Community co-production might seem like a touchy-feely 1970s concept – but in austerity Britain parts of the public sector are making it work
As the public sector struggles with unprecedented funding cuts, there is a growing realisation that if communities wish to protect public services they need to play a greater role in their design, planning and delivery. And the public sector needs to find ways to allow this to happen.
Community co-production, or the practice of communities getting more involved in providing services, isn’t new – it started in the US in the 1970s. It is particularly useful for ‘neighbourly’ services – such as clearing snow-bound roads, running day-care centres and delivering meals on wheels.
Over the past few years, some excellent pilot projects have started across the UK. In south London, Lambeth First is a community partnership that works to reduce youth violence and gang membership; promote early intervention and targeted actions for mental health groups; and help unemployed people wishing to find work. The Bromley-by-Bow Centre, in east London, provides services to the community including a GP practice, arts programme for vulnerable groups, job creation programmes and adult learning.
In the main, these services are not being provided within a rigid structure, and so are limited to pockets of excellence. Being delivered in isolation means that they might not have been considered appropriate to adopt on a wider basis – but harnessing this drive into a formal structure could deliver significant benefits.
The current economic climate has led to community co-production developing into full scale policy in some places, as councils realise the immense power of working with communities and its potential for efficient service delivery in a modern local government context.
However, a significant barrier to greater engagement with communities is procurement. Often community partnerships can only go so far, creating greater local participation and a much clearer idea of the services the community wants and needs. But then provision is turned back over to the ‘system’, which can cut out those that might be well placed to deliver and have an emotional motivation to make it work.
Since 2011, Dumfries and Galloway Council and Scott-Moncrieff have been developing a 'Community Co-Production Framework', an amendment to the council's service planning and procurement structure to allow local communities to be involved in the planning, design, commissioning and provision of local public services.
The council is considering a limited liability partnership to enable this and the framework sets out the corporate and governance structure. It uses lessons learned from community planning, previous pilot projects, academic research, international experience and commercial practices in areas such as business format franchising. It also emphasises: strong governance, including public accountability and performance management; the need for co-ordinated planning and development support; the need for community capacity-building in some areas; building on existing successes, including the effective and efficient use of existing joint working arrangements; compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements, including European Union procurement directives.
The framework will not be appropriate for all services but it is an opportunity for innovative and controlled engagement with capable communities in the redefinition of what services a community needs and how they are to be provided. It will also provide greater transparency on services, their related costs and the outcomes they achieve.
Shared responsibility for public services may have been a ‘touchy feely’ concept in the 1970s when the term ‘Community Co-Production’ was coined in the US. However, in today’s climate, it represents a real opportunity to provide key services by harnessing the ‘can-do’ spirit of modern communities – we just need to find a way to make it happen.
Campbell McLundie is a partner at Scott-Moncrieff, and worked closely with Dumfries and Galloway Council on the Community Co-Production Framework
