How the City of Utrecht achieved major budget savings through innovative service reviews

Outcomes

Within a period of six months an overarching reform plan was produced with estimated savings of over €66m (see Table 3). The final report of the review also defined the milestones for a large-scale transformation process of local services.

Because the necessary level of cuts was €55m, this gave the local council room to choose between preferred and disliked reform measures. The council decided not to choose all reform measures (and it even created space for investments), postponing some less preferred measures for future rounds of savings.

Savings of about €5m were achieved in the first year, mainly through a reduction of external contracts in 2011. The structural savings of €55m were achieved by 2014 through a selection of measures from the concluding report.

Table 3: Estimated savings following the service reviews

Source: Adapted from the Concluding Report of the Review Director (2011:5).