Time to grit (no pun intended) your teeth and get on with it!

Happy New Year although for many in public services it may feel as if there isn't a lot to be happy about.

Facing up to some of the largest challenges to public finances in a generation coupled with the impact of severe weather on the public image of local authority services may make many feel that they want to curl up in a ball and hide.

Unfortunately as has been proven in recent days if public servants don't deliver, the country and it's economy very quickly grind to a standstill. Over the holiday's and beyond, the fairly unique weather we have experienced, over an extended period, has meant grit stocks running low and whilst main roads have in the vast majority of cases kept functioning, minor roads and housing estates have remained snowbound.

Many schools have stayed closed after the holidays, some bins have not been emptied for weeks, as taking refuse lorries onto the streets in these conditions would be like releasing an uncontrollable lethal weapon, and many facilities such as leisure centres are unreachable except on foot.

The heroic struggle to respond to the worst weather in 30 years has been pilloried by some newspapers and yet these are the very same media organs who ignore the excellent work public servants do day in, day out all year long to keep the infrastructure of the country flowing freely. It's so much easier to criticise than be constructive. It's that thing about not knowing or appreciating what you have until it's gone.

So what has gone wrong. Well firstly the prolonged current weather front has been unparalleled in recent decades and the financial constraints local authorities operate under mean that they are unable to carry the levels of stock, staff or gritters on the off chance that something like this will happen once in a generation. If they did the same journalists would attack them for being inefficient.

Having said that I have not seen the massive levels of investment that some areas of the public sector have seen over the past decade or so flowing into some of the frontline blue collar services such as highways maintenance, indeed the opposite has often been true. With Government priorities focusing on health, education and social care some frontline services have been squeezed by the double whammy of corporate focus being on these inspected priorities and funding ringfenced to these areas.

With funding tight in these areas local authorities have whittled down the amount of stock they hold operating on a just in time supply basis. Suppliers have also geared up their operations to meet demand rather than hold massive supply levels above ground and hey presto we run into a sustained period of severe weather, rationing commences and everyone struggles to cope.

Of course it will be public servants that get the country moving again but don't hold your breath whilst waiting for any thanks.

Delivering Innovation and Efficiency!

Progressive austerity appears to be the message on public finances for the foreseeable future. In local government this translates to reducing costs or cutting services in order to pay for the sins of the bankers.

For those who have been in local government over the last few decades this is not exactly a new phenomenon. From the mid-1970s onwards every few years another government financial crisis appears, often originating from another source; from the International Monetary Fund intervention to CCT and from Black Wednesday to Gershon.

And as much as we can blame others for all of this, the reality is that the public sector has rapidly become the media whipping boy once again.

There is much talk of incremental improvement being exhausted with innovation and step change being the only solution. But is this really true? Or is it a convenient truth for those who stand to prosper from alternative forms of service delivery?

My view is that creating an environment in which efficiency and continuous improvement flourish will allow a culture of innovation to develop. It will also place local authorities in pole position to lead other public sector agencies in the total place agenda. So what might this environment look like?

Firstly, there needs to be a focus on good local performance management data. Not centrally driven targets, but meaningful useful information that identifies a baseline of performance which can be scrutinised for competitiveness and challenged by both elected members and local people.

Phase two is about process benchmarking with others to identify who has outstanding performance at present then examining how to get to that standard or level of efficiency.

This can be done in a variety of ways, but the management tools and techniques associated with systems thinking approaches could prove a useful start rather than simply attempting to replicate others.

Involving staff from all levels of the organisation from the outset in this process will help spread the message and build ownership of the solutions.

Having untangled staff from the organisational straitjacket of the past, you are now into level three where innovation can flourish. Transformational service redesign can take place by eradicating waste and bureaucracy and enabling such innovations as the co-production in service delivery we have seen in recycling and waste minimisation over the past few years.

This has encouraged residents to take more responsibility for their actions while having greater input into service design and allowed more to be done for less.Of course it may prove easier to achieve the benefits created by such an environment if you have retained control of your own destiny.

For councils locked into long-term contracts, it is likely to be someone else who reaps the rewards.

Shared Ambition!

Speech from the Guardian's 'Capital Ambition' conference in London.

On to the question then, ‘if getting organisations working together is an obvious and simple solution, what has prevented it happening?’

Some of my experience in this area probably dates back to the period 2002 – 04 when I sat on the Office of the Deputy Prime Ministers Strategic Partnership Taskforce and I seen at first hand the difficulties of getting the cultural, political and structural ducks in a row. We oversaw the 24 pathfinder projects identified as having the best chance of success and which in the end either experienced huge delays or disappeared into oblivion. So my starting premise would be to say an obvious solution, yes, a simple solution, no as it can become too elaborate and be over complicated by consultants and experts who make a living by generating fees.

Implementation time can be significant and shouldn’t be underestimated, the longer it takes the more likelihood there is of political, organisational or environmental change in one or more of the organisations. Large projects are also resource intensive and must be planned for properly. Consultancy and legal costs must also be built into the equation or the project could end up costing more than it saves.

However, APSE has also seen successful approaches to shared services, in the East Midlands 17 authorities undertaking joint legal services work saving £2.5m over 5 years, in Essex 15 authorities procuring energy supply together and reducing the cost by £1.7m per annum on a £12.5m turnover, the Greater Manchester authorities procuring transport fleets jointly and in Worcestershire the County and its 6 Districts combining to deliver the revenue and benefits service producing savings of £1m per annum.

A number of authorities in South Yorkshire also got together to procure necessary supplies for their decent homes programmes and advertised in OJEU their intention to hold an e-auction for £100m of heating systems, bathroom suites and vinyl flooring.

In Scotland Highways and FM services are delivered by Tayside Contracts to 3 local authorities, Dundee, Angus and Perth and Kinross who have worked successfully together for 13 years despite the fact that political control between the authorities has never been aligned and has changed many times.

Again however, I have also seen numerous examples of protracted discussions taking place over a number of years with a lot of time, resources and energy being expended prior to reaching an impasse and the project being abandoned.

With any partnership arrangement trust is always key and this is particularly relevant when operating in the goldfish bowl of local government where everyone appears to know everyone else and the baggage they carry. Co-operation is also one of the attributes required and managing egos in terms of who gets the credit will involve the greatest of diplomacy tests. Grasping the opportunity, however difficult discussions become, could be the critical factor for success and surely the potential efficiency rewards make it worth the pain.

The best advice available on governance structures for shared services is not to over complicate them. The more complex they become the more they are likely to invoke the European procurement directives or run up huge consultancy fees, which then erode the potential savings. Joint working arrangements, joint committees or consortia are often adequate to do the job. Limited Liability Partnerships or Joint Venture Companies, however fashionable they may appear, are only necessary in specific circumstances or when third parties from the private sector are involved, which changes the procurement dynamics significantly.

Potentially the largest savings can be made in I.T. based services where new technology can improve delivery across authorities and where geographic distances between the lead authority becomes less relevant than with more front line based services. Clearly savings can also be achieved from specialist service units or assets which are currently underutilised that can provide good opportunities for both shared services and service co-locations. With regard to labour intensive services the savings will mainly come from a reduction in senior and middle management and although this is politically sexy it will produce limited results. The use of buying consortia can also contribute significantly to achieving efficiencies through economies of scale particularly where heavy capital investment is required for large projects such as incinerators.

So in summary, keep it simple! Ensure there are adequate arrangements for scrutiny, transparency and democratic accountability. Remember if you go down the company route any elected member appointed to the company board will be required to act in the best interests of the company under U.K. law rather than the Council they represent. It is important to have senior officer involvement in the arrangements and to ensure that any conflicts of interest are identified by those involved. Consideration must also be given to asset transfer and ownership as well as anything jointly created by the shared approach such as intellectual property rights. One final point on governance is that exit arrangements should be agreed at the outset with financial penalties in place for those who voluntarily leave.

In the current financial climate local authorities cannot ignore this agenda, they need to examine their portfolio of services and assess which ones are most suitable for sharing. The shared services approach creates an opportunity to reinvent public services; the key to achieving this sits within the issues of trust, co-operation and grasping the opportunity. Don’t over complicate it!

Thanks

Creating the ‘Ensuring Council’

In his recent book on the politics of climate change Lord Anthony Giddens called for the creation of an ‘ensuring state’ with the capacity to achieve political and economic convergence across policy sub-systems to tackle what is becoming a global phenomenon.

With Copenhagen only weeks away the need to work strategically at national government level has never been clearer. However, this notion of the ‘ensuring state’ may also have a place at a more local level in terms of the creation of an ‘ensuring council’ - and not just for the purposes of climate change. An ‘ensuring council’ is one that has to balance the macro imperatives against the micro dynamics which exist in local neighbourhoods.

Since the White Paper ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’ was first published there has been a Government drive towards community engagement and empowerment, which manifested itself in initiatives such as devolvement to neighbourhood management, community kitties and asset transfers, however has the recession now resulted in the application of the brakes to this particular bandwagon? Has the need for financial constraint focused authorities’ minds on the need to act as strategic place shapers? Do councils now fear the breakdown of their capacity to influence the local economy in tackling difficult issues such as unemployment and climate change? Has the agenda moved on from local communities to local economies?

Local authorities need to find the right balance between devolving political systems to a neighbourhood level and the overarching economic and environmental necessity that exists at present and is also likely to worsen in the not too distant future. This tightrope walking act is one that falls nicely within the notion of the ‘ensuring council’.

Whilst devolution to neighbourhoods will remain a dominant policy theme there are challenges and limitations to the role they can fulfil. Firstly, you need to be clear about why you are establishing such governance arrangements in the first place, you also need to decide what levels of autonomy neighbourhood models have and how they will be supported. Can local councillors manage the tensions between strategic and local issues and what relationship should the neighbourhood have with the wider role of the council. APSE’s forthcoming research paper addresses these matters.

The costs of such models must be managed and the creation of political fiefdoms avoided. Capacity to deal with wider issues needs to be retained; this should not just be about perceived improvements in service delivery, neighbourhood working must also contribute to social, economic and environmental well-being of the whole area.
In these difficult times local communities need an ‘ensuring council’ that can balance the tensions between local engagement and strategic need.

Manchester Blues!

The Conservative Party conference has been in Manchester the past few days and I managed to attend a few fringe meetings on APSEs behalf.

Shadow Treasury Minister Greg Hands and leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Stephen Greenhalgh spoke at the first event on regeneration. Stephen linked successful regeneration to the return of business rates to local government and improving local housing and infrastructure.

At a separate event on localism and economic resilience Leader of Westminster City Council, Colin Barrow spoke along with Mike Whitby, Leader of Birmingham City Council. Mike makes a very impressive case for Birmingham as a global city and understands the need to ensure community benefits from both public and inward investment. He suggested that the ingredients for local economic success were around keeping council tax rises small, streets clean, a decent housing stock in place, communities safe and educational attainment high.

George Osborne's pay freeze on public servants on salaries above £18,000 in 2011 was a bold move. With inflation likely to be on the rise again by this point it could prove a significant cut in real terms for those who are just above this benchmark.

Value added services

Claire Fox succeeded in fulfilling the brief to do her usual thing and ‘stir it up’ when she spoke at our annual conference in Cardiff. She also took the opportunity to make her usual rallying cry for less state nannying.

The underlying tenet that what once constituted the public sphere is being eroded while the state delves further into the private lives of citizens warrants consideration. But is perhaps lost amid her evocation of some sort of municipal Dystopia; complete with spying helicopters and a moratorium on anything remotely resembling fun (Stop monitoring the public, The MJ, 1st October 2009).

We welcome debate on how scarce resources can be best targeted to achieve public value, which was, indeed, the theme of our conference. I think Claire is being slightly mischievous in her interpretation of this point. For us ¬– and for service users – front-line means collecting the waste, cleaning the streets, providing affordable housing, caring for elderly and vulnerable people, feeding school kids, repairing the roads, cutting the grass in parks and a whole host of highly tangible services upon which people rely day in day out.

These local services have a huge bearing on the health and well-being of local communities. They are also important economically; with our research showing every local authority pound spent can generate £1.64 in the local economy. Promoting behavioural change that will reduce the longer-term economic and social costs of ill health and create a better environment actually means more effective use of public resources.

‘Co-production’ was a term used by speakers at our conference with first hand experience of making service improvements and multi-million pound savings by finding effective local service solutions from within their own in-house teams and communities. And doing things ‘with’ residents, rather ‘to’ or even ‘for’ them is surely the intention of all of us in local government. The reality is that the majority of people are happy to recycle and don’t want their taxes used to clean up after the few who drop cigarette butts or beer bottles. Is Claire suggesting that, instead of encouraging healthier lifestyles, school meals and high quality public spaces, councils should instead be promoting deprivation, misery and a return to the dark days of public squalor?

Since way, way before the recession began, APSE has been supporting the delivery of excellent front-line services and fighting against bureaucracy and waste. But focusing on the front-line does not mean councils should stop taking a wider approach to the health and well-being of residents; it goes hand in hand.

And yes, service users will defend against cuts that affect not only their lives, but also their life-chances.

Payback time for Bob the cowboy!

Having been criticised previously for writing and expressing my views widely on the on-going investigation by the Office of Fair Trading into Construction Sector Cartels I must admit to a degree of smugness when news broke of the 103 companies having £129m of fines imposed on them having been found guilty of cover pricing.

It was humorous watching and listening to well paid industry representatives (some of whom had sent me threatening letters in the past) trying to justify why the public purse had been robbed of millions of pounds. It was everyone else's fault apparently, if the public sector procurers leave their window open can they really blame a passing stranger who climbs in and helps themselves. Alternatively public servants should really be sharper at spotting people exchanging envelopes in underground car parks hundreds of miles away or in golf club locker rooms.

I honestly hope that the Construction Sector has learned its lessons from this and we move on to a new era where every penny of the public purse is used to build badly needed public sector infrastructure. Now more than ever it is vital that we achieve as much public value for our buck as possible. Taxpayers don't deserve anything less.

From recession to progression?

Just arrived back from our annual seminar and awards at Cardiff and it was a great success.

The event opened with a bit of scene setting from the Welsh Local Government Minister, Dr Brian Gibbons and Emeritus Professor of Local Governance at LSE, George Jones. This could have been a 'we're all doomed session', however the quality of contributions by both speakers enabled delegates to keep the financial pressures faced in perspective.

Another day one highlight was World Champion Hurdler Colin Jackson who spoke about overcoming challenges to ultimately become the best in the world at his sport.

Our annual general meeting went smoothly with delegates entertained by former British Lion great, Phil Bennett.

A major debate took place around future models of service delivery with contributions from Professor John Tizard, Brian Devlin of AMEY PLC, Nic Cox of Solutions SK, Kath Moore of Newcastle City Council, Byron Davies Chief Executive of Cardiff City Council and myself. With so many speakers and overruns it was difficult to get beyond views expressed into real debate but it was a worthwhile exercise.

Onto APSE's annual service awards in the evening with 700 people present and it all went well despite one or two minor hiccups. We had the usual mixture of elated winners, sporting runners up and bad losers - who appear unable to accept that an independent panel of judges decided someone else was better.

Looking beyond the sound bites

The recent debate around the role of the Audit Commission, brought into sharp focus by John Seddon’s call to scrap it, has rather overshadowed the more important discussion around how best to improve service delivery. Is this best achieved under central direction? Or by creating a culture locally where members and officers work together to ensure they continuously improve local services by building upwards from citizens’ needs?

First up, I would like to say that the Comprehensive Performance Assessment served a purpose by proving to central government that local government could deliver. However, my own view has always been that the targets it set were more focused on where the money was spent; rather than aligned to the services the public cares about most.

With regard to the role of the Audit Commission itself, the accountability and transparency an independent auditing body brings to local government is vital. But any World class inspection service, by definition, should work itself out of a job – or at least to an optimum minimum level. It should certainly not continually expand by virtue of ‘mission creep.’

Getting back to the real debate around systems thinking and value management, this is something that has been around for a long time. The impact of the recession and the need for efficiency has generated a real interest in redesigning services to eradicate waste, reduce steps in the supply chain and most importantly make them more user-friendly. I have come across numerous authorities that are investing heavily in this approach – and it’s not just the usual ‘conference luvvies’ fixating on the latest passing fad.

Many of those authorities whose last major structural overhaul was removing the unnecessary client / contractor splits created by CCT to achieve integrated service delivery are now assessing how to reduce the steps in the supply chain still further. Some are using commissioning as an opportunity to do this. Thankfully most have learnt the lessons of history and are not using it to build bureaucracy and waste into the system by recreating procurement functions divorced from actual delivery.

World class services are delivered by organisations that promote a culture of everyone working together for a common purpose. Now, more than ever, the scarce financial resources at local authorities’ disposal must be spent on the bit that actually matters most to the punters. This means highly visible service delivery, clearly targeted at local needs. And the Audit Commission must be a World class inspection body helping make sure they achieve that.

Learning some gritty lessons!

The 'Great Salt' debate takes place today at APSE's annual Highways and Street Lighting conference in Newcastle. With the worst conditions for 18 years this winter has been extremely demanding for those charged with keeping the country's roads moving, with the media debate raging about how close the nation came to running out of salt and grit and who was to blame for this.

I open the debate by contextualising what had taken place and Bob Ray of Cleveland Potash then follows on behalf of the suppliers. He had been at the Transport Select Committee at Westminster the day before and brought us up to speed with the thoughts of Ministers, Parliamentarians and National Agencies.

He is then followed by Derek Heap of Lancashire County Council who outlines what things had been like from a local authority perspective. Derek talked about how close they had come to running down their stock and what had been learned by this episode.

It's then time for a bit of audience participation and despite the fact it is late in the day, there is no holding them back, everyone wants to have their say.

In summary the debate concluded by identifying a number of lessons which should be considered by suppliers, Councils and Government departments and agencies to better address similar conditions in future.

These include -
• Better two way communication between councils and Local Resilience Teams / Government Regional Offices
• Customers ordering smaller amounts but more regularly
• Promote willingness to share supplies between councils
• Utilise APSE brokerage service
• Suppliers to prioritise communication with customers
• Guidance on mixing salt with grit, potash, refined salt and other additives and impacts of such mixing.