Total Place: A Whole Area

Approach to Public Services (?)

Structure

• What is it trying to do?

• What has happened so far?

• What happens next?

• A commentary

• What are the risks that need to be managed?

What is it trying to do?

‘The Total Place initiative sets a new direction for local public services and local authorities, with a range of freedoms that define a new relationship with Government. It has shown how, through bold local leadership and better collaborative working, it is possible to deliver services which meet people’s needs, improve outcomes and deliver better value for money’.

Labour Party Manifesto

‘Local government and its partners in public services are already pooling budgets across localities. Our radical Total Place agenda will take this further, giving local areas additional freedom to achieve better services and more savings, cutting bureaucracy and management costs, while placing a greater (sic) on early intervention. Ring-fenced budgets, central targets and indicators will be cut back’.

What is it trying to do?‘freedoms;’

• ‘from central control & financial controls’

•‘& incentives for local collaboration’

•‘to invest in prevention’

•‘to drive growth’

How to Cut Costs?• ‘frontline services – redesigning processes’

•‘back office and support functions’

•‘shared management and joint working’

(e.g. shared / fewer premises)

•‘better outcomes’

•‘redesigning services with the local community’ (e.g. recycling)

The 13 Pilots• Birmingham: health, housing and crime. services for people with learning difficulties, mental health,

outcomes for children leaving care, guns & gangs, drug and alcohol misuse, as well as housing;

• Bradford: young people leaving care and leaving prison, and older people leaving hospital;

• Central Bedfordshire and Luton: those affected by critical life events such as becoming disabled or unemployed, victims of crime, and family breakdown, 'high contact' families of crime;

• Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire: children and carers in relation to education.

• Croydon: child development with a particular focus on the first five years;

• Dorset, Poole and Bournemouth: services for older people;

• Durham: access to funding for housing and regeneration;.

• Kent: access to services and sharing of buildings

• Leicester and Leicestershire: alcohol and drug abuse,

• Lewisham: minimise reoffending;

• Manchester City Region and Warrington: young children up to five years old;

• South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland: drugs and alcohol misuse;

• Worcestershire: obesity, reoffending and road safety; and 'high contact' families.

A People Centric Approach?• More services are targeted

• Outreach – ‘take services to where people are’

• Behavioural change and responsibility for change from service user

• Personalisation and tailoring

• Integrated customer journey

• Services based on spatial level appropriate to community e.g. neighbourhood

What Happens Next? • ‘incentivise placed based approaches to efficiency by assessing the use of

resources on an area basis within Comprehensive Area Assessment’

• ‘publishing standardised partnership agreements to support wider use of pooled budgets’

• ‘Single Offers’ for ‘high performing’ areas from April 2011…setting out a range of ‘ambitious savings’

• ‘Innovative Policy Offers’ for specific subjects across a ‘much wider group’

• 11 Total Capital & Asset Pathfinders (includes Durham)

• ‘government and places will work together to agree a mechanism for identifying and allocating savings…. ‘develop new approaches to cost benefit analysis’

• freedoms will be ‘negotiated’….and ‘could’ include….’further significant reductions of ring fence for local authorities…a small number of outcome targets….and lighter touch assessment and reporting’

“Total Place has been welcomed across the public sector, but the hard work is yet to come, and perhaps it is not entirely surprising if some remain cynical”

Jane Dudman: editor of the Guardian's Public website

“The concept of aligning all public resources in an area around the needs of its community is simple and commonsense. Putting it into practice, however, remains a major challenge not just for local areas but also for Whitehall. The changes needed go way beyond merely removing a few ring-fenced budgets or performance targets. Our cultures of governing and our current systems of funding and accountability cut through and undermine our focus on what the citizen needs”

Nigel Keohane, NLGN

A Commentary? • What exactly are the new ‘freedoms’?

• Doing better things? Or the same things with less money?

• How to involve citizens & third sector in service design?

• Only 2% savings? All the pilots have been theoretical – none are practical. How to count savings?

• What capacity within local government to do cost benefit analysis?

• How to distinguish between areas which are ‘well placed’, ‘near prosperous areas’ and ‘truly disconnected.’

• What geography for place?

• Early focus has been on the ‘social’ e.g. worklessness, early years/child poverty, welfare benefits, anti social behaviour, re-offending, (70% of all spending in an area on social security, education & health)

What risks need to be managed? • What changes for Ministerial Accountability / Central Departments and

Local Political Leadership?

• How to align central departments – with their own systems and targets. What commitment from departments other than HMT and CLG?

• What cost of initial investment and who gets the dividend?

• Might costs not rise?

• A clash of cultures & systems?

• Transparency, transfer and security of data – who is accountable?

• The lobby for jobs and the post election dash to just cut costs?

• What happens when things go wrong?

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