Local authorities are under pressure; pressure to do things better, make huge financial savings and deeply understand the needs of their communities.

Monmouthshire County Council is no different and over the past 18 months we have been looking at different ways to enable our staff to be more creative and innovative to help face the challenges ahead.

Traditionally, creativity in councils is seen asfluffy but we know from other organisations, both in the UK and internationally, that when applied properly with innovation it can bring huge rewards including community participation, community resilience  and economic efficiencies.

Working through Nesta's Creative Councils programme we decided that the best place to start is on radically transforming our culture.

Up until now, like many other councils, we have been able to manage minor financial pressures by making small scale efficiencies but with the level of cuts we are looking at, this is not enough.

What we can do is tap into our other resources, the most valuable one being our people.

At Monmouthshire Council we are looking at our staff to find creative solutions to deal with the growing expectations on public services.The first part of that process has been to create a culture in which staff can contribute, come up with new ideas and try things out without being afraid of failure.

The Intrapreneurship School is a staff training programme that we have created to enable our staff to foster this sense of empowerment, self belief and purpose.

The Intrapreneurship School equips staff with a set of tools and methodologies that they can apply to the ‘day job' to help them think about how they can do things better. The school also focuses on the big question: what really matters? It is a big question and the answer is always the same: that is for our communities to decide.

To date, 67 staff have completed the programme, and another 30 are about to embark on the process.

It is an open training programme and is available to all staff who want to participate because it's important that all staff come up with ideas and share them within the organisation no matter where they sit in the hierarchy. Everyone should feel empowered to have a say on how the council is run.

Monmouthshire Council has also recognised that the most efficient way to allow ideas and innovation to flow around the council is to move away from traditional hierarchical structures.

Our staff - at all levels - do not have desks or offices of their own and the council has cut its desks by 50%.

Instead people hot desk and operate in communal spaces so they can share ideas and talk to colleagues they might not otherwise have met.

People are networked through ICT and there is an emphasis on behaviour, attitudes and values.

We often see communication blockages in a council where ideas from the top do not get passed down and vice versa.

We have a team whose focus is to enable and support innovation throughout the organisation.

That way, rather than reinventing the wheel each time, the team works with others on ideas, identifies best practice and shares knowledge across the council.

Bringing people together means we cut down on duplication and focus on implementing change.  It's about ‘adopt and adapt' as opposed to ‘reinvent'."

Change is hard and making radical changes to an organisation can cost money so it's important that there is a compelling case to do so.

Through the changes we have made, staff have come up with many exciting ideas that have become a reality and are now benefiting the council and the community.

These include a shared resource service for ICT provision that allows the authority greater opportunities to collaborate with other public sector organisations.  It has seen Monmouthshire become the first Welsh council run its ICT services ‘in the cloud' via the internet without the need to store data or buy multiple software licences which has saved us money.

In the long run we estimate we can save in the region of £150k.

The MonmouthpediA project has seen Monmouth become the world's first Wikipedia town.

As well as supporting tourism in the area, the project has reaped millions of pounds worth of free promotional activity and has been recognised and adopted in other parts of the world.

We are also looking at projects in heavy spend areas such as education, adult social care, children services and waste and recycling.

For example, we have a bank of staff who volunteer their time and use of their 4x4 vehicles to deliver meals to the elderly when our contractors are stopped by snow.

So far we have around 200 established ideas from staff that could bring about a million pounds worth of savings over a range of projects. But this is  just the beginning.

Innovation must be an inclusive process; it's not just for the chosen few.

We have some tough times ahead and the only way we can continue to stay relevant to our communities is if we use the best asset we have: our people.

Peter Davies is head of Innovation for Monmouthshire CC