Communities and Local Government CommitteeWritten evidence from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council
Background
Tunbridge Wells Borough Council welcomes the opportunity to provide its views on the Committee’s inquiry into Community Budgets.
Tunbridge Wells applied to become a Neighbourhood Level Community Budget (NLCB) pilot in November 2011 and was successful in becoming the only district-led pilot in the country.
Sherwood
The pilot is focused on the ward of Sherwood in Tunbridge Wells (population 6,800). Whilst Tunbridge Wells is often seen an affluent place, neighbourhood-level data shows that Sherwood is one of the borough’s more deprived neighbourhoods.
The issues
We knew a number of things about Sherwood from our data:
It has the highest concentration of social rented housing in the borough (37%) which is more than twice the borough average.
It has the highest proportion of lone parent households in the borough.
It has the highest rate of unemployment in the borough.
18% of the working age population are claiming some form of benefit.
It recorded the highest level of recorded crime and anti-social behaviour in the borough outside the town centre.
39% of the working age population have no qualifications (far greater than the borough average).
It has more than twice the percentage of NEETs (16—18 year olds not in education, employment or training) in the borough.
It has the highest rate of alcohol and drug-related hospital admissions (almost three times greater than the Tunbridge Wells and county average).
It has the second highest prevalence of smoking in the borough.
It has the highest rates of childhood obesity in the borough:
As the pilot developed, we also found a number of other issues that needed addressing:
When we looked more deeply at recipients of out-of-work benefits in the ward, we found that low level mental health issues were cited in more than 50% of cases as the reason for unemployment.
Two thirds of RSL residents were in receipt of some form of housing benefits.
Statistics from JobCentre Plus told us that residents who had been in receipt of JSA for more than two years were statistically more likely to die than get a job.
Opportunities
We were also acutely aware of a number of opportunities that presented themselves in and around Sherwood. Including:
A successful Town Green application had been made for Sherwood Lake and 47 acres of woodland—the largest such application in the UK (giving the potential to work with the community to develop a significant natural resource).
The local registered social landlord (RSL) had been successful in receiving planning permission for a £34 million regeneration scheme on the estate.
Funding had been unlocked to develop a new building for the former high school (Skinners Kent Academy)—a multi million pound rebuild that has provided a 21st century learning environment to raise the aspirations of the students and the wider community.
The growth retail and light industrial units in an adjoining industrial estate offered employment opportunities.
The TN2 Centre provides a focal point for the community and includes a library, sports hall, a café, space for meeting and access to services.
Finally, an analysis of budgetary spend identified over £35 million per annum being spent within the ward with more than £13 million being spent on out of work benefits alone.
Our Approach
Having been successful in our bid to become a neighbourhood-level community budget (NLCB) pilot, we started off by commissioning ethnographic research within the ward to understand the end-user experience which would help us in our service redesign. It also ensured that we would not allow our organisational and professional judgement to direct the pilot.
The research revealed that many of the groups and individuals we had historically dealt with were a visible minority and that there was also a large, invisible majority with whom we had very little contact. It also revealed that public agencies, despite good intentions, were not always helping and that:
They focused on part of the family, not the whole.
There was insufficient coordination between agencies (eg a number of programmes to support people into work).
They intervened too late at moments of crisis which drove up cost and reduced the likelihood of success.
There were multiple assessments and action plans.
There was scope for perverse incentives.
Examples of perverse incentives
We also undertook a number of case studies of issues presented by certain families and the nature and breadth of agency responses. The following graphic sets out one such example [we would prefer that this example is not published].
!!!Redacted at the request of Tonbridge Wells Borough Council!!!
In parallel, we also started looking at costs and potential benefits and developed a simple evaluation model that combines the two drivers into a single score based on a prediction of life outcomes and the cost of interventions
|
A. Cost of Existing Interventions £ |
Score—Cost/Outcomes Combined |
||||
|
Net Contributor (free from support). |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
0–25k. |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
|
25–50k. |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
|
50–100k. |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
Over 100k. |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
|
B. Prediction of Life Outcomes |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
|
The model is simple and this is its appeal and whilst some might argue for greater refinement on costs this risks an implied accuracy that is probably difficult to prove. Our initial advice to CLG was to keep economists away from it! When we are talking about some colossal costs such as residential care for children at £175k per annum, fostering at £33k per annum and maintaining a Job Seekers Allowance claim at £16k then endless debate about a few hundred seems to miss the point.
Big Ticket Issues
Following the ethnographic research and discussions with partners, we have agreed six “big ticket” items which we will seek to address through the pilot. These are:
No of children on Child Protection register due to safeguarding issues.
No of antisocial behaviour incidents.
% of working aged people on Employment Support Allowance due to underlying mental health conditions.
% of working age population on Jobseekers Allowance.
% of 18–24 yrs NEETS (Not in Education, Employment or Training).
No of evictions.
Hospital admissions relating to drug abuse.
Current State of Play
We have spent a lot of time working with partners to redesign services for families in Sherwood. This has culminated in a multi-agency team which has been co-located in a flat in Sherwood provided by the RSL. The new joined-up approach means that we are intervening earlier on, in a more coherent manner and making sure that we sequence support (and tailor sanctions) appropriately. One particular success has been the development of links with the GP to refer families into the new service. The relationship with the GPs has developed particularly well and we are now exploring the potential of relocating the GP surgery as part of the redevelopment of the estate to link it in with the community centre and other services.
Lessons Learned
Trust and Confidence
Part of our success has been due to the strong working relationships we have maintained with partners. Trust between partners (and individuals) is absolutely vital at a variety of different organisational levels as is political support.
Backdrop of economic scarcity and shrinking budgets and change
The drive within the public sector to centralise and standardise as budgets get squeezed has led to difficulties in getting some agencies to deviate from standard operating procedures or to pilot new approaches (eg MoJ rules prevent Probation from working with any individuals who are not current or ex-offenders and do not allow them to fund preventative work). Funding constraints have also meant that some organisations are living hand to mouth and flexible budgets have been eliminated. For example, one young person had moved to live with her mother and was no longer able to claim for her bus fare so was about to stop attending College.
We have also experienced significant issues with turnover in staff associated with rapid downsizing or organisational change. This has had an impact on stability and organisational memory. For example, we are on our third lead from JCP, our second Chief Inspector and our fourth representative from Health (all in less than 18 months!)
Resources and Support
The work we have undertaken has been extremely challenging and resource-intensive. We have had excellent support from partners and funding associated with the pilot has allowed us to provide project management and other support for the programme.
Coherence and confidence
In the early stages of the pilot it appeared that there was not enough integration between different initiatives (for example, there was overlap between elements of Total Place, Community Budgets, Working Families Everywhere (WFE), Neighbourhood Budgets and “Troubled Families”). From a local government perspective this can appear short-term and incoherent. For example, having secured WFE funding and employed people to deliver the programme, it was transferred from DFE to DCLG and subsequently cancelled. It is also important to note that there is a reasonable amount of scepticism within organisations (and a view that “we’ve been here before” with Local Public Service Agreements and Local Area Agreements when many of the freedoms and flexibilities we sought were refused). That said, as the pilot has evolved, levels of support and confidence have increased dramatically.
Nature of communities
Sherwood does have a strong sense of community but communities are complicated. Sherwood differs markedly from another deprived neighbourhood in that there is high enthusiasm but low skills and little appetite for administration or management of budgets and facilities. There is also a need to recognise the dangers associated with relying upon specific individuals (and therefore, vulnerabilities and potential to fail with the associated risks of moral hazard).
Savings vs outcomes
There is a vital need to understand the importance of outcomes as well as savings and the dangers of emphasising the latter in public communications and press releases (eg the original press release from CLG stated “14 areas get 2012 starter gun to “pool and save” billions” [http://bit.ly/ZRCJAZ]). The most significant savings will be very long-term (and possibly intergenerational). There is a need to understand the enormity of some barriers to work and the effort required to remove them.
Mapping spend and dividing savings
It can be extraordinarily difficult to map spend. A county-wide exercise in Kent showed wide discrepancies in the cost of individual services/interventions and many agencies only hold budgets at a county-wide or cluster level. Seventy% of spend is spent by national agencies and early discussions have led us to conclude that it is going to be exceptionally difficult to extract meaningful data on baseline spend. This means that we are going to have to take a pragmatic view on not getting too hung up on the accuracy of figures on spend and in balancing the twin objectives of improving outcomes and delivering savings.
Data sharing
In the early days we did not have a problem with this but, as more partners come on board, it is bound to arise. We have developed and agreed a Kent-wide data-sharing protocol.
Whitehall as a partner
Whilst we have received some support from CLG, the approach has, at times, lacked clarity. The programme was announced on 17 October 2011 with a deadline just three weeks later (10 November). The objective of the pilot was to produce a plan by April 2013 and we repeatedly been seeking confirmation as to what was happening after the April deadline (and we’re still not clear!). It has also sometimes felt a little as if the neighbourhood-level pilots have played second fiddle to the well-publicised whole-place pilots. Whereas whole-place pilots have had dedicated staff transferred to work intensively alongside the four areas, we have received much less support and recent press releases have made no mention at all of the neighbourhood pilots http://bit.ly/104X1o0. Our final operating plan included a statement of intent that we asked all partners to sign (to demonstrate ongoing commitment to the pilot) and CLG are the only partner not to have signed up! To make this approach sustainable will require the reinvestment of savings into further early preventative work at a local level and this may require savings from one agency (or from central government) being reinvested into other agencies or locally.
Discussions with other government departments has also revealed a tension between the desire to allow local solutions to suit local neighbourhoods and a concern that this might lead to differences in outcomes between communities (sometimes referred to as the postcode lottery). We need to accept that if we are working at neighbourhood level with specific groups and individuals, interventions and outcomes will vary. There may also be occasions when the priorities of local communities will not always coincide or align with those of democratically-elected leaders (local or national).
Conclusions
We have thoroughly enjoyed our involvement in the Neighbourhood-Level Community Budget pilot. It has not been without its challenges but we (and our partners) draw succour from the fact that we are making a real difference to people’s lives. Following work with one particular family, a mother remarked “I feel like I’ve got my daughter back” after our improved approach work resulted in her daughter coming off drugs, volunteering at a local leisure centre, getting her children back to school and giving birth to a healthy child.
At the same time, any other district councils thinking of participating in further rounds of community budgets should do so with their eyes open. They should be aware of: the challenges involved; the resources, energy and persistence required; and they should be willing and able to encourage bigger, more powerful organisations to flex to a local agenda. Finally, they need to understand the significant cultural changes that need to take place in redesigning services and the need for those working at the coal-face to move away from professional silos towards understanding and reacting to the needs of local communities.
April 2013
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