Written evidence submitted by the Centre
for Public Service Partnerships
(LOCO 093)
SUMMARY
Local authorities should be able to lead the shaping
of all the public services in their area to deliver effective
services for users and communities and ensure value for money.
This will require consultative and responsive local political
leadership by councils working with other agencies—building
trust in their local communities by being open about the choices
and options for allocating and rationing public resources, brokering
between different interest groups and between the short and long
term. The search for fairness, the best solution, or the least
worst, is a political process. It requires strong local leadership
and relationships and a creative approach to service redesign
across agencies—a change from the drift to a compliant,
or even dependent culture that had grown up after decades of central
government direction of local budgets, outcomes and performance.
¾ Local
government should be at the heart of localism and have powers
to shape local spending decisions, local services and local outcomes—to
improve services and places for individuals and groups who live
and work in the locality.
¾ Local
government must work with others across the public, business and
third sectors, as localism includes devolving some power and funding
to local communities to empower neighbourhoods and individuals.
¾ We believe
that localism, building on "Total Place" and "Place
Based Budgeting" approaches can deliver efficiencies as well
as better outcomes for people and communities by joining up the
commissioning, procurement, design and delivery of services. This
should embrace a significant proportion of the total public expenditure
in an area—it will be a terrible missed opportunity if the
new freedom is only to fully control all existing local government
expenditure.
¾ Local
partnership working can be led by principal local authorities
co-ordinating local partnerships to commission locally redesigned
cost-effective services—they can use the new general power
of competence.
¾ Localism
will also require changed structures, roles and behaviours in
Westminster and Whitehall and in political parties.
¾ National
commitment to localism requires acceptance of the variation in
the strengths, circumstances and challenges across local communities.
Different outcomes based on local choice should be celebrated
rather than worrying about "post code lotteries".
¾ Partnership
architecture will vary across different localities and spatial
levels to reflect local circumstances and objectives and to focus
on outcomes and specific client groups.
INTRODUCTION
The Centre for Public Service Partnerships welcomes
this opportunity to submit evidence to the Committee's Inquiry
into localism. This subject is very relevant to the Centre's own
mission to shape innovative public service policy and better public
service outcomes through a specific focus on partnership and collaboration.
The Centre:
¾ undertakes
research and policy development;
¾ provides
strategic advisory support to the public, third and business sectors;
and
¾ comments
on topical practice and policy issues.
The Centre was significantly involved in the development
of "Total Place" and its Director was programme director
for the Total Place pilot in Worcestershire. The Centre has also
helped many other local authorities and their local partners as
well as central government departments to tailor local approaches
based on Total Place principles and lessons; greater decentralisation;
developing leadership capacity in places across agencies, reviewing
and redesigning local partnership arrangements, and building partnerships
between public sector agencies and the private and third sectors
to drive outcomes up and costs down. This submission draws directly
from the Centre's practical experience of advising and supporting
public sector partners and others, as well as its more theoretical
research.
This Inquiry is timely as the Government develops
and implements its policies for decentralisation, localism and
"Big Society"; and public bodies consider how to respond
to the forthcoming Spending Review announcements.
It is encouraging that the Government is strongly
committed to localism. However, we believe that more clarity and
consistency of national political direction is essential to achieve
better services locally and more efficient use of overall public
resources.
LOCALISM AND
DECENTRALISATION
The terms "localism and decentralisation"
are sometimes used interchangeably. The key point is ensuring
decisions are taken by or as close to the communities affected
by those decisions as is practicable. Localism does not necessarily
imply that such decisions are always taken by local authorities.
They could be taken by smaller more local neighbourhoods or community
groups, or town and parish councils. Decentralisation can mean
full devolution of powers to a different body—from central
to local government—or include instances where some of the
accountability and decision-making is held back at a higher level,
such as defining the scope and the shape of what is taken at the
local level—for instance in neighbourhood policing, and
aspects of the NHS. Therefore both localism and decentralisation
are on a spectrum of local control and autonomy, which can include
some limits on the variations in content and style which full
localism promotes.
Local government is the democratically elected and
accountable body in a locality with a specific duty and opportunity
to provide civic or community leadership—by all elected
councillors whether in Cabinet or Scrutiny or backbench roles.
This will be reinforced by the proposed general power of competence.
Many Councillors are community organisers, facilitating the success
of community groups, brokering arrangements that do not always
cost public resources, but benefit local people. This role exceeds
their responsibilities for individual services and outcomes—it
is their long-term stewardship or "place-shaping"[38]
role.
THE LESSONS
FROM TOTAL
PLACE AND
LOCAL PARTNERSHIP
WORKING
Citizens in any locality are the same people who
use the services of the local NHS, councils, the police and other
local and national public agencies and pay for these services
through their taxes. They expect these agencies to serve them
as individuals with mixed needs, and not separately as patients,
parents or council customers. In a time of austerity the public
wants to know public resources are being used effectively and
efficiently.
The Total Place pilots demonstrated that outcomes
for citizens and communities can be enhanced at the same time
as making significant financial savings by eliminating duplication,
rationalising services and assets between agencies, and redesigning
services around citizens and users. This needs to work across
institutional and professional boundaries which are sometimes
artificial and usually historical or professional constructs which
create barriers to securing efficient solutions to local needs
and choices.
The Total Place pilots and other innovative integration
and local partnership working such as integrated management teams
and aligned governance arrangements across local council and PCT
such as in Blackburn with Darwen, Herefordshire and Hammersmith
and Fulham have proved that much can be achieved without legislative
change. Many improvements can be achieved without Whitehall action
and the pilots released confidence and helped focus local leadership
and partnerships to achieve more together, quicker.
Public finances will be under enormous pressures
over the next five years. It makes sense to introduce measures
that will ensure key outcomes are provided whilst delivering value
for money. Total Place showed the desirability of breaking down
the vertical silos that reach from ministers to different front
line services and of local horizontal joining up to meet needs
of people - such as of elderly people requiring both medical,
housing and social care. It must always be right to combine maximising
effectiveness and efficiency with better outcomes for individuals
and communities.
The Total Place pilots also identified the need for
greater and more focused collaboration between Whitehall and localities.
There is a requirement for a "joined up" and co-ordinated
approach between Whitehall departments which needs to be clear
in the architecture that implements the Spending Review. All Whitehall
Departments will have to change to actively deliver localism and
decentralisation—it will not be achieved only through Communities
and Local Government.
For example solutions need to be able to join up
across different services to create innovative solutions for those
individuals and communities facing the combined challenges of
worklessness, poor health, high crime, poor housing, and low levels
of skills and educational aspiration. This has been proven not
just by Total Place pilots but by successes across the past 20
years in Education and Health Action Zones, SRBs, Crime and Disorder
Reduction Partnerships, Youth and Children's Trusts, and Local
Strategic Partnerships. However, many of these were decentralised
not localised models—central government providing funding
and permitting specific partnerships within a national system.
They achieved focused outcomes but added to bureaucracy and often
did not improve core services. Significant strategic focus and
time was devoted to considering how to spend the "additional
monies" rather than how to maximise the impact of core budgets.
For example a Total Place project in Kidderminster has shown that
a total public sector spend of over £50 million per year
in one neighbourhood (many time higher per capita than across
Worcestershire) has resulted in some of the poorest social and
economic outcomes whilst most strategic focus was on a "Pathfinder"
project of only £400k per year.
Too many local public partnerships to date have been
"arranged marriages"; mainly shaping a local response
to a national prescription which set the membership, activities
and rules for accessing the "extra" funding. Even local
Area Agreements became less an expression of the true local strategy,
and more a local response to a national agenda administered regionally.
This distracted energy from creating successful partnerships between
public agencies to redesign the delivery of public services using
the core local budgets. However, the past few years have seen
increases in joint commissioning and joint appointments including
of chief executives, and of more public/private and public/third
sector contracts.
Councillors need to be bold and use their legitimate
mandate to take tough decisions and test new designs for services—as
has already happened within existing powers, such as in Blackburn
with Darwen where the council and PCT came together gradually
and now are completely integrated. In the same locality, other
services are run in wider partnerships across the East Lancashire
group of councils, or in private sector partnerships or with community
organisations at very local level. As such new tapestries of partnerships
develop, Councillors will need to provide effective scrutiny to
their leadership colleagues and to local partnerships.
It is expected that Local Area Agreements will end
and the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) model will change significantly
as the localist agenda progresses. There will be different partnership
arrangements based on achieving specific outcomes for specific
client groups and/or communities and for driving down costs. These
will vary to reflect local circumstances and they will also be
based on a variety of spatial boundaries—not always locality
or local authority boundaries, but sometimes sub-regional or even
a small neighbourhood or village.
PLACE BASED
BUDGETING
Coalition Government ministers have frequently spoken
in support of the concept of Total Place. More particularly Ministers
promote "Place Based Budgets". But, as articulated by
the Secretary of State on 3 October 2010, this does not offer
the full potential that Total Place offered for extending localism
and local government democratic control of a significant proportion
of the total public expenditure in a locality. It seems that Place
Based Budgets will allow local authorities and elected mayors
only the freedom and flexibility to fully control existing local
government expenditure by removing ring fencing and other central
controls. If so, it will represent a major significant missed
opportunity.
Further, government seems not to recognise that the
impact of this freedom may be diminished by other policies which
could confuse local relationships and potentially create delays
and new expensive bureaucracy. These include proposals for directly
elected police and crime commissioners and for PCTs to be replaced
by GP consortia to lead local NHS commissioning. The economic
powers of the new Local Enterprise Partnerships are unclear and
each propose their own way of working across authority boundaries,
which could add to the fragmentation away from the original Total
Place aim of co-ordinating all public services and spend in the
same place. The emerging national policy framework suggests changes
are likely to existing partnership arrangements and structures,
with each public body involved in a tapestry of different partnerships
for different purposes across several sizes of spatial areas.
This may be appropriate, as the public can appreciate that different
services have different levels of economy of scale or accountability.
Some basic services may have little local variation and are best
procured by large regional contracts to secure low cost, transport
services should be commissioned on a county or sub-regional level,
whilst parks and libraries may have such high value and identity
to a specific neighbourhood or particular community that accountability
should be secured at that very local level.
MAKING LOCALISM
WORK AND
BE ACCOUNTABLE
Central government should devolve a significantly
greater proportion of total local public expenditure to genuine
local control, so challenging
existing accountabilities and service boundaries. Currently local
authorities control less than 10% of the total public spend in
their areas. The majority of the expenditure—schools, welfare
benefits and pensions—is directly controlled from Whitehall.
This is contrary to the principle of localism. It also means that
the full benefits of a "Total Place" type approach will
never be realised—improvements for users and cost savings
across public services.
Localism demands new models for governance, commissioning
and accountability mechanisms in localities. Reorganisations are
costly, time-consuming, confusing and rarely make significant
difference. There is not the time, will or evidence to support
major structural reform of public agencies in localities or elsewhere.
The public wants clear accountability, simple structures, and
increasing focus on value for money. Savings require flexibility
across budgets. Local leadership should be based firmly on the
democratic legitimacy of local government and elected local leaders
will have to both control and influence, recognising other forms
of accountability in localities and between them in city-regions,
Local Economic Partnerships and other partnerships.
Local accountabilities and relationships need to
be agreed since most of the country has two or three tiers of
local government (GLA and London boroughs; county, district and
also town and parish councils) as well as other bodies. Who will
be responsible for these wider devolved budgets (capital and revenue)
and who will make the decisions on resource allocation, local
entitlements and eligibility criteria, charges and other factors?
In each locality local agencies should be able to propose mergers
and institutional changes where there is a clear business case.
One model for "Total Place" or area based
budgets would extend the powers and accountability of local government
by giving principal local authorities the clear responsibility
for strategic commissioning for all locally controlled services,
including elements of the benefits services. Operational commissioning
would continue to reside with key specialist agencies such as
GP consortia. If police and other bodies remain separate, there
must be a close look at where services overlap for the same users
so that services can be jointly commissioned and redesigned to
benefit users and make savings, whist retaining clear accountabilities.
This commissioning role could be co-ordinated and
supported by a "public services board" of politicians
and non-executives from the key public agencies. In turn these
boards would be supported by a core team of public sector chief
executives and senior budget holders.
In such a model an officer—usually the chief
executive of the principal local authority—with accountability
to local elected councillors would be identified as the local
accounting officer. Such an officer would have an accountability
for some funds voted directly for parliament—which they
could discharge through a relationship with a Whitehall permanent
secretary. A preferable, more localist, model would be for Parliament
to agree to devolve monies and the powers direct to the Revenue
Support Grant along with responsibility to local councils answerable
to their local electorate.
Localism and "Total Place" is predicated
on local choices resulting in differences between localities.
Some minimum entitlements to specific services may continue to
be set at a national level, reflecting legal duties, and these
need to be determined and agreed between Government and local
government with wide scale public consultation. We would argue
that the assumption should always be that local determination
should be the default position. There is a need to set a timetable
to conclude this debate at local and national level, to establish
the legitimacy of such local differences, as already seen in the
differences between the services such as education in the four
countries of the UK.
The benefits of local accountability and place shaping
challenge those who believe central government has a duty to "avoid
a post code lottery". In practice, many centralised services
have not managed to completely deliver uniformly, partly due to
their interaction with local circumstances. Indeed centrally controlled
organisations such as the NHS already have major geographical
differences in their outputs and outcomes.
It is a fundamental role of elected government to
represent, promote and protect the interests of constituents and
be accountable for the best use of public resources such as tax
monies, charges, buildings, expert staff—to ensure the wider
public good and community well-being. The freedom to spend less
requires clear accountability to local people—who have the
power to choose and vote for their local representatives and leaders.
They will want to contribute to meaningful local debate on choices,
and on long-term planning and place shaping. They will not want
to be fobbed off by a confusion of different bodies saying and
"but that's not my responsibility." Whilst approving
of cost cutting and economies of scale being achieved by sensible
procurement and contracting-out, the public will always hold their
local councillor and council leader ultimately responsible.
Practical implementation should be supported by accounting
and funding arrangements which promote a joint long-term view.
The balance of spend and of direct provision may change between
agencies, and there will be tracking to recognise where benefits
accrue to one or more organisations as a result of an investment
and/or action by another agency. This would enable and greatly
incentivise partnership and collaborative working. Work on this
technically complex issue should begin as a matter of urgency.
LOCAL POLITICAL
LEADERSHIP IS
KEY TO
EFFECTIVE LOCALISM
Localism will require effective local political leadership.
The attributes of such leadership include:
¾ an ability
to set clear vision for the community having consulted within
it and with external stakeholders and being clear of the organisation's
role and contribution to realising this vision;
¾ effective
communication of this vision to local citizens, staff and other
stakeholders;
¾ the
ability and the willingness to listen to these stakeholders and,
in particular, current and potential partners;
¾ the
patience to take time to talk, listen, consult and understand
where the partner/potential partner is coming from and what they
seek to achieve;
¾ a realisation
that they must understand the cultures, governance, constraints
and drivers that determine what their partner can do;
¾ a willingness
to invest time in building relationships—partnership has
to be worked at and has to be embedded throughout the partner
organizations;
¾ a challenging
mentality that asks "why?" "what for?" "why
not?" and similar questions;
¾ understand
risk management and ensure that it is properly allocated and managed
in partnerships; and
¾ being
ready to let go and allowing others to do so.
Often partnerships fail because there is no alignment
of objectives for the partners and/or no opportunity for "win-win"
outcomes. One-sided partnerships are not partnerships - they are
one-sided arrangements.
Leaders have to be ready and prepared not to command
but to negotiate, persuade and often to "trade objectives
and resources" with partners so that there is a rational
reason for each partner to participate in the relationship. This
can be challenging, especially when the respective perceived power
and authority of the partners is not considered to be equal. Simply
asserting your power advantage will usually result in sub-optimal
and unsustainable arrangements that will fall over.
While local government political leaders have the
right and indeed duty to assert their democratic legitimacy in
their localities, they will need to deploy this with care when
they do not have any legal or other powers over the potential
partner. Leadership of place is not and should not be the responsibility
of local government leaders alone. It is essential to pull together
the leaderships of the wider public sector, the third and community
sectors and the business sector and others to galvanise the strength
of civil society.
For the last eighteen months The Centre for Public
Service Partnerships has supported and advised local leaders in
Worcestershire to do precisely this through the Shenstone Programme.
The Worcestershire Partnership in 2009 decided to
bring together a cadre of 26 leaders from across civil society
to embark on a programme of exploration and development. The membership
of the group included political leaders from the county and district
councils, chief executives from across the public sector, senior
business leaders, third sector leaders, the Bishop of Worcester,
the Vice-Chancellor of the local university, college principal
and a head teacher.
The programme has become known as the Shenstone Programme—and
the cadre The Shenstone Group—after the location of the
hotel at which it meets for its monthly sessions and to avoid
any confusion with the formal partnership governance arrangements.
The Shenstone Group has no executive authority. It provided a
strategic overview, guidance and critical friend challenge to
the Worcestershire Total Place pilot and its projects.
It has set a continuing programme of monthly meetings
and all of its members have made a personal commitment to invest
at least one day a month of their time to the programme. The first
session was held in the summer of 2009. The Group meets in facilitated
plenary sessions and in smaller task groups which will produce
high level strategic plans and ideas for addressing the key wicked
issues facing the County, strengthening partnership working—it
has nurtured the creation of a revised LSP and public service
board structure—and building understanding between the sectors
so as to focus on what matters for local people, communities and
businesses.
The group has challenged public sector orthodoxy.
Business leaders are able to contribute their experience and professional
judgements in way both respected and valued by their public sector
colleagues. Third sector leaders are able bring their perspective
to the debate. The force of this process has been very powerful
and has, and continues to add value in the county. The Shenstone
programme has just embarked on its second year with a slightly
wider and larger membership.
MINISTERS, CIVIL
SERVANTS AND
POLITICAL PARTIES
NEED TO
BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY
Greater localism requires strong consistent political
leadership locally and in Westminster and Whitehall through civil
service champions in CLG and Treasury—and crucially in spending
departments such as DWP and DfT. There is a need for a significant
cultural and behavioural shift for civil servants and politicians.
Essentially neither ministers nor civil servants ought to be involved
in most of the decisions taking place locally. Yet over the past
30 years both have increased their role, and set up regional outposts
and national quangos answering to ministers and running more national
initiatives locally. That was neither decentralisation or localism.
It may have been well-intentioned, led by the desire to ensure
new entitlements were made available to all, irrespective of local
communities' capacity to choose or pay for them themselves, or
a belief that central provision ensured greater cost-effectiveness.
But an increase in the number of ministers each promoting more
specific initiatives and programmes as widely as possible, led
them to lead nationally with policies and delivery that should
have been local choices. It was often ineffective, expensive,
counter-productive and failed to add value or engage with the
history, strengths and challenges of different localities.
As the central highly regulated system reverses,
Whitehall departments should shrink in size. Consequently the
civil service will have less capacity as well as less interest
in micro-managing localities. Ministers and Permanent Secretaries
should only answer to Parliament for those matters over which
they are in control and not for localised matters—though
they may have new relationships for decentralised issues.
This has implications too for the political process.
Ministers should be concerned with national strategic policy.
They should not feel the urge to interfere or answer for local
decisions taken by local politicians and local people. Political
parties set national manifestoes outlining how they would make
policy trade-offs but will need to allow local flexibility on
some policies—as national pledges on local issues could
run contrary to-local decisions and choices.
FURTHER DEVOLUTION
TO NEIGHBOURHOODS
There should be further devolution of decision making
and finance into communities and neighbourhoods. Currently there
is a range of examples based on existing town and parish councils,
established community groups as well new ventures, such as new
mutuals or those based around existing council service workers
or users, spun off from council control or brand—for example
both are being encouraged by Lambeth council's co-operative prospectus.
Many councils of differing sizes across rural and
urban areas have set up neighbourhood forums with some local accountability
and powers, including Birmingham, Wiltshire and several London
councils. There are choices to be made requiring clarity as to
whether the council is off-loading assets and ceding responsibility
for them—such as a community facility to a community group
for them to decide, manage and engage with the local people—or
when it is setting a framework for decentralising decisions whilst
still retaining accountability itself. We promote localism not
local anarchy. Experiments in local neighbourhood management in
the early 1990s were seen as successful by some local people,
but also led to some confused accountability and higher costs,
partly linked to supporting and building capacity in different
community groups, seen as necessary to ensure involvement. This
experience is now being reviewed as local councils ponder how
they can support "Big Society" initiatives.
A vision where each service, each school and GP is
directly accountable to its users will not work on its own - though
it can be powerful in securing change and service improvement.
Each citizen uses more than one service and will realise that
choices need to be made between individuals, between communities
of place and of interest and they expect strong leadership and
collaboration. For the past hundred years, multi-purpose local
authorities have developed and absorbed single purpose Boards
to overcome fragmentation and high administrative costs. Users
have their lives to lead, they really want public infrastructure
to work and not call on their time.
LOCAL TAX
RAISING IS
NOT ESSENTIAL
FOR LOCALISM
Localism is not the same as smaller and weaker government.
Some believe that localism requires local freedom to raise funding
and set local taxes—as well as decide on how to spend it.
Yet total fiscal devolution could lead to greater inequality and
smaller scope for localism and has had a limited tradition in
England compared to federal and larger nations who do not have
England's very uneven spread of wealth. Those areas of the country
with the most wealth in terms of income, business, and housing
values tend to have the lowest total social and economic needs—therefore
tax receipts must be equalised to avoid unacceptable differences
in services provided between localities and enable all local government
to serve all its citizens. No local authority cannot opt out of
providing statutory services that are difficult, specialised and
expensive but only needed by a handful of the community. Local
government finance is always complex because it is multi-dimensional
but it can work despite an opaque relationship between local,
national taxes and charges and services received. Interestingly,
the Scottish Government has shown it can exercise power and make
distinct policy differences without raising taxes. We welcome
recent government initiatives which could add additional funding
sources for local determination such as Tax Increment Financing
powers. Social Impact Bonds could provide social enterprises and
community enterprises with the means to finance investment in
new programmes.
What matters most is the ability for local determination
of how public monies are deployed in a locality or place. Therefore,
we would argue that "place based budgets" should cover
a significant proportion of local public expenditure by all agencies
and across all services. There should be few and ultimately no
ring fenced funds.
Local political choices will have to be made and
these will not always be popular even in times of increasing public
expenditure let alone when there are spending cuts. There have
to be trade-offs and some cost benefit analysis should form the
basis of decision making across services and agencies. There are
challenging political choices to make and important statutory
duties to fulfil.
The vast majority of the population all use some
local services such as roads and waste collection, whilst other
services have fewer, specific users. In England the overall quality
and public satisfaction of services has risen—perhaps fuelling
"rational apathy" in those who use only the universal
services. Yet it is the child protection and adult social care
services targeted at a few users that have the highest costs—and
this is a difficult local democratic issue, as are any that raise
questions of "fairness" and "entitlement".
However, these are fundamental to the public debates that local
politicians should not evade when they take responsibility for
decisions.
October 2010
38 Sir Michael Lyons-Inquiry
into local government-final report 2007-comprehensive survey of
landscape:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/pdf/158064.pdf Back
| 
