There was little rejoicing this week as the economy emerged wearily from six quarters of negative growth.
This underwhelming achievement – a paltry rise in output of 0.1% for the last quarter of 2009 – raised fears of a double-dip recession. Meanwhile, a leading investment adviser claimed the UK should be avoided and placed it in a ‘ring of fire’ of countries where rising debt could slow down growth.
So we shouldn’t expect a swift return to the boom times – and any consequent boost to the government’s coffers. For the public sector, of course, the pain has been delayed but pain there certainly will be.
Ministers have been desperate to offer an appropriate response, and Total Place has become their favoured solution. This initiative, which takes a ‘whole area’ approach, has become a panacea for the financial ills of the public sector. A lot is resting on the results from the 13 pilot areas in England.
The early findings have been positive and a report this week from London Councils and PricewaterhouseCoopers suggested that a Total Place approach in the capital could save 15% from budgets or £11bn a year.
According to Communities Secretary John Denham, speaking at the New Local Government Network annual conference, Total Place is ‘the future of local government and local public services’. So, no pressure there then.
Total Place has great potential, but it’s too early to see it as the saviour of public services. We’ll get an indication soon enough when the results from the pilots are published – possibly next week – but care has to be taken in extrapolating potential national savings from a disparate group of pilots.
There’s much more that the public sector – and local government in particular – can and should be doing to prepare for what is to come.
Steve Bundred, chief executive of the Audit Commission, made this point in his address to the NLGN conference. There needs to be more innovation, including sharing of services – and not just of the back-office variety.
Teignbridge and Torridge, two district councils with differing political leaderships, have already taken this approach by appointing a joint chief executive. Herefordshire council and its local primary care trust have gone further by sharing a chief executive, a senior management team and their headquarters building.
Recession or no recession, everything that can save precious resources and improve services should be considered – and nothing should be ruled out of bounds.
Mike Thatcher is the editor of Public Finance
