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BLOG: Hidden Assets?

As the squeeze on public spending hits every organisation in the sector (and those that depend on their services) we have seen a range of responses from the leaders of public services.

Management restructuring, sharing services, sharing staff, sharing management teams and even the abolition of the Chief Executive post all feature in the current landscape. Much of the focus for this has been reducing overheads represented by the phrase ‘the back office’ in an effort to protect frontline services. So far the focus has been largely around “doing things differently” and more efficiently rather than “doing different things”. It is becoming increasingly clear that the ‘back office’ cannot by itself provide the scale of savings required.

More radically, many are looking at variations on becoming a ‘commissioning council’ with delivery undertaken by commercial partners, social enterprises/mutuals or simply taken-up by local residents on a voluntary basis,  either fulfilling the hopes of the Big Society enthusiasts or possibly just too desperate to face the loss of a precious local facility. Although this is about seeking new ways to deliver quality and quantity of services, it can raise significant local opposition when it’s felt to be about outsourcing frontline services.

Organisations across the public sector continue to shed staff, which even if handled carefully by organisations acting as responsible employers has a huge impact on all staff, with the risk of morale and performance being destabilised even for those not being made redundant. Without a redesign of services, those remaining then face significant pressures to maintain past levels of quality and quantity in service delivery with fewer staff and less resources.

Income generation to make up shortfalls in income from central Government have often followed traditional routes of increased charges where charges already exist and introducing charges for services where they didn’t.

How many are looking at their own (and their local partners’) bricks and mortar as the means to reduce costs and increase income? Is this the missing piece of the ‘more for less’ puzzle?

It may well be that for a single organisation there are limits to what can be achieved by focusing on just their own land and property – but even that possibility needs to be thoroughly tested before being discarded. Is this what’s happening across all parts of the public sector?

Across public service partners in a local area, there is increasing evidence to suggest that there are significant savings and income opportunities tied-up in land and buildings that could be taken, thereby reducing the impact of cuts on frontline services.

This is not simply about disposal of assets. This is about a change of mindset, for organisations to think about re-engineering assets in the same way that they think about redesigning services or re-structuring staff. There is money to be saved in reducing the number of building occupied and in the costs of occupation; there is money to be made through disposals (but not that sensible in most places in the current market); there is also income to be generated in the re-use of surplus land and buildings – from arrangements with partners to share accommodation (and benefit from some of their savings) to simple commercial lettings through to long-term arrangements with private sector companies in Asset-Backed Special Purpose Vehicles.

There are a series of issues to consider and steps to take. The first and most important is to establish the willingness inside the organisation and/or across partners to do this. This itself seems to have been a major stumbling block for some. The challenge this might pose to ‘departmentalism’ and to established working practices often puts it straight into the ‘too difficult’ box. The assumption that this will adversely affect those service delivery buildings which are close to the hearts of local communities often makes politicians understandably hesitant to take the step. Like all forms of partnership and collaboration, this work can also suffer from one partner dominating the dialogue leading to the view that this is a take-over not a partnership.

There are examples of councils and places that have seen this opportunity and grasped. Most of those examples seem to pre-date the public spending squeeze and were driven by a combination of political vision and common sense. 

The recent Westminster Sustainable Business Forum publication Leaner and Greener II: Putting Buildings to Work highlighted examples as far as apart as Bournemouth and Hull, Woking and Stockport. The 11 Capital and Assets Pathfinders are also providing properly costed business cases demonstrating the scale of the opportunity in their area.

So what are the key things to think about/steps to take?

• Get a sense of the scale of the financial opportunity for your organisation/place
• Get a sense of the scale of change needed to realise that opportunity
• Build a vision of what the new approach offers and prevents
• Build a coalition of local services and partners willing to take the journey
• Draw all of the above together in a coherent programme
• Start by making a start, however small!

If it’s that obvious, why isn’t everyone already doing this?

It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that this is easy: it isn’t. It’s also easy to assume that just making the case and looking at examples from elsewhere is enough to convince local leaders that this work is needed: that’s too simplistic too.

This approach to the way assets are currently used is very challenging. It is not in itself about land and property; it is about a fundamental re-think about how land and property is being used to support the delivery of public services and to meet the aspirations of local leaders. A programme that ambitious will be difficult to shape and hard to deliver, but the scale of savings this offers is too big to be ignored!

For more information contact Robert Hardy at robert@bqc-network.com

BLOG: Challenges Facing Council CEO's

In September 2011 PWC conducted an online survey of local authority Chief Executives to get their sense of the progress they are making on implementing budget reductions to date and of the nature and scale of challenges for the future. Their conclusions point to a number of things, some obvious, some more surprising.

Firstly they demonstrate that although the scale and speed of savings required are new, they are largely seen as part of a longer period of efficiencies, service improvement and rationalisation – at least that was the view of what was needed in 2010/11. There is a very strong sense that what is needed for 2012/13 – just five months away – is much more challenging and requires tougher solutions.

When asked to rate their top five challenges for 2012 onwards, Chief Executives identified the following –

• Increasing demand for services

• Management capacity to deal with change

• Difficulties in locating further savings areas

• Agreeing collaborative arrangements

• Access to skilled implementation resources

We at BQC Network have worked successfully with public sector clients over a number of years to support them to deliver change in all of these areas.

1. Many might think that ‘increasing demand’ is merely a fact of life that can only be dealt with by managing down expectations. In truth, much of the preventative agenda, nudge theory and models of behaviour change – whether in encouraging recycling or working with vulnerable families - are the real key to reducing both actual and latent demand.

What all of these approaches require is a change of mind-set for both officers and members about the nature of the business they are in and a resolute focus on the outcomes desired. Many authorities have been successful in aspects of this change, we can help you scale this up to a council-wide, and place-wide way of thinking and working.

Our work supporting past Total Place pilots and our support to the roll-out of Community Budgets give us unique insights into the key stumbling blocks to be avoided and the leadership needed to make this approach to prevention and behaviour-change successful.

2. As the PWC survey shows, management re-structuring has made a significant contribution to the savings found to date. The downside of this is obviously the lack of capacity highlighted as challenge number two. Assuming that no council was deliberately carrying ‘top-heavy’ management structures in the past, this is obviously a real issue, not simply a perception. As well as the obvious lack of people, organisations will have lost knowledge, experience and perhaps crucially the personal working relationships with partners which senior staff developed over time.

While we can’t replace all of that, our team of consultants and managers have experience, knowledge and contacts that can be used by councils for fixed periods on fixed programmes and projects at a fixed cost.

3. As well as management restructuring, the other major contributor to savings so far has been ‘the back office’. The survey suggest that so far the focus has been largely around “doing things differently” and more efficiently rather than “doing different things”. For the future, Chief Executives are more concerned about their ability to limit the impact of savings on frontline services. The need for more radical change – to what’s done, how it’s done and who does it – is recognised and is inextricably linked to challenges four and five.

Relying on ‘more for less’ and squeezing yet more efficiencies from the management structure, from business processes and from ‘the back office’ will not be enough to meet the scale of the financial challenges. Some authorities are well advanced in their thinking about alternative service models and wider collaboration, but given the timescales needed to make such change sustainable, tangible, cashable savings have been slow to emerge.

The Total Place pilots and the Community Budget authorities proved the basis for significant savings was available through a radical re-shaping of both ‘back-office’ and frontline services across public sector bodies in a local area. We at the BQC Network have developed significant expertise in this field and can offer practical ways to streamline services or generate additional revenue streams by working across the ‘whole place’.

4. Chief Executives see collaboration with others as both a key challenge and a keys means to achieving the savings needed. As with all relationships, collaboration between public sector bodies or with private and voluntary sector ones requires considerable effort and arguably a different skill-set to traditional management styles.

As part of the BQC support to Total Place, Community Budgets and Asset Management we have considerable insight and expertise in relation to the leadership challenges posed by a whole range of formal and informal collaboration arrangements and agreements. We also have tools that help address and overcome these challenges.

 

For more information on this blog contact Robert Hardy

BLOG: Community Budgets and the learning from Total Place

One of the key pieces of learning from the Total Place work was the need to ensure the multi-sector partnerships that were set up to deliver the "total place" public services fully understood the requirements, responsibilities and consequences of adopting the "total place" approach. They also needed to be fully prepared to establish a set of attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that facilitated the success of a "total place" approach. During the process of Total Place we often became too focused on the deliverables at the expense of getting the relationships right, this in turn made delivering much harder. To avoid the same mistakes in Community Budgets we would argue strongly that it is time well spent understanding where all the partners are starting from; understanding where there are potential blockages, barriers and gaps within the partnership; understanding where we need support and where we can support others; understanding the responsibilities and consequences of working in new ways; understanding how we need to change and how others will need to change.

One of the best ways of building this understanding is to sit down with the partners and carry out an open and honest assessment of how ready the partnership is to start working in the new way. Readiness is about behaviours, attitudes, beliefs as well as structures, systems and logistics. We also need to consider how capable the partnership is. Can the partnership as a whole cover the wide range of skills, competencies and experience required to deliver under a community budget. By asking these questions against a set of critical success factors (i.e. factors that must be in place if we are to give ourselves the best opportunity to successfully deliver community budgets) we can gain a visual representation of where the partnership can succeed as it stands and where it will need help from both within and outside the partnership.

BQC Network, with the help of LG Leadership, have developed a set of self assessment products which can help organisations raise this self awareness across the partnership. Built from our experience of Total Place and our developed understanding of organisational alignment (as summarised in the BQC Alignment Model) we have established our Organisational Assessment suite currently covering Comprehensive Spending Review, Asset Optimisation, Community Budgets, and Complex Families. A short presentation on the community budgets tool is available at the following link Organisational Assessment Community Budgets Presentation

If you would like further information please contact Mike Parry

BLOG: Mutual Benefits

I don't often like to blow the trumpet of our competitors but I have to say that I have just read a very good piece of research by the Office for Public Management (OPM) "New models of public service ownership". The document provides an excellent insight into the potential opportunities for public sector workers which may result from the devastation of the 20th October Comprehensive Spending Review. Mutuals, worker owned enterprises, co-operatives may not be new but could provide alternative career paths for the social entrepreneurs amongst the public sector employees. It would be great to see the Coalition, Public Sector Employers and Local Authorities actively encourage and embrace social entrepreneurs within their staff, helping them to establish sustainable social enterprises which could eventually lead to significant savings to the public purse. It would also be great if the Trades Unions could recognise the potential benefits of such an approach, both with regard to their own members and also to the service recipients who they purport to be protecting as well, especially when compared to the probable alternative scenarios of redundancies and service cuts.

There are a number of significant issues that have to be overcome, not least amongst them the responsibility for pensions and the publicly owned buildings and assets. There will also need to be serious changes in the culture of commissioners, public sector leadership as well as the service users and the general public. The social entrepreneurs are likely to need significant support to help them through their own personal and business development. There is likely to be up-front investment needed to enable this approach to fly, however I really believe that the difficulties resulting from the spending review can give us an opportunity to re-construct the provision of public services, I'm just not sure there is the bravery to make it happen.

If anyone wants to discuss this further please contact me Mike Parry.

Mike Parry 15th October 2010

 

BLOG: Understanding the Government's Game Plan

Maybe I am being particularly thick but I am having great difficulty understanding the Coalition Government's game plan. As far as I can see there seems to be a lot of bluster about "getting rid of the old bureaucracy", however it seems to be being replaced by things that could turn out just as, if not more, bureaucratic.

• Why does replacing NHS direct with a "1-1-1" number mean a more efficient service with less bureaucracy? My understanding is the principle is very similar although the rumour is there will be less trained nurses at the end of the phone!
• Apparently closing down the Audit Commission (of whom I am one of their harshest critics) will "save the taxpayer £50m per year". Local Authorities will still need to pay for audits, presumably from taxpayers money, however this money will now go into the pockets of the the "big 5" consultancies. (I thought this Government were wanting to reduce their "consultancy" bill!!)
• Getting rid of the Regional Health Authorities (again organisations for which I have little love) and giving the money to the frontline GP's appears to be a sensible "localism" move. My concern, however is that the GP's (privately owned businesses) will first need to develop exceptional partnering skills with other practices (privately owned businesses) as well as employing the Trust staff to manage the processes. I can see this takes it off the books of the NHS, but it is still the same public money being spent by organisations that are outside the control of local people. Surely there must be some loss of "economy of scale" through this decision, and I am unclear about where the gains are.

Similar arguments can be made for RDA's, Police Authorities and some of the other "QUANGO's" the Government is tearing down. I have no doubt that what is in place now is not working well, but find it hard to see the evidence that what is replacing it is fundamentally changing things for the better. I will be delighted if anyone can help me overcome by ignorance.

Mike Parry - mike@bqc-network.com

 

 

BLOG: Responding to the coalition's request for ideas

Whilst some have cynically described the coalition's attempts to engage with "ordinary people" as either a "mere publicity stunt" or "further evidence of the coalition's inability to come up with their own ideas", we have taken them at face value and offered a number of suggestions on how to achieve the deficit reduction required. Below are our submissions:

"Fairness and Targeting

My idea draws on the lessons of the Total Place pilots that “taking a preventative approach, ensuring issues are identified and addressed quickly – before they become acute – is both better for the citizen and cheaper to the public purse”.

The pilots identified that multi-agency targeting and joint process re-design offered savings ranging from 10 to 30% in the highest spend services providing targeted care and support.

• Figures from Peterborough City Council show that the cost per child rises dramatically, the more acute the family circumstances become – families ‘coping’ require universal services at a cost of £643 per child; for those ‘barely coping’ the figure increases ten-fold to £6,527; and for those in the most ‘chaotic’ circumstances the figure increases by 750% to £49,425.
• Shared use by local agencies of customer insight, needs assessment and demand predictor models guides the investment in and marketing of contact channels, resource deployment, disinvestment decisions and behaviour change strategies.
• The link between customer insight and the use of ‘nudge economics’ techniques such as social marketing is very strong and offers the chance for social entrepreneurs to play a greater role in  prevention services and supporting those most in need.
• Through customer journey mapping, many pilots have demonstrated how citizens provide the same information multiple times to different agencies. Pilots have identified ways to help reduce this duplication and the potential savings from doing so:
• Croydon are developing the ‘Life Passport’ concept in which families with disabled children can share a wide range of information about themselves with all public services they have contact with;
• Kent proposed that the number of benefit assessment forms affecting those recently unemployed could be reduced from five to one, and the number of visits to public agencies from four to one, reducing the time taken to deal with a customer by a third and saving £2.2 million per annum; and
• Worcestershire is introducing a unified commissioning process and working as a single service, based on the detailed approach emerging from cross-sectoral ‘Lean’ analysis for services for the NEET group. This would reduce administrative and support costs by 20 per cent and improve services.
• Lack of joined-up intelligence leads to unintended consequences for those families in receipt of the most intensive and expensive support service – for example the council tax demand de-railing months of social work support

• Greater use of generalist staff within and across local agencies to act as single points of contact, would mean that issues can be identified earlier and appropriate support provided quickly:

• Croydon estimate this could reap savings of £8.4 million by 2011-12 to 2013-14 and up to £61 million by 2023-24; and

• Manchester city-region believe £2 million could be saved by improving early years provision for 0-5 year olds, and an extra £2 million if they can achieve a 1 per cent reduction in the number of children in care." Robert Hardy Robert Hardy Consulting Ltd

"The Integration of Central Government and Local Authority staff into the Kent Gateway Project.

Question: why can’t we achieve the successful integration?

Answer: because of the territorial approach taken by some central Government Departments 

Gateway puts the citizen first and improves their experience of public services. Access to public and voluntary sector services should be simple, friendly, non-stigmatising and effective. The Gateway programme, which has been active since 2005, is achieving this by a single point of access across the three main channels – face-to-face, telephone and online. The vision is for coherence and includes the aspiration to move towards a single non-emergency number and a single web portal in addition to the physical Gateway network. Gateway is a strategic plank of public policy in Kent with demonstrable outcomes both for citizens and organisations and offers the potential for significant savings as evidenced in this report. It is a strong working partnership.

Rationale

• The Gateway initiative provides access to integrated public and voluntary sector services which are simple, friendly and effective and puts the customer first. The Gateway programme aims to achieve this by providing a single point of access across three main channels – face-to-face (f2f), telephone and online.  

• The vision is for coherent access, including the aspiration to move towards a single non-emergency number and a single local web portal in addition to the physical and mobile Gateway network.  

• By taking this approach, public sector organisations in Kent are able to rationalise their front and back-office processes, and achieve reductions in their physical estate whilst enhancing relationships with citizens and improving customer satisfaction.  

• Experience to date gained through customer insight work and intelligence gathering indicates that customer satisfaction levels are and will continue to be high with this approach (satisfaction levels in excess of 90% currently reported).  

• To sustain and improve these levels of satisfaction, it is critical that the Gateway service model continues to evolve and integrates Central Government agencies such as DWP, JCP, and HMRC etc). The added profile and visibility of Gateway through the Total Place pilot has begun to open-up this potential but nothing has actually happened!  

• The importance of Gateway as a theme is as follows:  

• The Gateway approach first and foremost considers the customer and their needs as the primary driver for change  

• Establishing simple shared access environments simplifies the customer journey, improving efficiency and effectiveness, including cost effectiveness  

• The Gateway approach enables the release and disposal of assets that are no longer required  

• Builds strong local ‘delivery partnerships’ - responsive to strategic aims  

• Close to citizens and place".  Geoff Norris, Team Consultants Ltd

"Diversification of Supply

My idea is to use the successful Total Place model to enable a wider range of businesses and community organisations to become public service providers by establishing pooled commissioning and procurement at the local level. This approach will challenge entrenched organisational resistance to change and innovation in how goods and services are commissioned, purchased and delivered.

• Place-based integrated commissioning across public sector agencies, using shared needs assessment and shared customer insight tools has to replace organisation-led structures which duplicate resources. The OEP estimated that £103bn per year was spent in procurement including local government and local health bodies. Procurement represents 46% of gross local government expenditure.
• Sharing commissioning across agencies immediately negates any organisational ‘protectionism’ which regards the in-house service provider as automatically the preferred option.
• This approach also removes the cost of the duplication of these functions across each of the separate public sector bodies in local areas.
• An integrated locally-based approach to assessment and commissioning offers the perfect opportunity for the direct involvement of local private sector and customer bodies which would bring market intelligence, practical expertise and frontline experience into the key part of the local public sector procurement chain.
• Management and administration savings also extend into the procurement and contract management stages of the process and no individual organisation in a locality should need (or be able to afford) stand-alone capacity to carry-out these roles.
• To reinforce transparency and increase public scrutiny there should be a place-based Value for Money assessment publishing the cost to each public sector body in an area of a range of core goods and services (e.g. utility bills, building maintenance etc.) and this assessment must be made public.
• Such a shared assessment would be more difficult in relation to the supply of specialist services and expertise for example to an NHS Acute Trust, but the need for transparency and the involvement of those with current market expertise and those representing ‘end-users’ in no less necessary.
• Much current public sector procurement does not directly support, nor benefit from, the wealth of local expertise, innovation and flexibility to be found in the small and micro businesses which form the bedrock of local economies.
• An integrated approach to commissioning and procurement enables the possibility of a stronger link between the totality of public sector purchasing power in a locality and visible support for local economic growth and enterprise as set out in Thinking Businss in Policy. This would be even stronger if there is greater transparency in the future not only about what has been spent, but about the needs to be met and the means by which services will be procured through integrated commissioning." Robert Hardy, Robert Hardy Consulting Ltd

"Offenders leaving prison after sentences of less than 12 months ;

Part of the Bradford Total Place project has been to examine the potential to reduce re-offending by effective and timely interventions by agencies in the criminal justice system, from the time of arrest to the release of the offender. Annual potential savings in Bradford alone are £4.764m plus £130k p.a. efficiency gains.  There is no reason why substantial national savings cannot be realised by rolling out the approach across Britain.

Project Partners have been; Service Users (inc. ex-offenders and families; Service User Representatives; Probation Services; HM Prisons; Police; Adult Services ; Children and Families; Voluntary Sector; National Offender Management Service; G4S; DWP; NHS.

Principal findings are:

• Considerable duplication of assessments of offenders is wasteful and irritating; assessments are not passported between agencies
• Focussing on sentences of <12 months give the greatest potential to impact on reoffending numbers, reducing the call on custodial places
• There’s a ‘golden 24 hours’ following release that can be highly influential in preventing reoffending
• Special attention at arrest stage to burglars, even if it only prevents an extra 5% reoffending could save huge amounts of public cost.
• The male-oriented offender management system doesn’t work for women
• There are multi-generational benefits from breaking the cycles of offending within families, with potentially large long term financial savings to the public purse

Key elements of a new approach are;

1.  Case management for everyone. 

2.  Passported Assessments.

3.  Offender Management at Arrest. Burglary is a particular local issue and will be subject to a specific focussed initiative; 750 burglars cohort p.a., of which 5% (=38) will now not reoffend due to this intervention saving £3.688m p.a  in costs of police , processing up to Court Stage and prison costs, plus £145k social costs.

4.  A focus on families. 

There are some small set up (invest-to-save) costs.

Benefits include;

• Working with families of offenders will assist in reducing the number of children who experience difficulties, and reduce the cost of interventions being required from Children’s Services.
• Offenders will have a better opportunity to reintegrate into the community through increased personal security and support
• Successful resettlement of offenders in local communities reduces the cost of re-imprisonment
• Successful resettlement of offenders creates more citizens and less victims
• Perceptions with regards to crime and fear of crime will reduce where re-offending rates are demonstrated to be significantly cut.
• Early intervention with the perpetrators of crimes that have significant negative impact, and high social cost e.g. Burglary in Bradford, will reduce crime and should positively impact over time on fear of crime
• Costs to the taxpayer will be reduced in both short and long terms. Current local costs of re-offending is £93m p.a. in Bradford

Fuller information is available from me in the Bradford Total Place Business Case Summary Document" Andy Snowden, AS&A

We await the feedback with bated breath!!

 

BLOG: Lets create a "coalition of the place"

The latest news on the political negotiations between the various parties does not give any certainty on who or what will be governing the UK for the next 6 months/4 years. Even when the uncertainty is over there is little likelihood of a government which is "strong and stable"; the most stable scenario given the numbers i.e. a ConLib coalition, is probably the least stable from a policy consensus point of view. Whoever takes the reins will be looking to stay in power rather than taking the difficult decisions that will be required to drag the UK back into a position of economic strength. All the parties will be concerned with not "blackening their copybook" for the next election.

This situation offers local public sector organisations a huge opportunity to take the reins themselves and start to reinvigorate and/or reinforce the concepts of local democracy that the Total Place pilots have resurfaced over the last few months. We all know that whether it is in 2010 or 2011 there are going to be wide reaching demands to cut back the public spend. It is critical that local people now start to demand that the decisions on public spending priorities should be made at a local level. Clearly national frameworks are important but the real knowledge of what is needed is held by both the service users and the service providers at a local level. The thinking behind Total Place encourages that local voice to be at the forefront of decision making.

To make the money work well, something which is in everybody's interest, we need to create a "coalition of the place", bringing local business leaders, political leaders, community leaders, funders, service providers and service users together to determine what is required for the "place", its people and its future. Free up the money from its organisational constraints, free organisations from their national objectives and targets and work together to provide an efficient effective locally focused public sector. Lets start judging the success of the public sector on what it achieves for us at a local level where individuals can be held accountable.