Participated in meeting of Greenlink today in London. This is the body bringing together organisations involved in the parks and open spaces sector, an area that is being particularly hit hard by cuts at present. Many of the organisations present where third sector and social enterprises, who depend heavily on local authority funding and contracts to survive. This is a point the group has pursued at a recent lobbying meeting with DCLG Minister Andrew Stunnell, along with concerns on skill erosion and a reduction in perceived Government supportiveness for the importance of quality green space.

One of the senior civil servants present at the meeting of Greenlink pointed to the significant linkages to greenspace contained within the Localism Bill. She also referenced that Government would be producing civic society 'how to' guides and that one would be specific to Greenspace. She also referenced that there would be a Local Government Act by the end of the summer and a right to reclaim public land not being put to good use would be in this. I pressed her on whether this would be consulted on prior to issue as it has not been referenced within the Localism Bill.

Greenlink have also undertaken a survey of local authority greenspace teams on the impact on their budgets of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Some of the key themes were around are green services being treated equitably in the cuts and are the cuts eroding the ability to deliver on the Big Society aims of encouraging greater public engagement and involvement. Some of the points emerging are that the average cuts to parks and open spaces budgets appear to be 28% to 30%, although many appeared to think this was unique I pointed out that this was a consistent message coming back from all non statutory frontline services based on the survey work that APSE does across local government services.

The group then swapped stories on the impact of the cuts on their own organisations. As an example the design council and CABE have now merged and there has been a reduction in CABE staff from 110 to 20, they are now a charity and only have guaranteed funding of £2.85m per year for the next two years, previously their budget was between £10m and £11m.

Love Parks week is organised for 28 to 31 July. I managed to get in the launch of APSE's research paper on renewables 'the virtuous green circle' in the organisational round up.

After this meeting I went and had a discussion with Gaynor Hartnell the Chief Executive of the Renewable Energy Association to look at potential joint working between APSE and the REA.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg opened the summit in St Albans by posing the question, how do we reinvent public services in the current climate? Perhaps he was referring to the impossible conundrum of raising standards and quality, whilst demand is increasing and huge cuts are being made.

He stressed the need to modernise public services by increasing plurality of provision, criticised the trade unions for being protectionist and argued that he was strongly against a market based approach and privatisation, as he doesn’t believe the private sector are inherently better at delivering services.

During questions the DPM was asked about the letter from 90 Lib Dem Local Government Group Leaders that had appeared in the Times that morning criticising the cuts that the coalition Government is imposing on public services. He expressed the view that he didn’t think you moved the debate forward by conducting a megaphone debate.

I then asked him whether he thought there should also be an onus on Ministers to avoid megaphone diplomacy, particularly those who have launched an onslaught on public servants who have given their working life’s to improving public services. The DPM agreed that it was unhelpful to conduct a debate in such a fashion and that the focus should be on equity, standards, responsiveness and affordability rather than a political slanging match.

David Walker lightened the mood with a much needed joke – A man says to the Doctor I am addicted to Twitter, the Doctor replies I am sorry, I don’t follow you.

David outlined his view that some of the problems with public management are permanent because culturally they are built in, he also stressed that public services are political by definition. He went on to make a plea for the voice of public managers to be heard as he believes they have a vital role to play in the debate that is taking place on the future of public services. He suggested that public services had been brainwashed by marketeers and that he found it incredulous that little effort had been made to expose the limits of markets and neo-liberalism despite the major role this had played in creating the recession.

Jon Sibson of PWC and Will Straw from IPPR then led a session on building foundations for growth, when asking them about the one area where I believe growth potential exists, the green economy, I quipped that ‘Asking a public service audience about growth at present was a bit like asking General Custer to launch a recruitment drive for the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.’ Jon indicated that he believed it would be two Parliaments time before we experienced any real growth again in the economy.

Peter Marks the Group Chief Executive at the Co-operative offered that ‘everyone talks about the John Lewis model being the answer but this is a producerist model built on maximising financial benefit to employees, should this really be an aspiration for public service delivery?’ His suggestion was that co-operatives and mutuals should be built around consumerist models and must be about the public good. APSE's research into cooperatives and mutuals has also identified this issue.

In a workshop on organisational change I asked the panel if they felt that there was a clear narrative on the big society and what we are trying to change to over the next three or four years? I suggested that it feels a bit like a science lab experiment that could go wrong and can we really afford this approach. Local authority Chief Executive Katherine Kerswell was the most vociferous in her response by suggesting that we don’t want a blueprint for the future, it's better if we create our own future and leave room for entrepreneurial creativity.

Christian Bason the Director of the Danish Government’s innovation unit then gave a brilliant talk on how to create the correct environment for innovation to flourish; he illustrated this by using numerous examples of approaches taken in Scandinavia.

Chief Executives John Barradell from Brighton and Andrea Hill from Suffolk then outlined their visions of what the public should expect from the state in the future. John spoke about a reduction in provision and the use of models such as cooperatives to make up shortfalls in provision.

Andrea then spoke about Suffolk’s vision of being strategic but not a provider by divesting itself of services, she spoke of reductions in residential care, library provision and even Lollipop people, this provoked a pretty hostile response from much of the audience with one person making the plea don’t let me grow old on your watch. Others asked if elected members were having an input in Suffolk or whether it was just Andrea’s view. Richard Kemp from the LGA suggested that the big society approach may be okay for middle class people but in areas of deprivation such as in Liverpool, for groups such as dementia sufferers there isn’t an army of qualified volunteers to fall back on – the less fortunate in society desperately need public services.

Peter Holbrook the Chief Executive of the Social Enterprise Coalition was asked if social enterprise was the panacea we are looking for and he said no but it was gathering momentum as an economic model as a result of market failure.

All in all it was a useful event to assess if the alternative models of delivery and approach to public services that are being touted have any legs, having heard from the experts I think the jury is still very much out amongst them and I remain a long way from convinced that this isn’t just distracting people from dealing with the impact of the severe cuts that have been made to public services.     

A senior central government figure recently asked me what a transformed council should look like in four or five years’ time. Whilst this is a fairly obvious question to ask, then a fairly obvious answer to give is that it depends on what you want it to look like.

The budget cuts of the next few years will be undoubtedly severe, but political leaders of local authorities still have choices about the approach and direction they take. Do they see the council’s role as being a small hub administering funds, which others access to provide services to their communities (akin to Nicholas Ridley’s model circa 1980’s)? Or do they see their role as something more meaningful and active in their local communities and economies?

APSE has been working with De Montfort University on developing a vision for the future around the notion of the ‘ensuring council’. To me, this means: a council that is leaner but not hollowed out; one that retains a strong core of services and the capacity to co-ordinate policy; that has the ability to intervene on behalf of local communities and secure broader strategic goals; that ensures local economies are resilient; and that is innovative and maintains a spirit of municipal entrepreneurship.

However, in order to get there over the next few years local authorities may have to take on different guises. This means being the efficient, entrepreneurial and innovative council, simultaneously.

It means authorities being efficient at a strategic level, in looking at strategic alliances with the wider public sector, at a corporate level, by initiating authority wide programmes and at an operational level by redesigning processes around service users in order to sweat out bureaucracy and waste.

By entrepreneurial I mean in exploiting opportunities to charge for, and trade in, services where appropriate and without being regressive for users who can least afford to contribute.

An innovative council will be one which embraces emerging opportunities that exist around renewable energy and the climate change agenda generally. This is an area that is a bright light at the end of a long dark tunnel of cuts. It’s an opportunity to be expansive, create local employment, deliver on sustainability commitments and do so on a self financing basis because of feed in tariffs funded by central Government.

Local authorities will deploy a range of transformational techniques over the coming years but one thing worth ensuring is that you know where you are going before you set of on the journey. A voyage that is merely about cutting costs and not also about transforming services is, without doubt, the road to nowhere.

Attend the Conservative party conference Sunday and Monday and we hold a fringe with South Warwickshire Conservative Association on ‘getting more bang for the public buck’ through procurement, with Neil McInroy from CLES speaking with APSE’s Mark Bramah.

The conference itself doesn’t appear as stage managed and controlled as new Labour did when they were in government. This means that when you walk around the event you are likely to bump into big beasts like William Hague, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Liam Fox standing around in corridors talking. However it’s also the first time I have been to a political conference that has Crombie coats, Harvey Nichols and Austin Reeds exhibiting!

The mood also seems a bit more subdued than I would have expected from a political party that has just come into government after 13 years in opposition. Speculating that this could be because party members know how unpopular they will be once the cuts start to impact on public services.  

Spoke today at the City and Financial seminar in London on the topic of ‘Grasping the scale of the medium to long term challenge facing local government.’

Basically my role was to set the context on the scale of the financial cuts facing public services and examine how cuts of up to, and beyond 15% can, be achieved.

Some of the proposals being put forward include shared management structures, a complete 3 year spending freeze on capital and revenue funding, structural reform through reorganisation, the CBI are obviously promoting outsourcing, the total place approach, shared services generally, increasing charging beyond the £11b per annum that local government gathers at present and my own preferred approach of lean or systems thinking combined with good local performance management systems.

It was a good debate and most local authorities will examine what is correct for their own specific local circumstances.