Written evidence submitted by Knowsley
Borough Council (LOCO 41)
SUMMARY
(i) The approach to decentralisation adopted
by the Government is welcome but needs further work to develop
it. There is a need to have a fine grained view as to what subsidiarity
means for particular services, organisations and spatial levels.
Whitehall Departments need to be more consistent in their approach
to decentralisation and localism, and CLG need to take the led
in ensuring that this happens.
1. The extent to which decentralisation leads
to more effective public service delivery; and what the limits
are, or should be, of localism
1.1 Decentralisation of services, as part of
the wider localism agenda, is not a pancea for all ills or all
services. Subsidiarity suggests that services should be controlled
at the lowest possible level, not always at the lowest or highest
levels. There are times when we are one nation, times when we
are 150 Local Authority areas and times when we are individuals.
However, it is important to get the right balance for the right
services. This may necessarily need to be different between different
Councils given the different population sizes that they serve.
1.2 The organising presumption should be that
we organise at a low spatial level and then if this does not work,
organise at higher levels until we find the most practical level
to organise.
1.3 The evidence suggests that decentralised
services are more flexible and responsive to local concerns. This
needs to be balanced with the effective and efficient delivery
of services, as organisations on a larger spatial footprint may
be more efficient, but less responsive. If this is the case, and
there are legitimate areas where this is the case (eg skills development
at a functional economic area), it is essential service design
and delivery meets the needs of the areas being served and there
needs to be an opportunity for local voices to be included within
the contract and performance management For example recent successful
work to address Not in Education Employment and Training issues
in Knowsley focused on case conferencing at an area level as partners
around the needs of key individuals. Partner services both area,
Borough wide and City Region Services were then re-directed and
designed to address these needs.
1.4 Services may be delivered at a very local
level and meet demand issues, but they can also be directed from
the centre: schools are an example of this. Localism and decentralisation
must be followed through fully if they are to be effective.
1.5 The different spatial levels of decentralisation
across Whitehall departments also precludes from a consistent
approach. The proposed allocation of NHS budgets to GP consortia
is different to the support offered directly to individuals under
the Work Programme which is different again to the emergent proposals
around business support to be covered at the level of the functional
economic area. This is unhelpful at one level and counterproductive
at another.
2. The lessons for decentralisation from Total
Place, and the potential to build on the work done under that
initiative, particularly through place-based budgeting
2.1 Total Place has provided a lens to consider
the local delivery of services and to examine how services are
provided by different bodies. Traditionally, services are specified
by a range of Whitehall departments and instructions issued to
Local Government and other service deliverers, who then have to
join them back up again. Total Place, if it is fully implemented,
should allow local areas to determine their investment priorities
based upon local priorities. This needs grant and funding regulations
to be freed up to facilitate this virement between original funding
streams.
2.2 Knowsley's six Area Partnership Boards determine
their own priorities within the Boroughs strategic framework and
then work as partnerships to bend service delivery to address
these priorities eg increasing recycling in South Huyton . If
this work is to be facilitated further partners need to be able
to organise citizen and customer information and budgets in ways
that relate to these areas, not necessarily to devolve budgets,
but as a minimum to be able to better understand the needs of
areas and the to evaluate the cost and benefit of interventions.
2.3 Total Place will only be effective if all
partners involved participate in the process. Recent experience
in Knowsley has shown that some partners are unable or unwilling
to participate due to data sharing issues at an individual level
or the differential level at which financial information is held.
3. The role of local government in a decentralised
model of local public service delivery, and the extent to which
localism can and should extend to other local agents
3.1 Local Government has a unique role to play
in the decentralisation of service provision given that it is
the only locally based organisation with a democratic mandate.
This democratic legitimacy is often overlooked by national policy
makers, who might think of local government as another local delivery
agency. Local Government provides the focus for a local democratic
voice to be offered on the quality and quantity of service delivery
as part of both its representative role and its wider role on
scrutiny of public services. Therefore Local Government is well
placed to lead the overview of decentralised models of delivery
in an area and enable other local agents to input other voices
not engaged through the democratic process. This must include
a restatement of the balance between the rights and responsibilities
of the individual.
4. The action which will be necessary on the
part of Whitehall departments to achieve effective decentralised
public service delivery
4.1 Whitehall Departments need to understand
the way in which local communities operate and are organised,
and therefore the way in which they can interact with them. It
would also be beneficial for them to appreciate the existing mechanisms
for engagement rather than setting up structures that are at the
least parallel and at the worst duplicative, inefficient and ineffective.
Departments will need to be able to organise budget, and resident
and customer information in a way that relates to "place"
and in a way that can be shared with partners.
5. The impact of decentralisation on the achievement
of savings in the cost of local public services and the effective
targeting of cuts to those services
5.1 There is again a balance that needs to be
struck between efficiency and flexibility in service provision.
A number of services are provided in a suboptimal manner, and
their efficiency or effectiveness could be improved by having
them provided on a more local level. The impending reductions
in public expenditure need to be modeled through on a local level
to determine the localized impact.
6. What, if any, arrangements for the oversight
of local authority performance will be necessary to ensure effective
local public service delivery
6.1 The Minister for Decentralisation has stated
that the oversight of Council performance will be performed by
local residents, who are better informed about performance as
a result of freeing up performance information. This runs the
risk of performance being monitored by an informed minority, with
vulnerable groups excluded from this process. There is a clear
role for the Scrutiny function within Councils here to hold the
Executive to account, as well as a role for partner organisations
through Local Strategic Partnerships and the emergent Local Enterprise
Partnerships.
7. How effective and appropriate accountability
can be achieved for expenditure on the delivery of local services,
especially for that voted by Parliament rather than raised locally
7.1 There is a clear role for Local Councils
in this given their democratic accountability but this will require
the Government to move past empty rhetoric to the genuine decentralisation
of accountability. The indications from CLG in the early days
of this administration are encouraging but it remains to be seen
as how influential they are with colleague Departments in Whitehall.
The Committee would be particularly interested to
hear of examples, from the UK or overseas, of models of decentralised
public service delivery from which lessons could be learnt for
further decentralisation in England.
October 2010
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