New Local Government Network » Public Service reform

Transforming Universal Services: Transport, libraries and environmental services beyond 2015

editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:40:58 +0000

NLGN today calls for radical reform of council services including transport, waste and libraries, as new analysis reveals that the cost of issuing a book can be so high that in some cases it might be cheaper to buy each borrower a new copy.

As citizen demands change and cuts start to bite, NLGN’s research shows that, while the average cost of borrowing a book is around £3.50, in some areas it can be as high as £8.00, largely due to a 13m decline in the number of issues since 2005/6. While this figure does not capture the full value of all the services a library provides – such as free magazines, community space and internet use – it does highlight important changes in the ways people use these community facilities.

NLGN argues that the best way to democratise book access in future will be to make a radical shift to e-readers, online ordering and book vending machines in public places. This would make it much easier for the public to access books while freeing up library space for use by families and communities. Libraries would still hold the most popular titles and children’s books and act as a crucial community hub.

The new report, Transforming Universal Services, supported by May Gurney, also sets out the case for major reform of transport and environmental services beyond the next election. Proposals include:

The increased use of congestion charging and adoption of road user pricing by central government
City-wide cap and trade schemes for business waste using new variable charging technology, with any profit being used to reduce the business rate
New green bonds allowing local people and businesses to invest in energy from waste plants and to receive a dividend from their operation

NLGN researcher Daria Kuznetsova said:

“We need a radical discussion about how public services need to change over the coming decade. Our proposals envisage a world in which citizens and businesses get far more choice about how they use and access key services. We envisage libraries that are accessible online and through vending machines in train stations. We call for businesses to refurbish old furniture and computers to avoid landfill taxes. And where citizens and businesses can help local authorities make savings, they should get a share back through council tax or business rate discounts.”

Future Councils: Life after the spending cuts

editor — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:01:30 +0000

Local councils of the future may undergo a process of ‘Californication’ as they respond to budget cuts, new analysis predicts. A report published today by localism think tank the New Local Government Network (NLGN) outlines three new models for town halls of the future as councillors navigate budget cuts in the coming decade.

One scenario outlined in the ‘Future Councils’ report suggests that a lack of funding and new rights for citizens over planning and service delivery could by 2020 leave local authorities in the same kind of position as the Californian state government: struggling to provide services in the face of high demands, low income and increased direct democracy.

Drawing on an analysis of anticipated and emerging trends across the sector and in national politics, the report predicts that councils of the future will take on substantially less direct responsibility for service delivery. In particular the report suggests there will be an increasing emphasis on commissioning services and more devolution of power to neighbourhoods and individuals.

NLGN Director and report author Simon Parker, said:

“Local authorities are quietly preparing to transform the way they work in response to budget cuts. Some services will change radically as councils become commissioning hubs. Expect councils to redesign everything from social care to street cleaning, more delivery by the private and voluntary sectors, and an increased reliance on personal budgets.

“This is a time of risk and possibility for local government. Town halls could find themselves becoming less relevant as direct democracy and consumer-led services start to bypass local democracy. The key for councils who want to remain at the heart of their communities is not just good service delivery, but strong political leadership to drive economic and social growth for their residents.”

In a foreword to the report, Northumberland County Council Chief Executive Steve Stewart said:

“The scenario-based approach taken here is essential. It’s not just the preserve of think tanks and academics. It’s essential for practitioners, especially over the next few years if we are to sustain any kind of economic and social resilience in our places. None of these scenarios might actually materialise, but is likely that elements of all of them could.”

Based on a scenario planning exercise involving senior figures from local government and an analysis of existing council plans for change, ‘Future Councils’ highlights a number of ways town halls could be transformed over the next eight years to 2020 as the cuts bite. These include:

1. Councils in areas such as the north east clustering together into new regional federations to manage economic growth and share their services – with some having Boris Johnson-style ‘metro mayors’

2. Councils introducing ‘pay as you go’ public services for residents and selling their services to neighbouring boroughs, allowing them to cut council tax and perhaps even pay dividends to poorer residents

3. A handful of local authorities that try to commission most of their services might become ‘residual councils’ – a commissioning hub that directly delivers almost no public services.

Realising Community Wealth: Local Government and the Big Society

editor — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:01:46 +0000

A new report from localism think tank the New Local Government Network (NLGN) will this week show which areas of the country are most ready to benefit and most at risk from the Government’s Big Society agenda.

The report will show that:

There is no strong link between a community’s wealth and its ‘Big Society’ resources, with some deprived areas comparatively rich in community wealth. A poll of local authorities suggested that even in areas facing the steepest budget reductions, ingredients of the Big Society are often strong.
In new heat maps illustrating Big Society resources, Barking & Dagenham and Harlow councils are least well placed to benefit from the Big Society, with the South West and North of England regions faring strongest.
Communities faced with ‘double deprivation’ – those lacking both financial wealth and community resources such as volunteering – should be targeted for extra help to cope with the withdrawal of traditional state services
In a boost to the Government’s agenda, new polling by Ipsos Mori shows that there is an untapped well of people willing to get more involved in community work through staffing libraries, sharing skills or mentoring children.

In advance of the launch, NLGN’s Director Simon Parker said:

“The big society agenda has lost its way, with many people seeing it as little more than a cover for cuts. But almost everyone can agree the UK would be a better place if we had stronger communities that could do more for themselves, especially at a time of severe cuts”

“Whilst there are areas at risk – those facing funding cuts and with little social wealth to plug the gap – our statistical analysis provides grounds for cautious optimism, suggesting that poor areas don’t necessarily have low social capital and that there might be untapped reserves of voluntary activism, especially among the baby boomer generation”

“But our research also suggests that alongside community activism, a big society needs an active local state. To create a big society, councils must learn to value social wealth – trust, engagement and belonging – just as much as more tangible financial assets.”

The report will recommend a much clearer role for local government in helping the Big Society grow from within localities. The authors also suggest that Whitehall should do more to understand the social complexities of communities and use that knowledge to better inform policy formation and resource allocation.

Below is NLGNs interactive map to illustrate a ‘Big Society score’ across England. (click and drag to move the map around, click the different layers to compare heatmap scores):

View Full Map

Changing Behaviours: Opening a new conversation with the citizen

editor — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:01:31 +0000

With the Coalition putting behaviour change or ‘nudge’ techniques at the forefront of its public service reform agenda, a new report by localism think tank the New Local Government Network (NLGN), illustrates that councils must identify and harness the energy of their most active citizens to help improve services, engage communities and save money.

The new report, Changing Behaviours, has identified a number of innovative case studies and pilot projects where councils have afforded citizens an increased role in re-inventing services, resulting in cost reductions for councils of between 15 and 20 percent.

However, the report also warns that government itself must radically change to initiate and maximise these approaches. Greater resources and emphasis need to be invested in effective communication with residents and in putting support measures in place to enable a more active role for individual citizens in designing their public services.

Report author and NLGN’s Head of Research, Nigel Keohane said:

“With local government facing the daunting challenges of dealing with massive budget reductions whilst renewing their relationship with citizens, councils need to take the lead in adopting behaviour change techniques to make the Government’s ‘Big Society’ agenda a reality.”

“However, moving away from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model of public services means fundamental change in the way government operates. Councils should focus on detailed and targeted communication with their residents and work with them to make best use of ‘behaviour change’ measures”

“Our research shows that identifying ‘Citizen Pioneers’ who are prepared to initiate and lead increased public engagement with service design can encourage wider participation among communities as these practices become part of the norm.” The report sets out practical tools available to councils to better understand citizens’ underlying motivations so that services can be personalised to their needs and values. This detailed social insight allows councils to gauge and test what support, advice and messages citizens would respond positively to.

Shared Necessities: The next generation of shared services

editor — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:01:24 +0000

A new report from localism think tank NLGN has this week revealed the tough challenge facing councils that are sharing services in order to fill the gap caused by the government’s spending cuts. But the report also warns that councils must be more innovative and ‘boldly go beyond the back office’ if sharing is to deliver significant efficiencies while protecting frontline services.

Councils are looking at grant cuts of 26% in the period to 2014, with some expected to save as much as 8.8% of total expenditure in the first year, and a median expectation of 5.8%. The NLGN report, Shared Necessities: the next generation of shared services, concludes however, that even in a best case scenario, sharing back office services will limit savings to 3.6% of expenditure; with a more realistic expectation of 1.8%.

The report, carried out by the think tank’s research unit, recommends councils adopt a presumption in favour of sharing services, incorporating the concept within service redesigns and all transformations being used to manage the impact of cuts.

Launching the report, NLGN’s Tom Symons said:

“These are tough times for local authorities but a narrow focus on how best to make efficiency savings will be insufficient if they are to handle the lasting impact of spending cuts. Those councils that boldly go beyond the back office when considering shared service agreements will emerge in time as leaner and sharper organisations better able to deliver the services people need.”

The report authors conclude:

“New models of shared services, from sharing chief executives and senior management teams to virtual centres, are aimed at helping local authorities with the practicalities of sharing, as well as fitting them into much broader strategies for organisational change. There are implications for the nature of local authority workforces, and potential for reform of organisational structures to more generalist pools of employees, coupled with targeted incentives, to help combat the ‘human’ barrier to sharing.”

“Sharing services also brings questions about the nature of local authority boundaries to the fore. We are keen to preserve existing democratic structures but there is a vital debate to be had about the potential for the majority of council services to be merged together across economic geographies. It is also apparent that the ‘market’ for shared services is underdeveloped.”

The NLGN report also includes a toolkit for local authorities and their partner organisations looking to embark upon the shared services journey; and recommends the development of an ‘eHarmony-style’ market place for councils looking to share and trade services, as well as the piloting of ‘invest-to-save’ bonds to finance wide-scale transformation and service redesign.

The NLGN shared services survey results can be downloaded HERE

This report was kindly supported by Bevan Brittan, Capgemini and SAP.

Next Localism: Five trends for the future of local government

editor — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:01:00 +0000

A new report by localism think tank NLGN has set out a vision for more sustainable local public services beyond the current financial settlement and the aims of the government’s Localism Bill.

Next Localism: Five trends for the future of local government explores how a new relationship between State and Citizen could make a reality of the freedoms needed to fulfil local government’s ambition, shape the future of local democracy and ‘lock in’ localism into the wider public service reform agenda.

The report demands three key reforms from central government that would herald a new era of localism:

Greater financial reform: to reduce local government’s dependency on Westminster by letting councils raise more than half of their own money from local sources, up from less than 40% at present.
New management powers: to improve local services, with councils able to bid to manage elements of budgets currently controlled by Whitehall, such as health, police and jobcentres, so councils can help design more efficient and personalised local services.
Greater Whitehall reform: with central government better joined-up on policy, localism integrated into the decision-making process, and ministers and their officials set more hurdles to stop the micro-management of localities.

Report author, NLGN’s new Director Simon Parker said:

“The Localism Bill sets out an important direction of travel, devolving some key powers to councils and their communities. But the framework in which our Town Halls operate is still severely limited, and the latest financial settlement ties one hand behind their back.”

“NLGN is today calling for greater financial freedom, more devolved power and a redefined relationship between central and local government to bring about a new era of truly sustainable localism.”

“At a time of challenging cuts, there is a real danger of localism becoming associated with low cost and low value public services. Councils themselves must rise to this challenge by meeting budget cuts with innovative and ambitious thinking”

NLGN has also identified five shifts for how councils can be more ambitious:

1. A shift from retrenching to redeveloping. Once the first wave of cuts is over, councils must decide whether they want to become less ambitious, or whether they will transform their services and develop new roles in their communities.

2. Local government needs to move from simply piloting new approaches to transforming services on an industrial scale. Over the coming years, local and central government will need to be much bolder, working together to rapidly bring approaches such as early intervention, prevention and community-based budgeting into the mainstream.

3. A shift from wholesale to retail provision as services are increasingly sold directly to individuals. This trend is most obvious in social care, where the government is preparing to shove councils down the route of personal budgets. But other services such as health and education are also being marketised.

4. A shift in the political role of councils from being primarily service providers to becoming democratic hubs. As the shared or commissioned services approach strips members of their role as elected service managers, they will need to embrace a role that combines traditional voter advocacy with community capacity building and social entrepreneurship.

5. Local government will have to move from place-shaping to community development. Instead of planning better places from the town hall, councils will need to help citizens and communities make better choices for themselves by providing them with information and advice, and by building up intangible assets like trust and social capital.

Going Nuclear? A general power of competence and what it could mean for local communities

editor — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:01:14 +0000

The Government’s new General Power of Competence for local authorities will only work successfully if councils are given clear legal freedom according to the New Local Government Network.

In a new report the think tank urges the Government to abolish the ultra vires principle – in place to ensure that councils do not stray beyond their powers – and allow them to implement actions unless they are expressly forbidden by law.

With parliament shortly to consider legislating for a General Power of Competence for local authorities, NLGN’s report sets out a series of innovative activities that councils could consider adopting and makes recommendations on how the reform should be enacted.

In the context of local authorities losing a third of Central Government funding over the next four years, the research argues that councils must be freed to develop new revenue streams and income, and allowed to work more innovatively in partnership with the private sector, local community groups and other public bodies to drive out savings and re-design services.

The research analyses possible new ventures and activities for local authorities to consider, including

offering banking, insurance and credit services to local businesses and residents;
grouping together in innovative partnerships to drive efficiencies and generate income or to devolve powers and responsibilities to the neighbourhood level;
trading and selling a wider range of products and expertise (such as recruitment services, energy, communication and business services) to the private sector as well as other public agencies;
varying charging rates for planning and licensing fees to reflect local circumstances and costs;
adjusting tax rates and reliefs to incentivise behaviour on recycling, business development or property usage.

In legislating for change, the report calls on the Government to consider a series of additional freedoms to make the reform meaningful. These include allowing councils to act as they like in the interests of their local communities as long as their action is not specifically illegal, permitting local authorities to flex and vary taxes within the existing tax regime and carrying out a thorough examination of current laws to remove inappropriate legislation.

Report author and NLGN’s Head of Research, Nigel Keohane, said:

‘This power has the potential to be a major piece of reform that heralds a new era of localism. For too long, democratically-elected councils have been restricted in what they can do and vulnerable to legal challenge for adopting innovative responses to local challenges.

‘In the difficult financial landscape ahead, local authorities need full discretion to engage in new ways with their community, to save money through efficiencies and to develop income to safeguard frontline services.

‘To work it will require a leap of faith from national politicians to give local areas the necessary latitude for innovation to thrive. It will then rest on the ambition and aspiration of local communities to determine how best to improve the lives of their residents.’

Through the Looking Glass: Putting citizens at the heart of the assessment process

editor — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:01:44 +0000

In the wake of the Coalition Government’s decision to scrap the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA), NLGN is today calling for remaining inspection regimes to be slimmed down and for local citizens to play a greater role in driving up standards. It also called for greater responsibility for local government in improving its own performance.

Publishing a on the future of public service inspection, NLGN warns that wholesale abolition of assessment regimes could risk “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” and instead suggests that inspections of key services should move to a ‘risk-based’ weighted approach that would offer intensive support to underperforming councils but much more infrequent and lighter inspection to those performing well.

Having only been in place since 2009, CAA has been criticised for being too expensive and overly burdensome. A number of local authorities have publicly announced that they will limit the amount of time afforded to collating data for the inspectorate. Government plans to scrap CAA may lead to local authorities only being held to account through elections and through more transparent listing of their spending and decision making.

Under NLGN’s model, citizens would be encouraged to take a greater role in service provision and in holding their public services to account. They would be able to petition the LGA if they feel that the quality of a specific local service is declining or is not up-to-standards and if the internal procedure of the council or service is not satisfactory. Citizens would also be given access to more transparent information on how council money is spent, as a means of strengthening local democracy, and be invited to act as “bare-foot” assessors of local services.

The report also points towards a redefined role for the Audit Commission, which would focus more on financial auditing functions and on being a gate-keeper for other inspectorates such as OFSTED and the Care Quality Commission.

The local government family, led by the LGA, would take on a greater role in supporting underperforming councils and providing peer-led reviews.

Author of the report and NLGN Researcher Olivier Roth said:

“Each year local authorities spend around £150 billion of public money and it is therefore fundamental how we assess our public services and allow citizens a fair voice in monitoring them. We should enhance the role that citizens can play in holding their local public services to account through transparency and increased citizen engagement. Transparency and clear accountability must sit at the heart of the response, so that citizens have the necessary tools with which to hold elected politicians and officials to account. Effective assessment can underpin local democracy.

“One of the lessons of CAA is that adversarial and external inspections can only take improvement so far. For improvement to be real and lasting, it has to be embraced by the organisation attempting to improve. It is local government that possesses the experience, the skills and the mindset to identify possible improvements, and to find the right solutions to enable them. The assessment process should be owned by the local government family, as it possesses the required democratic legitimacy, buy in, and know-how needed to implement real and substantial changes.”

At the report launch, Cllr David Parsons praised the report as “a timely contribution to the debate on the future of audit and inspection.” Gareth Davies affirmed the report’s thesis that “independent local audit is fundamentally important” and Dr. Ita O’Donovan declared that we need to be “much more imaginative at the local level” as we decide upon the future of audit and assessment.

Making Sense of Entitlement: Improving public services without performance guarantees

editor — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:18:10 +0000

Recently-reversed entitlements such as the promise of free care at home and the scrapping of maximum hospital waiting times may have rung some alarm bells, but a new report from the New Local Government Network (NLGN) sees this as a positive move in the right direction and calls for a more devolved, locally-focused system for public service delivery.

NLGN’s latest paper, Making Sense of Entitlement, argues that the use of entitlements and guarantees to citizens replicates many of the problems of traditional performance targets and restricts the ability of services to focus on the needs of their local communities. It concludes that users would benefit and better outcomes could be achieved more efficiently if public services were subject to less central instruction, as long as the necessary safeguards of transparency, scrutiny and accountability to local citizens are in place.

Entitlements offering public service users a number of guaranteed commitments from public services were a prominent feature of policy under the previous government. They included:

Maximum waiting times in the NHS
Free care at home for older people and the disabled
‘September Guarantee’ offering all 16 and 17 year old school leavers a guaranteed place in education or training
One-to-one tuition for all school children falling behind in English and Maths

However, the Coalition Government has already scrapped the ‘personal care at home’ bill and is proposing an end to ‘political targets’ in the NHS. Government spokespeople have also been at pains to emphasise that ‘those on the frontline know better than government ministers how to spend money’ in relation to one-to-one tuition.

NLGN’s report highlights the considerable evidence that uniform entitlements distort the priorities of frontline staff away from providing the best possible service, towards fulfilling specific entitlements at the behest of civil servants in Whitehall. Entitlements such as the NHS waiting times are also vulnerable to manipulation, for example holding A&E patients in ambulances so as to process them within the four hour maximum wait.

As such NLGN recommends that:

1) Priorities and policy aims should be formulated on the basis of a negotiated agreement between central government and the local authority based on policy objectives and the needs of the local community. Drawing on the findings from the Total Place pilots, NLGN proposes that such a ‘Place Agreement’ should define clear service outcomes to be achieved locally and include additional devolution of funding and powers to meet these objectives.
2) To provide the necessary safeguards, both central and local government should ensure that public service outcomes are clearly transparent and accountable to citizens. This should be done through a series of measures including e-transparency, an assessment system focused fundamentally on the citizen, and greater scrutiny from the local government family. Such a system will be the focus of NLGN’s forthcoming report in July 2010 on the ‘Future of Assessment’.
3) Where the Coalition Government chooses to maintain or introduce future entitlements, that these should be broad and outcome-focused, rather than narrow and procedural, to allow local bodies flexibility to meet the needs of their community. The Policing pledge commitment to spending time on the beat working to agreed neighbourhood priorities is a positive example.
4) Local authorities should be given greater responsibility for services such as healthcare and policing – strengthening joined up working and giving a cohesive democratic mandate to locally-responsive priorities.

Luke Hildyard, the report author said:

‘Fears of public services suffering as a result of the abandonment of entitlements are unfounded. Equivalently resourced services ought to be capable of producing better outcomes if they are subject to less central instruction, not worse. Provided the necessary safeguards of transparency, scrutiny and accountability to citizens are in place, public service users will benefit if the coalition’s move towards a more devolved, locally-focused system of public service management leads to the scaling down of uniform national guarantees’

Greater than the sum of its parts: Total place and the future shape of public services

editor — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:01:42 +0000

A lack of joined-up working across Whitehall departments risks undermining the Government’s Total Place initiative according NLGN’s new report.

In one of the most detailed studies so far on Total Place, the research finds that whilst billions of savings could be achieved at the local level by better joined-up services, a lack of coherence between Government departments and a historic reluctance to devolve threatens to derail the project. The report is timed to inform the debate around the future of Total Place before further announcements are made in the Budget.

NLGN’s report argues that major change is needed at the centre to break existing top-down models and cultures of accountability and service delivery, which lead to significant inefficiency and wastage in public services. For instance, one local pilot uncovered as many as 50 different benefits each with their own form, rules and administrative machinery; another has calculated that it costs as much as £135m to spend £176m on economic development projects. NLGN’s analysis shows that major benefits can be unlocked by a more collaborative approach to public sector assets and building services around the citizen at a local level.

The report advocates the setting up of a new Department for Devolved Government to subsume CLG and the Cabinet Office and the Scottish and Welsh offices to drive devolution across Whitehall and release greater freedoms and powers for locally elected politicians to coordinate activity and decide how and where services are delivered. As part of this, accountability for public health budgets and local policing should be devolved immediately to all local authorities.

It also argues that localities and national government should come to a new series of deals on devolving public money and delivery responsibilities across a wider range of services such as employment and skills. These Place Proposition Agreements would allow local areas to set out how they could provide improved services for less money as a response to the expected cuts in public sector budgets.

Further recommendations in the NLGN report include:

Allowing councils full discretion over spend across regeneration, transport and housing in a single capital pot;
Establishing a new Joint Parliamentary and Local Government ‘Total Place Progress Committee’ comprised of MPs and local council leaders to scrutinise cross-government activity;
Strengthening existing Local Strategic Partnership arrangements and moving towards more statutory, incorporated and focused Public Service Boards;
Undertaking total counts of public resources and asset mapping across all local areas as a catalyst for collaborative approaches;
Setting up a Collaborative Leadership Academy to develop leadership across the public sector.

Report author Nigel Keohane said:

‘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.

‘With public sector budgets under pressure, it is more important now than ever that we seek to institute reforms that can ensure the most targeted and efficient responses to our local communities. This must include greater freedoms, responsibilities and resources at the local level.’

NLGN’s report was undertaken with support from Cap Gemini, Grant Thornton, Leadership Centre for Local Government and London Councils.