By Chris Leslie and Nigel Keohane
18 March 2010
Evidence from the Total Place pilots shows that the government’s big new idea for funding local services will need nurturing in Whitehall. Chris Leslie and Nigel Keohane explain why it means change from the ground up
Of all the initiatives and reforms to public services over the past decade, none has had such unambiguous support from politicians of all parties as the Treasury-led ‘Total Place’ programme. Neither has any reform had such apparent unanimity of backing or commitment from Whitehall and localities alike.
But then the concept is such commonsense – to bring all public resources within a locality together – that opposition would be hard to muster. The question is actually what level of change the government is ready to tolerate. Will Whitehall be ready to open the doors to its corridors of power?
The official and unofficial Total Place pilots are unearthing major failures within our public services. And the costs of these failures are significant – inconvenience to the citizen and customer, wasted taxpayer money, an emasculation of the relationship between public servants and their clients. In many cases, inconvenience for the public and wastage in the system goes hand in hand; the pilots have revealed a dizzying array of assessments and some 50 different forms for benefits.
And it is not hard to see where this stems from. One council discovered 120 projects or programmes in employment-related services alone, provided by more than 50 public, private and voluntary sector providers, with more than 15 funding streams. Another pilot estimated that it costs £135m in overheads alone to spend the area’s £176m budget on economic development projects, excluding education, skills and housing.
Conversely, effective joined-up services, early intervention and service redesign can lead to more efficient solutions: London Councils has estimated savings at 15% across the capital from such approaches; local areas are suggesting that 10% savings in worklessness and public sector assets are achievable figures.
Unlocking these financial and service benefits is no easy task. The pilots demonstrate the virtue of government thinking as one, just as they reveal the merits of close proximity to the citizen in putting this concept into practice. It is here, at the local level, where the interactions between the state and its clients can be best understood, duplications stripped out and innovative approaches designed. Yet we remain far from a situation where public resources can be applied and decisions made at the local level – especially as such a small fraction of public money is under the discretion of local councils.
Major barriers also stand in the way of a ‘whole public service approach’ more generally. At first glance, many appear to be local problems – professional, organisational and sectoral cultures, the need for local leadership and capacity to bring the whole public sector together.
However, these mask more deep-rooted dynamics, activities and relationships across government. Performance targets, departmental programmes, vertical accounting structures and ring-fenced budgets all stand in the way of Total Place methods by generating their own conflicting practices, cultures and programmes at all levels of government.
Yet our analysis also demonstrates that we cannot hope to respond simply by removing a series of performance measures or even ring-fenced budgets. Rather, we found that these forces are now ingrained and the local dependency and centralisation cultures feed off each other. Performance frameworks are a symptom of a reluctance to devolve responsibility and resources to the local level – and the abundance of programmes, funding streams, targets and systems reflect the lack of strategic co-ordination across government and the tendency for each department to think individually. These all reduce the discretion or ability to make decisions and pool public resources at the right tier of government.
Our responses in the past have been piecemeal and partial – such as reducing central targets from 1,200 to 200 – or have relied on local partners to transcend these barriers as best they can through Local Strategic Partnerships. There is clearly awareness of the problem, but the next steps might need to be more radical.
To break us out of these cycles, the New Local Government Network proposes three principal reforms to the way that government works. The first is to devolve responsibilities and funding for local services, such as public health and local policing, where councils and their partners have such common purpose that any other approach appears perverse.
Secondly, the government should adopt ‘Place Proposition Agreements’ to follow Local Area Agreements. Through these agreements, the centre and localities would make practical deals on how to provide a more efficient and effective service. We predict that localities could put forward business cases for the devolution of responsibility, resources, risks and rewards in a whole range of services. These include worklessness and benefits, chronic and acute care, and economic development.
Dialogue between the locality and Whitehall would present the Treasury with innovative cost-effective and efficient ways to undertake public service activity within the context of restricted public resources, and go beyond the aspirational agreements of the LAA process.
Whitehall could and should become a strategic centre setting out the vision and framework within which public services should operate. But such Place Agreements on their own are unlikely to be enough to achieve the devolution necessary nor the requisite ‘whole government’ approach to find savings and improve services. Evidence shows that Whitehall remains too fragmented and too culturally opposed to relinquishing the hold on the purse strings or performance measures.
The main question therefore is how we can encourage government departments to look outwards and think as one. There have been many proposals and reforms over the years – such as cross-cutting units and budgets – but none has created the momentum for the essential shift in culture. As one of our Whitehall interviewees noted: ‘As long as there are clearly delineated government departments, the culture will be hard to shift.’
Wholesale restructuring of all departments would be costly and might lead to discrete corridors of power being established. Therefore, in the short term, there is merit in forcing all domestic departments to perhaps funnel a minimum percentage of their departmental expenditure through deals with localities to encourage the pooling of resources.
However, we also recommend a major change to the shape and nature of Whitehall. Despite its best efforts, the Department for Communities and Local Government has possessed insufficient presence and sway to shift the mind-sets and practices of other departments to be more genuinely oriented around the needs of place. The current architecture of government does not encourage change.
Thirdly, therefore, we propose that the DCLG be converted into a new Department for Devolved Government, merging with the Cabinet Office, the Scotland and Wales offices and the constitutional elements of the Ministry of Justice. This department would have sufficient clout to support whole public service approaches and encourage cross-cutting approaches.
Total Place must not be merely another edict or buzz-phrase generating talk but no change. It is as much a challenge for Whitehall, and any test of seriousness needs to be judged nationally as well as locally.
Chris Leslie is director and Nigel Keohane is head of research of the New Local Government Network. NLGN research on Total Place by Nigel Keohane and Geraldine Smith was published on March 18 and is available at www.nlgn.org.uk
18 March 2010
Evidence from the Total Place pilots shows that the government’s big new idea for funding local services will need nurturing in Whitehall. Chris Leslie and Nigel Keohane explain why it means change from the ground up
Of all the initiatives and reforms to public services over the past decade, none has had such unambiguous support from politicians of all parties as the Treasury-led ‘Total Place’ programme. Neither has any reform had such apparent unanimity of backing or commitment from Whitehall and localities alike.
But then the concept is such commonsense – to bring all public resources within a locality together – that opposition would be hard to muster. The question is actually what level of change the government is ready to tolerate. Will Whitehall be ready to open the doors to its corridors of power?
The official and unofficial Total Place pilots are unearthing major failures within our public services. And the costs of these failures are significant – inconvenience to the citizen and customer, wasted taxpayer money, an emasculation of the relationship between public servants and their clients. In many cases, inconvenience for the public and wastage in the system goes hand in hand; the pilots have revealed a dizzying array of assessments and some 50 different forms for benefits.
And it is not hard to see where this stems from. One council discovered 120 projects or programmes in employment-related services alone, provided by more than 50 public, private and voluntary sector providers, with more than 15 funding streams. Another pilot estimated that it costs £135m in overheads alone to spend the area’s £176m budget on economic development projects, excluding education, skills and housing.
Conversely, effective joined-up services, early intervention and service redesign can lead to more efficient solutions: London Councils has estimated savings at 15% across the capital from such approaches; local areas are suggesting that 10% savings in worklessness and public sector assets are achievable figures.
Unlocking these financial and service benefits is no easy task. The pilots demonstrate the virtue of government thinking as one, just as they reveal the merits of close proximity to the citizen in putting this concept into practice. It is here, at the local level, where the interactions between the state and its clients can be best understood, duplications stripped out and innovative approaches designed. Yet we remain far from a situation where public resources can be applied and decisions made at the local level – especially as such a small fraction of public money is under the discretion of local councils.
Major barriers also stand in the way of a ‘whole public service approach’ more generally. At first glance, many appear to be local problems – professional, organisational and sectoral cultures, the need for local leadership and capacity to bring the whole public sector together.
However, these mask more deep-rooted dynamics, activities and relationships across government. Performance targets, departmental programmes, vertical accounting structures and ring-fenced budgets all stand in the way of Total Place methods by generating their own conflicting practices, cultures and programmes at all levels of government.
Yet our analysis also demonstrates that we cannot hope to respond simply by removing a series of performance measures or even ring-fenced budgets. Rather, we found that these forces are now ingrained and the local dependency and centralisation cultures feed off each other. Performance frameworks are a symptom of a reluctance to devolve responsibility and resources to the local level – and the abundance of programmes, funding streams, targets and systems reflect the lack of strategic co-ordination across government and the tendency for each department to think individually. These all reduce the discretion or ability to make decisions and pool public resources at the right tier of government.
Our responses in the past have been piecemeal and partial – such as reducing central targets from 1,200 to 200 – or have relied on local partners to transcend these barriers as best they can through Local Strategic Partnerships. There is clearly awareness of the problem, but the next steps might need to be more radical.
To break us out of these cycles, the New Local Government Network proposes three principal reforms to the way that government works. The first is to devolve responsibilities and funding for local services, such as public health and local policing, where councils and their partners have such common purpose that any other approach appears perverse.
Secondly, the government should adopt ‘Place Proposition Agreements’ to follow Local Area Agreements. Through these agreements, the centre and localities would make practical deals on how to provide a more efficient and effective service. We predict that localities could put forward business cases for the devolution of responsibility, resources, risks and rewards in a whole range of services. These include worklessness and benefits, chronic and acute care, and economic development.
Dialogue between the locality and Whitehall would present the Treasury with innovative cost-effective and efficient ways to undertake public service activity within the context of restricted public resources, and go beyond the aspirational agreements of the LAA process.
Whitehall could and should become a strategic centre setting out the vision and framework within which public services should operate. But such Place Agreements on their own are unlikely to be enough to achieve the devolution necessary nor the requisite ‘whole government’ approach to find savings and improve services. Evidence shows that Whitehall remains too fragmented and too culturally opposed to relinquishing the hold on the purse strings or performance measures.
The main question therefore is how we can encourage government departments to look outwards and think as one. There have been many proposals and reforms over the years – such as cross-cutting units and budgets – but none has created the momentum for the essential shift in culture. As one of our Whitehall interviewees noted: ‘As long as there are clearly delineated government departments, the culture will be hard to shift.’
Wholesale restructuring of all departments would be costly and might lead to discrete corridors of power being established. Therefore, in the short term, there is merit in forcing all domestic departments to perhaps funnel a minimum percentage of their departmental expenditure through deals with localities to encourage the pooling of resources.
However, we also recommend a major change to the shape and nature of Whitehall. Despite its best efforts, the Department for Communities and Local Government has possessed insufficient presence and sway to shift the mind-sets and practices of other departments to be more genuinely oriented around the needs of place. The current architecture of government does not encourage change.
Thirdly, therefore, we propose that the DCLG be converted into a new Department for Devolved Government, merging with the Cabinet Office, the Scotland and Wales offices and the constitutional elements of the Ministry of Justice. This department would have sufficient clout to support whole public service approaches and encourage cross-cutting approaches.
Total Place must not be merely another edict or buzz-phrase generating talk but no change. It is as much a challenge for Whitehall, and any test of seriousness needs to be judged nationally as well as locally.
Chris Leslie is director and Nigel Keohane is head of research of the New Local Government Network. NLGN research on Total Place by Nigel Keohane and Geraldine Smith was published on March 18 and is available at www.nlgn.org.uk
