Smarter Government paper “triggers new debate around local public service reform”

December 7, 2009


Reacting to the publication of the Government’s Smarter Government paper, NLGN Director, Chris Leslie welcomed the document as “a trigger for new debate around local public service reform”.

He said:

“We welcome this paper as a serious and considered effort at refashioning the way our public services operate – and it is especially refreshing to see the central-local dimension thought through in such detail. We believe that this Paper offers a challenging outlook and merits a serious debate among the wider local government community.”

Commenting on specific aspects of the paper he said:

On moves to encourage ‘pooling’ of budgets locally:
“NLGN is a passionate advocate of greater pooling, but this will only happen if hard incentives overcome the tendency for agencies to hoard budgets, especially when finances are being cut back. We urge Ministers to implement a year-on-year incremental requirement to pool budgets locally by 0.5% of total spend annually, to force all areas to change behaviour, coupled with a reward grant for those areas who most enthusiastically embrace a local pooling culture.”

On reducing the National Indicator Set, Chris Leslie said:“Radically downsizing the 188 national indicators by April would imply a complete refresh of the Local Area Agreement process – something that might be timely now in the current economic climate but which would be a significant endeavour for councils to undertake.”

On reducing central grant ‘ring-fencing’:“More detail is needed on which ring-fenced grants are to be opened and placed into the Area-Based Grant, but this is a positive commitment we welcome.”

On moves to encourage councils to take on new commercial opportunities:“Councils will have to increase their income and an entrepreneurial approach to trading and new ventures must surely be a feature of every chief executives’ year ahead. NLGN has already urged councils to offer mortgages locally, establish universal wifi services, insurance products and community banking. In January we publish further recommendations for municipal entrepreneurship, boosting council revenues, reducing pressures on council tax and creating local employment.”

On the potential for opening new data sets for wider public use:“Transparency has got to be the guiding principle, and while much of this data may already be technically available through Freedom of Information means to individuals, the hope that the wider public obtain benefits from real time information and comparative data as consumers is laudable.”

On the notion of a new ‘Civic Health Index’:“Greater efforts are certainly needed to renew civic participation, but we are sceptical that any Whitehall-led central initiative can make an appreciable impact on what ought to be a locally led endeavour.”

On the potential piloting of ‘Social Impact Bonds’:“We would be keen to see decisions on which range of public services are likely to be open to this initiative and precisely how investors would be able to isolate the returns on their early intervention. Reducing certain categories of crime, drug and alcohol abuse may be most amenable to the Social Impact Bond approach but to date the methodologies underpinning these programmes have lacked sufficient rigour.”


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