Education, Education, Education

Got the opportunity to visit some of North Lanarkshire Councils new schools today and it was a really eye opener for me.

Our first stop was Airdrie Academy where we got a tour of the new school and got to see the Science, Music, P.E., Languages departments etc and the quality of the facilities were incredible. The school was really airy and the pupils and teachers are thriving in the new facilities. It would be hard for anyone to argue that educational attainment would not be enhanced in this setting. Whilst I would question whether PFI and PPP is the correct method of funding school building, what I cannot question is that it would be difficult to achieve such a vast building programme within a short period of time without impacting on government borrowing. I really hope these facilities last the test of time and don't become caught up in an economic straight jacket.

We moved on to see the joint school campus of St. Patricks and New Stevenson primaries. This has brought two separate schools together on one new site and has helped in bringing an often divided community in the past closer together. Again the new facilities were impressive and I even got a demonstration of how a smartboard works!

Our National Chair, Principal Advisor for Scotland and myself then went back to the Civic Centre where the Provost hosted a civic lunch for us, along with the Council Leader and the Leader of the Opposition. It was a humbling experience to see at first hand the excellent contribution that teachers and support staff make to preparing young people for the future, it was also great to see the area I grew up in making rapid progress towards regenerating itself.

First past the post!

Launched our Governance, Neighbourhoods and Service Delivery research in Scotland at a well attended APSE seminar at Hamilton Racecourse today. The conference room overlooked the winning post and I couldn't help myself from drawing the analogy with today's topic being vital to the hopes and dreams of the public in much the same way as a horse carries the hopes and dreams of the punters. Hopefully we will be more successful in this agenda than on my occasional failed attempts at predicting the winners of horse races.

The first session saw a fairly powerful line up of speakers with the President of CoSLA, Pat Watters opening up followed by research author Dr Steve Griggs and then Renfrewshire Council Leader Derek McKay. Derek started of by saying he disagreed with Steve's views on the issue of citizen engagement but actually made quite a compelling case to support some of the points that Steve had made about the Council having to lead the public in many areas where they are not that interested in being involved. Many authorities claim to have significant engagement with communities but in reality it can often be a one way process no matter how hard you try. Alex Linkston the Chief Executive of West Lothian acknowledged this very point in his address and his authority are recognised as one of the best about.

In the afternoon I chaired a workshop on community renewal and we had an excellent debate with Paul McColgan, the Director of Community Renewal,who had spoken of how is organisation work in many of the most deprived areas of the country attempting to reengage socially excluded people and generally build some social capital. Some, myself included, were initially sceptical about community workers being independent of wider public service resources, but I guess by the end I could see the benefits of this independence existing for initial engagement so long as it joined up and coordinated with local public sector agencies.

Having said all of the above it is still my believe that local democratically elected members are the key to neighbourhood / community cohesion and allowing all individuals and groups to access services to their maximum benefit.

Neighbourhood Champions!

Launch our latest research publication 'Governance, Neighbourhoods and Service Delivery', at our one day seminar at Old Trafford today. INLOGOV have done an excellent job with this research.

DCLG Minister Iain Wright MP opens proceedings with the keynote address where he concentrates mainly on the White Paper launched last week 'Real People, Real Power'. Iain praises our research and comes across as being passionate about the empowerment agenda and also makes a few lighthearted quips about Hartlepool's (his constituency)football prowess. After he has finished his spot I whisk him over to the trophy room to get his photo taken with both the Champions League and Premier League trophies.

Dr Steve Griggs of INLOGOV outlines the main findings of the research pointing out that the Neighbourhoods agenda is not a panacea for all policy problems, but that it can deliver benefits in terms of public engagement and involvement in public services, via the medium of the local elected member. He also mentions that it looks at some theoretical models of neighbourhoods.

In the next session, which I chair, David Mallaby from Blackburn and Nick Kavanagh and Ken Harrison from Knowsley, discuss the neighbourhood management models that both authorities have put in place. This puts a lot of flesh on the bones of the theory and generates a great deal of debate amongst the delegates.

All in all its a good event with over 140 delegates present with most staying the full day and participating in the afternoon workshops.

What is strategic commisioning?

Participated in a Strategic Commissioning Masterclass today at the Admiralty Arch in London, with the National School of Government.

Peter Housden the Permanent Secretary at DCLG opens up and outlines the Governments views on commissioning. He talks about how services improved by 25% from 2001 but at the same time public satisfaction fell. I question him about this anomaly and we agree that maybe CPA wasn't designed with public opinion fully in mind at the time but was based around Government priorities. He understands the arguments around investing in refuse collection and the highly visible services but that the high spenders of education and social services soaking up resources and investment.

Professor Tony Bovaird and Dr Barbara Allen from Birmingham University lead the next session and outline several versions of what commissioning is. One of Tony's later slides suggest a model as to how commissioning, procurement and contracting should work, which suggests getting to a fairly advanced stage before considering delivery options and when doing so to treat them all as neutral. I challenge some of the assumptions behind this and point to the DCLG statutory guidance issued this month on strong and prosperous communities that outlines local authorities commissioning roles as, regularly assessing and reviewing services (including those delivered externally), and where they are under performing in comparison with others and having failed in terms of an improvement plan only then should you move towards a competition process. Basically there is nothing statutory that says you need to turn every area of service delivery into a commissioning process that leads to a procurement exercise.

The debate goes on and John Tizzard (ex Capita) comes in on the points I made and says we don't want to turn commissioning in to a mechanistic process, there needs to be an element of political choice about it. So long as this is based on tangible evidence I am fully supportive of this.

I believe we are still in the early stages of shaping the strategic commissioning agenda and it will formulate more coherently over the coming months. However local authorities should be clear about what their statutory duties are and not be scared or cajoled into doing something they don't necessarily think is correct for them, just because some spiv in a sharp suit tells them it's whats required.

Putting DeDracula in charge of Da Bloodbank!

DeAnne Julius published her review into the Public Services Industry today and its hardly earth shattering conclusions that she draws.

Having poured over 'evidence' for a number of months she thinks that the £79b of public sector contracts awarded have brought great benefit to the UK economy and that the Government should accelerate the speed of outsourcing to gain even further!

As an ex Non Executive Director and Senior Independant Director of SERCO, which she stood down from 9 months ago I didn't really expect her to say things had gone too far. I am sure she is professional enough to be objective about her findings and wouldn't allow producer interests to get in the way of the facts.

Conference season begins!

At the LGA conference this week in Bournemouth and its the usual gathering of the great and good from the local government world.

Arrive down on the Monday night and once we have dropped of our exhibition stand its straight into the networking opportunities that are so useful at this type of event. Go out for something to eat with a long standing friend who is a local authority chief executive and we catch up on what has been happening in recent months around reorganisation, commissioning and the upcoming white papers themes.

The Tuesday sees the full opening of the conference and its busy around our stand most of the day. I go out with colleagues from Northamptonshire County Council and gather some useful information on what they are doing with scrutiny. On the Wednesday I end up being roped into speaking at a Housing fringe and the timing turns out to be useful as the LGA launches a major change in policy that morning. They along with a number of other organisations are now supporting vociferously the replacement of the current housing finance system and its replacement with one which provides a sustainable solution to funding, managing, maintaining and improving stock, whatever stock ownership option authorities choose. APSE has pushed this line for years.

MJ editor Michael Burton goads me into meeting him at 8am on the Thursday morning to go for a swim in the sea and when we arrive Nottingham City Council Leader Jon Collins is just emerging from the waves. We end up getting our photo taken with a copy of the MJ. Anything for a bit of cheap publicity!

Need to leave at 11.30am for meetings in London but before I go I visit the main hall to hear David Cameron's speech to conference. He is very engaging with the audience, speaks without a script and answers questions from all round the hall. This is not the usual stage managed stuff and he comes across as having a wide knowledge of local government. What he said was if/when he is Prime Minister he will bring forward a local government bill early aimed at pursuing devolution of power to local authorities but they then must also devolve to the private, voluntary and third sectors to deliver. Its classic Conservative policy of reduce state provision by involving the market (this time several sectors of it). I wasn't about to hear Hazel Blears in the afternoon, but I would expect the message would have been almost identical. I did notice that the bits about devolving power to the community and his call for elected mayors were not met by rapturous applause and I overheard a couple of Senior Conservative Councillors near me comment "What was the point of us working hard to get almost 50% of council seats in England, if we are now going to give everything away".

Reflecting on the week, we have met up with a number of senior people from APSE member authorities, raised our profile as an organisation, picked up a couple of strong leads on consultancy jobs and made some useful contacts.

Shaping fairer places for the future!

Delivered a speech at the CLES summer school today on the topic of 'Shaping fairer places for the future - laying out the challenges'. The conference opened with Government Minister, Beverley Hughes MP giving the keynote address then the Work Foundation, New Economics Foundation, Professor John Shutt and myself responding.

It's the first time I have been at this event and I was very impressed by the interactive feel to it and the learning and knowledge opportunities created by this approach.

My own contribution focused on how public services and local government can deliver on this agenda. I started by examining what the future may look like in terms of an environment, social, cultural and economic perspective. My observations were based on the 2015 work I was involved in with the Tavistock Institute a couple of years ago. I then made three points I believe are important if we are to progress this agenda, firstly central government infrastructure has to be devolved on a regional basis, secondly on a more local basis local authorities and public services need to be the catalysts and facilitators for fair and equitable distribution of resources and act as the stimulator and driver of local economies, thirdly recognition has to be given to the value public employment brings to local economies.

The feel I get is that CLES is an organisation on the rise and in the current volatile financial times an organisation that really understands local economies is going to be of value to all.