Over the past month or so, I have been discussing efficiency and service transformation with Association for Public Service Excellence members at events throughout the UK.
 Paul O’Brien is chief executive of the Association for Public Service Excellence(APSE) |
Most authorities appear to have their plans in place for the next few years, and have selected key personnel to make the cuts and lead the transition.
But one concern which has consistently niggled away at me after these sessions is the dependency that services now have on a few key individuals, who must get decisions right and have the energy, capability and tenacity to successfully implement them.
The approach of many councils is to de-layer management structures from the top downwards.
But how sustainable can this really be?
Where five heads of service existed in the past, we now often have two, dealing with a multitude of services – some of which they have no previous experience of running.
With a bit more time, the correct approach would be to redesign service processes from the users’ perspective, and then decide on management structures, based on requirements. Instead, authorities are eroding capacity by culling experienced managers at a time when their knowledge and skills should come into their own.
With many facing upwards of 10% budget cuts in the next year, there is little scope to bring in external specialist support or invest heavily in management-development programmes to fast-track internal talent.
On a recent visit to an authority in the north-east of England, I met up with a long-standing friend who has recently added several new services to his role, following an internal competitive process with other heads of service, who are now ‘surplus to requirements’.
By his own admission, he has very limited understanding of these new services. His budget is tens of millions of pounds, and he has to reduce this by several million in year one, while managing two thousand staff. He is working 12 hours a day, Monday to Friday, and catching up with paperwork at weekends. This situation is by no means unique, and is ultimately unsustainable.
Of course, resources need to be directed at frontline delivery, but services will not manage themselves and branding the over-stretched people who run them as incompetent, lazy ‘fat cats’ is an all-too-easy diversion from the reality of local government management at this difficult time.
If we really are ‘all in this together’, ministers should recognise the heroes who have stayed on to try to make huge savings while holding services together for the public who depend on them, rather than fuelling tabloid fires.
