Q
125John
Howell: May I pick up on that last point? One way in which
the money is going to be channelled is through a pooled fund. I know
from my previous experience in local government that pooled funds have
had a chequered history in terms of the ability of people to put money
in and to access them. In your experience of them, is there anything
that would help to improve things?
Richard
Kemp: My experience is similar to yours. The
theoretical agencies that put money into a fund do it voluntarily but
still expect to give you their outputs as you use the money out from
the fund. It is quite opaque. What the Local Government Association
argues generally is that there are a set of needs—in my case in
Liverpool—that ought to go into a pot, and that is what Total
Place is all about. I am sure Members are familiar with it. Very
important work is being done in Total Place to understand how we use
the totality of the money, where it comes in and where it goes, and to
ask a vital question: if we were starting again, would we spend this
amount of money this way? The answer is usually no. There is some
really radical thinking coming through from local government in
partnership with central Government, which will affect a lot of the
debates in 12 months’
time.
The
Chairman: Andrew, do you want to talk to Mr.
Kemp?
Q
126Andrew
Selous: Briefly. On Total Place, and picking up what Paul
Carter was saying about it earlier, I am particularly interested in the
relationship of local authorities with the benefits system. I have just
received a brief from my own local authority, which is one of the Total
Place pilots. It says that it is not happy with things at the moment. I
would be interested in any ideas or thoughts about how we could get the
partnership between local authorities and Jobcentre Plus to work
better. Richard
Kemp: There are some pilots at the moment on what I
am going to suggest, but one of the problems of dealing with families
who are in and out of employment and just above the poverty level is
benefits—not the benefits trap but the benefit claims problem.
We would like to use the extensive local government one-stop shop
system as a place where you go in and claim all your benefits. One of
the reasons we get delays is that the council does its housing and
council tax benefits and we wait for information to come from somewhere
else. In my own city we have 14 one-stop shops in the key areas of
poverty. You should be able to go in and get your benefits sorted out
in one place, because then you can decide whether you can afford to
take a job or not. If you are going up and down, you can get your
benefits adjusted properly. At the moment, it is still not worth some
people getting a job, because it puts them into poverty for 12 months
while someone reassesses what they should have, and by that time they
are halfway to being evicted. That is a simple system that local
government can do, particularly if it is a four-star benefits service
as judged by the Benefits Agency.
The
Chairman: Catherine
Fitt— [Interruption.] Oh, sorry. Did you
want to come back
in?
Andrew
Selous: Paul Carter mentioned Total Place. He or any of
the other panellists may want to add to that, but that was
helpful—thank
you. Catherine
Fitt: I have never been a great fan of pooled
budgets, not least because it seems to be complicated in terms of
administration—getting people to put their bits of money
together and then be jointly accountable. However, I am, and always
have been, a strong advocate of aligned budgets. For me, that is what
it is all about. It is simply about lining everyone up—central
Government, local government and people out in communities, whichever
sector they come from—to do things that are going to be on
balance for the benefit of children and not to their detriment. It is
probably no more complicated than people being aware that decisions
that they make for grown-ups sometimes have unintended consequences for
children. I am absolutely a fan of aligning budgets. I rather like
people knowing what money is in which bag on the table, and the trouble
with pooled budgets is that it becomes messy when you start putting
money together into one big pool, and it is difficult to argue with
your treasurer to have your bit to provide for
children. Paul
Carter: May I take that forward? I like the
Westminster model, which we are repeating in the Margate renewal, which
is one of our themes in Total Place. We are looking at vulnerable
families in Westminster and in Margate. In one shape or form, the
amount of public agency support going to those families is more than
£100,000 or £150,000. When you then start to talk to the
health economy and the educational economy through to special needs,
all of them are acting in isolation. With the health economy, the
special needs economy and the public agencies, if you looked at the
totality of expenditure on those 15, 20 or 100 families—more
than £150,000—and thought about that pooled resource,
would you start to do things dramatically differently that would lead
to much more positive outcomes for those vulnerable families? That is
part of the Total Place work. Whether you call it a pooled or whatever
you called
it— Catherine
Fitt:
Aligned. Paul
Carter: Whether you call it a pooled or aligned
resource, it is making everyone aware of interventions and support,
which may be well-intended, but individually. Collectively, it could
have a much better output and an outcome than people operating in
silos. That is a small example of what can be achieved.
Kevan
Collins: Just to return to the benefits issue, the
challenge we found was to create a more flexible and experimental
approach in the benefits world. For example, if you take incapacity
benefit, we see a strong correlation between families where the parents
are receiving benefit and children who then go on to be
NEETs. Child
poverty, as you all know better than I do, it is about breaking cycles.
We ask the benefit system to be flexible. How do you get a holiday from
that when there is a great fear that that means that you will never get
back on again, and yet get people back into work? Flexibility in the
benefits system is what we seek.
When you look
at localisation or you tie it into some of the innovative work that is
going on between families—we have all found our 50 families who
fire a certain set of triggers—how do you then not only get
the resources wrapped around them but get the system flexible enough to
give that family a chance to change their whole lifestyle? You are
quite often breaking generations of a relationship with the state and
with public service, and you have to do something quite dramatic. We
can do that with housing tenure, and we need to do it with other kinds
of benefits to break people out of a certain set of relationships and
behaviours that they have developed. I would like to see much more
flexibility with Jobcentre Plus. We are finding it quite hard to get it
to have a more flexible and innovative approach, particularly to those
families, but I absolutely take the point that it is about getting
families out of
poverty. Q
127Mr.
Gauke: I want to ask a question about partner authorities
that has already been raised. Under clause 19, we have a list of
partner authorities that have a responsibility to co-operate with the
responsible local authority. It also appears to be the case under
clause 20 that each responsible local authority must make arrangements
with each of the partner authorities. Can I ask whether the list under
clause 19—apologies to those of you who have not had a chance to
study it—is the right one? It consists of an interesting range
of people, including district councils, police authorities, chief
officers of police, integrated transport authorities, Transport for
London—where relevant—strategic health authorities,
primary care trusts and youth offending teams. I do not know whether
anyone has had an opportunity to look at the list or whether there are
any other organisations that you think should have a responsibility to
co-operate. Also, given that there is an obligation involved—it
is a case of “must” make arrangements rather than
“may” make arrangements—is there anyone on the
list who should not be
there? Paul
Carter: You are referring to statutory bodies.
Obviously, the third sector—the voluntary sector—has a
massive part to play, but it does not consist of statutory bodies,
which is presumably why it is not listed. You have given a list of all
the partners that sit on local strategic partnerships at various levels
in local government. In Kent, for example, we have one overarching
local strategic partnership called the Kent Partnership, and virtually
every district authority has its own distributed local strategic
partnership in its locality, although some of the authorities have
coalesced
together. It
is one thing creating all these talking shops, but the leadership of
the strategic partnerships with the outcomes that you want to derive
from them is another. Part of that is joining together to deliver some
of the local area agreements, but there is also no reason why we cannot
be much bolder and braver—I am trying to encourage this at Kent
Partnership—on some of the four, five or six big issues that we
want to crack across the county of Kent, and get a lot of traction and
buy-in from those partners. However, that needs leadership, because
otherwise, if we are always responding to the micro-management of
central Government, we are never going to get on to the job in our
locality. Richard
Kemp: I would like to add a point on housing, and
particularly housing associations. I know that this is a difficult
issue, because I chair a housing association and theoretically we are
private companies. In fact, we are private companies that are dependent
on the public sector, and the decisions that we make about housing
allocations do not necessarily affect individual families, but our
allocations policy can actually aggregate poverty by putting a whole
series of people together. I do not see how you can deal with this
effectively without considering housing in its general sense. If
housing associations create a problem because we are not statutory, I
think that you have to find a way of building us into
this. Colin
Green: This, in a sense, is the obvious list of local
commissioning bodies that actually have the resources to commission
services. I would say two key things. First, it leaves out central
Government bodies, particularly the Benefits Agency, which colleagues
have just been discussing. Where is the leverage over the Benefits
Agency to do some of the things as part of this that colleagues have
just been discussing? Secondly, within this kind of framework, given
our experience thus far of these kinds of arrangements, unless the
national Government priorities align and support this, it is actually
difficult to do. That particularly applies to what kind of priority
this will be for NHS bodies. Will it be among the must-dos for PCTs and
strategic health authorities, or will it be somewhere in a long list of
if-you-get-times?
Q
128Ms
Keeble: I want to ask about housing authorities. If
housing authorities are included in the list of responsible
authorities, they would presumably have to incorporate the housing
strategies, which will pull in the housing associations. Do you agree
with that,
Richard? Richard
Kemp: Yes, I would. In good areas, the
council—even if it does not have any stock of its
own—acts as the strategic housing authority and tries to build
them in. In good areas, good housing associations work with them, but I
can show you areas where neither of those two things
applies.
Q
129Ms
Keeble: The other thing that I want to ask about is
partnership working. On children’s needs, we have two-tier local
government with the county council and children’s services, and
the district council and housing services. One of you—I think it
was Paul—referred earlier to the difficulty of the joint working
protocols. Do you find that those work well? Richard might have views
on that as
well. Paul
Carter: The two-tier relationship is always
difficult. We are working very hard to make it work in Kent. Part of
our overall vision and regeneration framework for Kent encompasses an
overarching housing strategy, looking at housing condition and need.
The districts have signed up to it—a few of them
reluctantly—but it is not getting in the way of what we need to
do to start to change things significantly with regeneration. If you
were being specific about the two-tier issue of getting districts and
counties working together, I am optimistic that we are gaining ground
and making it happen.
Q
130Ms
Keeble: Colin, in terms of dealing with vulnerable
children—Catherine, you have probably seen this as
well—my observation is that slip-ups have quite often been due
to a lack of information getting through to the children’s
services about where the child is. Are you concerned about the need to
ensure that much more real meat is given to the need for joint working
protocols to be effective if we are to tackle poverty and vulnerability
among children?
Colin
Green: Clearly, that is a central part of good
provision for children and families but, fundamentally, it is about
changing people’s behaviour and practice on the front line. It
is about training together, about the leadership being united around
that as one of their core objectives and about each local authority
within that having the means for people to come together, communicate
together and understand what they are telling each other about children
and families. Those seem to be the fundamentals. Those are very much
about having enough of the right people properly trained who understand
that that is their job and that those who work in housing have a
responsibility to children under the Children Act 2004.
Those in other parts of the children’s service, whether in
schools or children’s centres, should have some grasp of the
role of housing authorities and providers so that they can all do their
jobs well
together. Catherine
Fitt: My experience echoes Colin’s. The
Children Act 2004 seems to give us enough support through the
children’s trust arrangements to have housing at the table, and
my experience is that that works extremely well. We wanted to have
influence where decisions are made regionally as to what is going to
happen in terms of the provision and development of housing. That is
where we wanted to start having influence. I know that there have been
some changes in the way that strategic discussions will happen
regionally. I am not confident enough to name the body that would do
that, but I suspect that if that body were subject to co-operation,
that would probably be
sufficient.
The
Chairman: Final question if you could, Sally.
Q
131Ms Keeble: Under the
overcrowding provisions, it is virtually impossible to be statutorily
overcrowded unless you manage to have an exceptionally large family in
an exceptionally small flat. The legislation is going to improve and
tighten the standards. In those cases that are sort of off to one side,
and that would be managed by a partner authority, not a responsible
authority—so it would be down the edge—how will you
ensure that the standards are properly enforced by the responsible
authority, and that children get the benefit of the tighter
standards?
Richard
Kemp: First, you are right: there is a difference
between those who do it well and those who do not. Perhaps that is one
of the answers to whether it is legislation or more support and
training that is required—probably not guidance, but more
support and training. I chaired a housing committee of a council and a
housing association, so I have an open mind. I am not trying to make
particular claims. Housing associations in particular are very well
attuned to who lives in their properties, which is an important point
that has not been used effectively
before. We
know who lives in our properties. We are able, within the resources of
our housing associations and the wider public sector where there are
partnerships, to move people appropriately to different types of
accommodation. The other thing that we can do is crucial to this
debate; we also, by and large, have a very good relationship with our
tenants. I believe that there are major opportunities for using good
housing associations and good housing providers in the public sector to
go through the front door of those houses on behalf of all the agencies
here and create the links. It is very difficult. If you are not used to
dealing with authority in a
variety of ways, to go into someone else’s office is a brave
step. We can take people though the door. We can hold the hand of the
public sector and take it into those houses, because we know where to
go—where the problems are. So, we should be used far more
imaginatively, because we can do more than provide
housing. | 
