About Babergh and Mid Suffolk
We are perfectly positioned in the heart of Suffolk, with historic market towns, beautiful villages and acres of countryside, with good train lines to London, Cambridge and Norwich and key road networks (A12/A14). We have a local population of around 200,000 in an area that has consistently been voted as among the best places to live in the country.
Babergh is part of the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB, which includes the Stour and Orwell estuaries, a site of European nature conservation interest, and Dedham Vale and Stour Valley AONB. Babergh and Mid Suffolk are rich in heritage assets. We have 60 designated conservation areas, over 6,400 listed buildings, 60 scheduled monuments and seven registered parks and gardens which represent about 45% of the designated heritage assets in Suffolk.
At the heart of everything we do is our vision to ‘create great communities with bright and healthy futures that everybody is proud to call home’. This is underpinned by strong and valued partnerships with our communities, businesses and statutory, voluntary and private sector colleagues. As partners, we are ambitious for our places and the communities we serve. Our aspiration is for them to thrive and not just survive. As an organisation, we are proud that our achievements so far are being recognised in the 2021 iESE Public Sector Transformation Awards, when we won gold for asset management and regeneration, silver for customer focus in planning enforcement and bronze for Council of the Year.
About Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils
Since 2011, Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils have answered the challenges facing local government by developing a new way of delivering council services; Working Together. Serving over 200,000 residents across the two districts, our councils are well known for our collaboration and partnership working across public, private and voluntary sectors.
Since 2017, both councils have Cabinet governance. In Babergh, the Green, Independent and Liberal Democrat groups agreed to power-share for the next four years after no party achieved an overall majority in the May 4 elections.
In Mid Suffolk has a majority conservative Cabinet (eight conservative members and one independent). In Mid Suffolk, the Greens won 24 of the 34 available seats at the May elections. Across both councils we have a headcount of 570 staff.
In the last 12 years, we have achieved millions of pounds of cumulative savings by delivering our services with a joint Chief Executive and a fully integrated management structure. We have a shared vision and corporate plan and are currently working with both new administrations to ensure we deliver against their priorities for residents. We have recently adopted a new outcomes-based approach. We are agile, resilient, strongly customer focused councils, which enabled us to deliver with minimal service disruption through the Covid-19 pandemic.
The two councils have a wholly integrated management team and staff group – everybody works for both. We have further shared services partnerships with other councils to deliver legal services and revenues and benefits. Leisure services and waste services are contracted out. We have four council-owned companies - the CIFCO investment company, two house building companies (Mid Suffolk Growth and Babergh Growth) and Gateway 14, a 156-hectare regeneration site to grow businesses and jobs, which is now also part of Freeport East.
You will join a dynamic and aspirational council management team. We recently completed an 18-month externally facilitated leadership programme for both Cabinets, the senior leadership team and corporate managers and are now thinking about what next for leadership development. We never want to stop developing ourselves and others. This is a key tenet of our people strategy, alongside recognition of the importance of creating working conditions that support everybody’s wellbeing to enable each staff member to be the very best that they can be.
Our Vision, Mission and Strategic Priorities
Our vision is to build "Great communities with bright and healthy futures that everyone is proud to call home".
Our mission is to "Provide strong, proud and inspirational leadership; striving for excellence, and together building great communities for everyone to live, work, visit and invest in".
Our strategic priorities are the environment, economy, housing, wellbeing, our customers and our communities, which are each underpinned by their own strategies and delivery plans.
Our Values
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