Memorandum from Surrey County Council
SUMMARY
- I welcome the direction of the government's plans
for localism and decentralisation of public services. Localism
offers the potential for more efficient, joined up decision-making
and delivery that meets local needs. Resources can be targeted
to where they are most needed within a particular area and decision-making
can be quicker and more responsive. Councils are best placed to
make these decisions.
- Localism is consistent with the direction of
travel in Surrey. Surrey County Council has deciding and delivering
locally as a priority in our corporate plan and work is underway
to consider what more the council can do.
- I welcome the steps taken by the government to
devolve responsibility and resources to the county council. The
council is also working with neighbouring authorities to prepare
to take on the more strategic issues and we are working with local
partners to pilot greater devolution to district and borough level
or further and to evaluate the benefits.
The extent to which decentralisation leads to
more effective public service delivery; and what the limits are,
or should be, of localism
I believe there is significant potential for localism
to enable more effective public service delivery. In particular
for areas of service where:
- there is variation in local needs and circumstances;
and
- significant local coordination is needed to deliver
an effective service.
Local councils are better able than government to
decide the priorities for their area and better able to design
and deliver the services to meet the needs of their communities.
I welcome steps being taken to increase local accountability for
economic development, planning decisions, public health and policing
and believe there is further to go. More accountability and resources
could be further devolved to district, borough, parish and town
councils in order to ensure services are tailored and resource
targets to best meet the needs of local people.
There could be a danger that the needs of minority
groups may be overlooked, particularly where they are geographically
dispersed and less likely to be represented within local decision-making.
Deprivation in Surrey is focussed very locally. A single estate
or a block of houses may be associated with the majority of health,
crime, education and employment issues in a district or borough.
Political engagement and volunteering can be low in many of these
areas and it is important that local decision-making and delivery
engage and target these areas to reduce disadvantage and do not
reinforce it. Checks and balances will be required to ensure that
services are accessible to all and that vulnerable people are
supported.
The lessons for decentralisation from Total Place,
and the potential to build on the work done under that initiative,
particularly through place-based budgeting
Total Place pilots highlight the scale of spending
in local areas and in particular on a few individuals and families
in those areas. The pilots have also highlighted the need to rebalance
influence that local government has in its areas in comparison
with the rest of the public sector. The pilots demonstrate the
failure of the silo structure in public services that is propagated
from the departments of Whitehall. They demonstrate that devolution
can deliver on its promise as well as indicating the size of the
prize available.
In Surrey, we are taking forward several initiatives
with partners using a total place type approach:
- Surrey First—we have established a joint
committee to oversee collaborative working arrangements to develop
a shared service approach to back office functions. Core work
streams underway are Assets, ICT, Waste, HR and Procurement.
- Review of local decision-making arrangements
with the aim of establishing a single strategic decision-making
body in each district and borough to strengthen local decision-making
and delivery.
- Pilot needs analysis and resource mapping at
district and borough level.
- Priority places: focussing partnership work on
those places in the county requiring the greatest support as identified
by "heat maps" which show the well being of local places
across the county by performance against a range of indicators.
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
Local government has a key role in a decentralised
model of local public service delivery as it has the democratic
mandate. For example, local authorities would be the obvious place
to locate responsibility for a community budget and current proposals
to make upper tier councils' accountable for public health are
welcome.
However, accountability for outcomes in a local area
does not mean responsibility for all service delivery. Local authorities
have a role to play in working with local people and other local
agents to decide what are the best ways to deliver specific services.
They might then have a commissioning or enabling role, while services
are provided by the voluntary or private sector.
Localism should extend to other local agents to the
extent that they are all partners working to increase wellbeing
of their area. In particular, the model should increase accountability
of other public services to local people by putting them under
local democratic control. It should encourage joining up across
the public sector in a place, such as more shared buildings, joint
contact centres, shared back office functions and joint commissioning
and contracts.
Voluntary sector organisations can offer huge potential
for delivering more local services through: excellent value for
money, high level of trust and lack of stigma in the community
and strong access to local networks. However, there are risks
of relying too heavily on the sector, particularly for statutory
provision, without the necessary support and contracts in place;
and many organisations may be vulnerable in the short-term due
to current or imminent funding cuts.
Local decision-making must be underpinned with robust
engagement and consultation with residents. Local members have
a key role in interpreting the concerns of individuals to enhance
the evidence base for their patch and lead the debate locally
on how to reconcile the needs of the local area with the resources
available for services. In Surrey, the Safer Community Policing
Panels are an effective mechanism for promoting engagement with
residents and there are trials in one borough with councillors
chairing these and covering a wider agenda.
The action which will be necessary on the part
of Whitehall departments to achieve effective decentralised public
service delivery
Government must continue the drive to remove red
tape and barriers to local innovation:
- Remove prescription regarding partnership arrangements
and joint working and instead allowing locally appropriate arrangements
to be developed through practical necessity.
- Increase the accountability of local authorities
for the outcomes in their area and underpin this with community
budgets and a single streamlined local accountability framework
for funding received from central government. This would necessarily
involve more services being under local democratic control.
- Commit to achieving a target minimum level of
funding to be channelled directly to local areas through community
budgets and to invest a proportion of savings achieved in prevention
and early intervention.
- Establish a power of general competence and including
removal of the ultra vires principle.
- Increase the ability of local authorities to
be entrepreneurial for example by increasing freedoms around company
ownership and our ability to trade our services and expertise.
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
The areas where localism has the potential to enable
the achievement of savings in the cost of local public services
include those areas mentioned above that enable more effective
public service delivery:
- there is variation in local needs and circumstances
so local decision making and delivery can tailor services to meet
local needs; and
- significant local coordination is needed to deliver
an effective service. For example doing as much work as possible
when you close a local road minimises disruption and reduces costs.
But also those where:
- those where there is not significant potential
for economies of scale;
- the size of the task more closely matches local
organisations and SMEs. For example, a quote from a local firm
to dig a hole for planting a tree is a fraction of the quote from
a major contractor for the same task;
- Surrey County Council is working with local authority
partners to devolve service delivery. This has the potential to
both improve service and reduce costs as resources are targeted
to lower cost local providers and local coordination of work better
meets local needs and reduces disruption; and
- however, replication of functions across several
areas means that decentralisation can be a less cost effective
solution, that is district/borough-level commissioning of universal
services where needs are consistent across the county.
What, if any, arrangements for the oversight of
local authority performance will be necessary to ensure effective
local public service delivery
Local government should be accountable to local people
for budgets funded by local taxation and to central government
for money received for budgets funded from national taxation.
Transparency is essential to local accountability
and councils need to provide local people with the information
they need to hold them to account. Ways to compare performance
between areas (unit costs, productivity, outcomes) will be needed.
Surrey County Council has already taken steps to increase transparency
for example, by publishing accounts on line and web casting public
meetings.
Some mechanism of external challenge will be needed
to provide confidence that organisations are being transparent
and robust in their self-assessment. Peer review offers good value
for money and the potential to support effective learning and
improvement across the sector.
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
A truly localist solution would be based on accountability
to local people. Allowing local authorities to keep more of the
tax that is raised locally would address the underlying problem
the question poses.
Assuming that parliament will continue to distribute
a significant portion of funding and will remain reluctant to
truly devolve accountability, any framework imposed should be
very streamlined and based on a few key measures of outcomes related
to national priorities. Grants for local areas to deliver against
these priorities should be pooled from existing departmental budgets
or formula grant and there should be a single channel of accountability
for outcomes and use of resources in an area to parliament.
In two-tier authorities there is a potential tension
between locally commissioned services and upper tier accountability
for performance measurements. As an example, youth provision lends
itself to being decided and delivered at a district/borough level,
yet is central to addressing some of the performance outcomes
that the county council is judged upon such as teenage pregnancy
or NEETs. The council is working with Surrey's districts and boroughs
to exploring the extent to which devolving both budget and accountability
to a joint strategic decision making body that is accountable
to both local authorities in the district or borough will help
resolve that tension.
October 2010
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