemplated by the policy.

The money market fund industry is built around the concepts of security, liquidity and return – in that order. Since security of principal is always the primary focus, we will explain and discuss how a money market fund preserves the credit quality of its portfolio whilst maintaining liquidity and return, despite being faced with exactly the same credit landscape as its investors.