Whatever new name applies to Total Place the priority now is for the public sector to get on and implement it, says Stephen Taylor

An old gardener’s wisdom on how to grow asparagus begins ‘Dig a trench three years ago’. Cumbria, Norfolk and Suffolk, where in 2008 Lynne Haig and I initiated the work which led to Total Place, are only now beginning to reap the big benefits. Little wonder: what is called ‘transformation’ is often little more than incremental improvement in a tuxedo. But budgeting local outcomes rather than organisations’ services is truly transformational.

Put aside the windy rhetoric about whole systems of change. Whether it’s called Total Place or ‘egg and chips’, what we’re concerned with is not a philosophy, a movement or a cause but a long, hard, essential slog to do a better job for less money.

It’s long because it takes time to create a different kind of conversation across public services steeped in their professions, their politics, their governance and their cultures. It’s hard because we have to learn a lot of new stuff: starting our thinking from the whole citizen not the service, decommissioning as well as commissioning, smart ways of analysing costs and benefits, shifting the boundary between state and community. And it’s essential because slicing the salami thinner won’t close the gap.

We’re seeing two kinds of council: those who know their job is to lead the place, not just the local authority, and who are getting on with it – and those who are waiting old style for the gentlefolk in Whitehall to tell them what to do. The former at least have a chance of squeaking through. The latter are in for a nasty surprise as they realise too late they do not have the capability to benefit from new spending freedoms, which come at the price of less to spend.

The coalition government may or may not devolve substantial powers to local government, but in either case the task of creating the new model of local public services falls to the locality. Councils such as Croydon, Wiltshire and Birmingham are, in different ways, re-conceiving their operating model. What better time than now to show that as a sector we can be self-starting and collaborative? The way to start is...to start.

We see emerging economies like India, Brazil and China asking not ‘how can we make it for 10% off the cost?’ but ‘how can we make it for 10% of the cost?’ For example, a car to sell not for £8,000 but for £800. This leads to a fundamental rethink, starting from what the customer really wants. We need a similar approach.

Paradoxically it can be easier to make a big saving than a small one, because to do so we are obliged to tackle it in a different way. For example, we know that 30% of admissions of frail elderly people to hospital are not only unnecessary in the first place but lead on to further dependency. That’s more expensive for the taxpayer and keeps people out of their own homes. We can break through that by creating more local support which helps people get back on their feet – in some cases literally.

But the evidence, the analysis and the business case, vital though they are, don’t get you there. As they say in Missouri, ‘you gotta wanna’. So we need leaders who challenge politicians who would rather be sovereign over their own failing place or portfolio than collaborate with others. We need leaders who have no time for officers who disguise complacency and self-interest as professional advice. We need leaders with the drive and gumption to undertake joint ventures which, yes, carry a risk of failure but also the prospect of success.

This means we have to work in parallel on the ‘hard’ – performance data, service redesign, benefits realisation, programme management – and the ‘soft’ – relationships, behaviour, trust, collaboration. The first without the second produces reports which gather dust. The second without the first produces goodwill with nowhere to go.

There is good news. In rising to the challenge of the next few years we have a hugely under-utilised asset we can deploy to much better effect. Not property, though that is certainly under-utilised too, but people. All the evidence shows that there is a whoosh of energy when we create an environment which is less about control and compliance, more about challenge and support. Get that right and people will deliver more than enough to close the gap. Let’s just get on with it.

Stephen Taylor is a director of Taylor Haig and former chief executive of the Leadership Centre for Local Government stephen.taylor@taylorhaig.co.uk