The following responses were made directly:

How about joining up the Maidstone borough council electronic news letter with the Maidstone town mail this will then have more news.

Joint cooperation with the town centre initiative and the council seems to be the right way forward.

• Getting rid of the parking tickets and having it done electronic. So you just pay your money, plug your reg number into the machine and then the warden can just plug the reg number into a machine to determine whether you’ve paid or not. Would save money on paper and constantly having to restock the machines in all the car parks
• Or can the above be a text service, similar to those in London?
• Getting the waste collection people to help deliver things that have to go to all households – as the visit every home throughout the week anyway. for example teaming up with elections etc.
• If the depot has refuse lorry facilities can it be opened up as a car wash?
• Turning the town hall into an exhibition space

How about getting our IT department to develop a free smartphone application, working with the Visit Maidstone team, to say 'What's on in Maidstone'. This could be done in conjunction with the KM's 'What's On' as well as Downs Mail's 'What's On' service which is currently printed in their newspapers. They could pay a small fee to get their services online, and we could fund the service (and make a small margin) from selling adverts to pubs, hotels etc. People can add their own events to allow pubs to advertise band nights, for example, but anyone wanting to advertise an event could pay a small fee, e.g. £2, to stop abuse of the service (e.g. people advertising house parties etc!). Hopefully this means the app looks after itself, rather than needing a member of staff to run it. Apps are supposed to be very easy to make in this day and age, so there is probably someone on the IT team who can do it - or who knows someone who can do it. This ties up with the Communication and Leisure and Culture strategies. It could be modelled on the 'Time out' website for London. If nothing else, it'll get some good press for the council - especially if it is done with the papers as partners. Can be used to highlight events at the Theatre and Leisure centre, to help drive up revenue there.

We should look first at the cost effectiveness of the income we currently collect. Stray dog fees is one that comes to mind where we write off significant numbers of small amounts that incur the full cost of administration. Also, though it is sensitive, litter fines that are progressed to legal action are expensive too.

If we can find a cost effective way of charging for small fees and fines we should elect to charge all statutory fees that we can.

Share our procurement or legal sections with outside organisations and develop a business section that can take on other businesses interests, prove  that we are looking forward in our objectives. and strive to ensure excellence and a business to be proud of .

Take on training and develop a training facility section that can train sections and personnel for anyone in local government or outside organisations .

Develop the reach the summit to outside businesses and monitor their performance to ensure value for money.

Find a way to merge our priorities with the private sector and give advice and experience.