When Alistair Darling presents his Budget on Wednesday he has the opportunity to signal a revolution. By announcing that Total Place will move to its next stage he can transform the way that public services are commissioned and organised. He can start a major transfer of power and resources from Whitehall to localities.
The Total Place national pilots indicate that there is much scope to improve customer experience and outcomes if public services are designed around their users and not artificial institutional or professional constructs. They also identify opportunities for eliminating duplication of effort and expenditure between public agencies; reduce unnecessary expenditure by reforming regulations and performance management regimes; and better utilise resources including staff, property and money across the agencies in a locality.
The public finances will be under enormous pressures over the next five years. It makes sense to introduce measures that can best provide protection for critical services and deliver value for money. Total Place is one of the most critical of these measures.
However, Total Place should be seen as more than a canopy to offer some protection from the public expenditure storm. It would have been as relevant had it been introduced ten years ago. It must always be right to maximise effectiveness and efficiency while at the same time maximising outcomes for individuals and communities.
Citizens in any locality are the same people who use the services of the local NHS, councils, the police and all the other local and national agencies active in their areas. They are the same citizens who pay for these services through their taxes. So it makes absolute sense that they should expect these agencies to focus on them as people and not separately as NHS patients and local authority customers.
So what could Darling announce to move Total Place on? There would be much merit in some further longer-term pilots that would allow for additional experimentation in some localities. These experiments may be different in particular areas but the core offer could be:
- a central–local agreement on the level of further financial devolution in the form of a ‘locality or Total Place block grant’. This would be considerably greater than the current devolved funding but would not include all local public expenditure as some would remain under national determination – this would be subject to negotiation between the locality and Whitehall.
- an accompanying devolution of decision making in respect of this finance – government and Parliament having set any national citizen entitlements in respect of selected services. The hope would be that there would be few of these as the underlying assumption would be greater local determination and accountability.
- local government being recognised as the democratically accountable local public body and place shaper. It would therefore be responsible for the greater devolution and the Total Place block grant. It could fulfil this responsibility by adopting a strategic commissioning role. In executing this role it would be required to consult all the other public agencies as well as the public before deciding the outcome targets for the locality and the allocation of the local block grant to the specialist public agencies, which in turn would undertake the operational commissioning to secure the outcomes.
- local authorities in consultation with other local agencies and the public would negotiate a new form of Local Area Agreement with central government. ‘Total Place Agreements’ would be binding on both parties but, unlike LAAs, would be locally, not centrally driven. They would commit central government departments and their agencies to actions and funding to support the achievement of the locally determined outcomes and any nationally determined citizen entitlements.
- a revamped role for Local Strategic Partnerships which are not corporate bodies and do not have the democratic accountability or usually the capacity to take on the lead role proposed for local government. LSPs could become the forum where the political and executive leaders of public agencies and the business and third sectors debate the future of the locality. LSPs would specifically contribute to the leadership of place; influence the local authority strategic commissioning; co-ordinate public budgets and resource use (the total public expenditure not only the Total Place block grant; and foster a strong civil society. LSPs might even become ‘Total Place Partnerships’.
Such a model could enhance local democracy as well as addressing the serious public sector budget challenges. It would strengthen Whitehall’s relationships with local areas..
The models of devolution could be applied in a variety of ways in different places. Variety will provide more lessons than would uniformity of approach. There would need to be significant discussion and development of a range of accountancy, technical and regulatory change. This discussion has started and should be accelerated. It must involve all the stakeholders. It must not be delayed by any sense of self-protection, selfishness or bureaucratic behaviour.
This next phase of Total Place would be experimental. As in all experiments there will be successes and some challenges. There would be a need for careful joint assessment of the readiness of a locality to participate in these experiments. There would also need to be comprehensive monitoring of performance, local capacity and competency, and the quality of local partnership working so that any regression in outcomes can be spotted and addressed quickly. This monitoring should owned by local and central government.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has a rare opportunity this week to turn the ideas and enthusiasm of Total Place into a progressive revolution in the governance of England as well as providing the basis to achieve better public service outcomes from limited public resources.
John Tizard is director of the CPSP@LGIU
