The push towards ‘total place’ will encounter huge institutional barriers, but these must be faced now, not in 2011, when the next CSR begins says Michael Burton
The debate around the future structure of public services is taking place in a small room with the door shut, while outside, the world goes about its business.
The public know our finances are shot to pieces, but prefer to avoid thinking about the implications.
Politicians are on the election trail, and must avoid upsetting the voters with dire warnings of slash and burn, so prefer to keep off the subject altogether
This leaves public sector practitioners, in particular, those in local government, to conduct the debate among themselves.
For time is already running out. At last week’s annual council human resources managers’ conference in Manchester, the plain-speaking ex-head of the Leadership Centre, Stephen Taylor, told his audience that local government had, at best, two years to prepare itself for the coming storm.
There were, he added, two options. The first was to do nothing, then at the last minute, panic, and start slashing services.
The second was to reconfigure public sector management structures, in particular, picking up the ‘total place’ concept of building local delivery around the whole pot, not around the institutions, and reducing waste and the cost of bureaucracy accordingly.
As an example, he cited the case of an elderly couple with failing sight refused, on cost grounds, NHS treatment, which could have alleviated their disease, only for them to end up in the care of the council at far greater expense.
But the task is immense – of Sisyphusian proportions. The public sector is scarcely on the first rung of the ladder when it comes to joining up service delivery.
When Mr Taylor asked his audience how many attending were in regular contact with their fellows across other parts of the public sector locally, just a handful stuck up their arms.
The two-tier pathfinders, supposedly the Big Idea in place of wider reorganisation, are going nowhere.
We are already bored to tears with the words ‘shared services’, even though there are hardly any operating in any strategic cross-boundary sense. We can barely get local government tiers to work together, let alone bring in other partners, such as health, police or JobcentrePlus.
This is certainly not for lack of awareness. Local government members and managers know very well the direction of travel.
For councils, the total place idea – as outlined by gurus including Sir Michael Bichard in his Budget efficiency report – is an opportunity, not a threat, since it puts some beef into the otherwise-woolly networks of LSPs and LAAs.
The Cumbria and Birmingham studies, now aided by the Bichard total place pilots announced in the Budget, have put some hard figures into the mix, analysing the total public spend in a locality, and evaluating whether this matches up with local priorities – the answer is not necessarily.
The time must come when it will be normal – not abnormal – for say PCTs and councils to share their senior management and their budgets.
But while there is much talk, plenty of good ideas and even a dose of blue-sky thinking, translating this into action is an altogether different task because of the cultural and institutional obstacles.
Ideally, the merging of the various public sector spending streams should be determined locally. In reality, it will be a miracle if it happens, or will happen only in isolated cases, or get no further than the drawing up of lots of strategies and memorandums of understanding which are just so much hot air.
The result, therefore, will be Mr Taylor’s doomsday scenario of councils trying to cut frontline services in a panic in 2011 when they receive their minus grant settlement, leaving their institutions unreformed.
The alternative, of course, is the Government forcing the total place process from the top from next year onwards, which somewhat defeats the purpose.
For, when it comes to choosing a cut in bureaucracy or a cut in frontline services, it is clear what the public and national politicians will choose.
Better, therefore, for councils and their local partners to seize the agenda and get cracking now on reducing the former, rather than sitting back and waiting to be told.
The public know our finances are shot to pieces, but prefer to avoid thinking about the implications.
Politicians are on the election trail, and must avoid upsetting the voters with dire warnings of slash and burn, so prefer to keep off the subject altogether
This leaves public sector practitioners, in particular, those in local government, to conduct the debate among themselves.
For time is already running out. At last week’s annual council human resources managers’ conference in Manchester, the plain-speaking ex-head of the Leadership Centre, Stephen Taylor, told his audience that local government had, at best, two years to prepare itself for the coming storm.
There were, he added, two options. The first was to do nothing, then at the last minute, panic, and start slashing services.
The second was to reconfigure public sector management structures, in particular, picking up the ‘total place’ concept of building local delivery around the whole pot, not around the institutions, and reducing waste and the cost of bureaucracy accordingly.
As an example, he cited the case of an elderly couple with failing sight refused, on cost grounds, NHS treatment, which could have alleviated their disease, only for them to end up in the care of the council at far greater expense.
But the task is immense – of Sisyphusian proportions. The public sector is scarcely on the first rung of the ladder when it comes to joining up service delivery.
When Mr Taylor asked his audience how many attending were in regular contact with their fellows across other parts of the public sector locally, just a handful stuck up their arms.
The two-tier pathfinders, supposedly the Big Idea in place of wider reorganisation, are going nowhere.
We are already bored to tears with the words ‘shared services’, even though there are hardly any operating in any strategic cross-boundary sense. We can barely get local government tiers to work together, let alone bring in other partners, such as health, police or JobcentrePlus.
This is certainly not for lack of awareness. Local government members and managers know very well the direction of travel.
For councils, the total place idea – as outlined by gurus including Sir Michael Bichard in his Budget efficiency report – is an opportunity, not a threat, since it puts some beef into the otherwise-woolly networks of LSPs and LAAs.
The Cumbria and Birmingham studies, now aided by the Bichard total place pilots announced in the Budget, have put some hard figures into the mix, analysing the total public spend in a locality, and evaluating whether this matches up with local priorities – the answer is not necessarily.
The time must come when it will be normal – not abnormal – for say PCTs and councils to share their senior management and their budgets.
But while there is much talk, plenty of good ideas and even a dose of blue-sky thinking, translating this into action is an altogether different task because of the cultural and institutional obstacles.
Ideally, the merging of the various public sector spending streams should be determined locally. In reality, it will be a miracle if it happens, or will happen only in isolated cases, or get no further than the drawing up of lots of strategies and memorandums of understanding which are just so much hot air.
The result, therefore, will be Mr Taylor’s doomsday scenario of councils trying to cut frontline services in a panic in 2011 when they receive their minus grant settlement, leaving their institutions unreformed.
The alternative, of course, is the Government forcing the total place process from the top from next year onwards, which somewhat defeats the purpose.
For, when it comes to choosing a cut in bureaucracy or a cut in frontline services, it is clear what the public and national politicians will choose.
Better, therefore, for councils and their local partners to seize the agenda and get cracking now on reducing the former, rather than sitting back and waiting to be told.
