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The Total Place pilots
have proved a winner across the political divide, leading to widespread calls
for more local autonomy. Ben Willis discovers that, whoever wins the election, Whitehall will have to
take the concept seriously

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Total
Place, the government’s latest drive to improve local service delivery, looks
like a concept whose time has come. A year ago, it was put to the test in 13
pilot areas in England;
those involved have apparently been so enthusiastic about the idea that in last
month’s Budget the government said the model would be rolled out across the
country. Meanwhile, with next month’s election fast approaching and Total Place central
to two key battlegrounds – the public finances and local devolution – the
programme, or at least the ideas it embodies, are set to remain firmly on the
political map.

“It’s an
idea that has found its day,” says David Parsons, leader of Leicestershire
County Council and chair of the Local Government Association’s Improvement
Board. “From the point of view of the Treasury, they will be trying to save
money, so they’ll need people to co-operate; from the point of view of the
citizen, it’s about much better services at the point of contact; and from the
point of view of local government, it’s about having much more influence over
the way all public sector money is spent in an area. So it’s a very powerful
tool.”

Put simply,
Total Place
seeks to cut out waste and duplication in local service delivery at a time when
the public finances are under severe strain. Public agencies spend massive
amounts of money each year on services ranging from childcare to tackling drug
and alcohol misuse. But with many of these priorities cutting across agency and
departmental boundaries, and with each subject to their own performance
monitoring systems, inefficiencies in the system are inevitable (see box).

The pilots
launched last year began by mapping out how services in their area operate.
Each picked an issue that was of particular importance to them and explored how
services geared towards that issue are run: whether they meet people’s needs;
how much money they receive; how that money could go further; and how any
duplication or waste in the system could be stripped out.

A Treasury
evaluation of the pilots published alongside March’s Budget gave a broadly
positive endorsement of their early work. It calculated that if local areas
were able, on average, to find a two per cent saving from their spending on
services by taking a Total Place
approach, this could release up to £1.2bn by 2013-14. Moreover, the report said
the pilots had demonstrated how tailoring services more carefully to the needs
of end users could lead to more focused and effective results.

On this
basis, the government concluded that the Total Place concept should be extended to
cover the whole country. In return for local authorities delivering better and
cheaper public services, the government promised them greater freedom in the
way they spend their budgets, and promised to remove the ring-fencing on £1.3bn
of local authority grants by 2013. For the highest-performing authorities, the
government said it would from 2011 introduce a new ‘single offer’. This will
enable authorities to negotiate additional freedoms from the centre, such as
further control over spending, and assessment against a smaller number of Whitehall targets.

The speed
with which the government has embraced Total Place raises a host of questions
about how rigorously the idea can have been tested in such a short space of
time. Yet it’s clear from March’s Budget that, should Labour win next month’s
election, it intends to push ahead quickly in rolling out the model. And
indeed, other parties seem similarly enthusiastic about pursuing the idea.
Speaking to CSW, Conservative shadow local government minister Bob Neill says
that if they win power, the Tories would retain the Total Place initiative. “The concept is
very consistent with our localist philosophy,” Neill says. “So we would look to
roll out the concept on a national basis if we win the election. It seems to be
a constructive initiative for delivering efficiencies, but also for simply
delivering services in a more effective manner.”

The Liberal
Democrats, meanwhile, have been less categorical about their intentions. But in
a recent article for a party website, its shadow communities secretary Julia
Goldsworthy wrote: “While the [Total
Place] pilots are valuable in highlighting how
public money is spent at a local level, they need to be taken further if they
are to have a real impact. Local people must be involved in the debate about
how public money can be better spent.”

Of course,
the degree to which the espousal of Total Place thinking leads to a genuinely
new model for delivering local public services remains to be seen, and will in
part depend on how the next governing party lives up to its rhetoric on
localism. But observers agree that the concept has huge potential.

“All three
parties are talking about localism, but we need to understand better what they
mean by localism,” says Katie Schmuecker, senior research fellow at think-tank
IPPR North. “If what it means is allowing freedoms and flexibilities at the
local level, allowing local government to have better oversight and scrutiny of
the public services delivered in its area so that it is able to marshal
services to respond to local need, that’s the way Total Place can contribute to
a really fundamental shift in the way we deliver services.”

If the next
government does decide it wants to pursue Total Place thinking to its full extent,
Schmuecker and Parsons agree that this will demand a new relationship between
the centre and localities, as Whitehall
departments are forced to loosen control of budgets and accept a weakening of
performance-management regimes. Both accept this may lead to tensions; and,
indeed, some experiences from the pilots suggest this could be an issue for any
roll out of Total Place.

“There are
some really enlightened people in Whitehall who
really understand that things have to change,” says Robin Porter, programme
leader for the Total Place
pilot in Luton and Central Bedfordshire. “But
a lot of people are still thinking they can continue the way they always have
done. There’s still a feeling in the centre that they know best, in spite of
the fact that we here on the ground are the people who deliver services day in,
day out.”

bob neill, julia goldsworthy, government, politics and public administration, Central Government, civil service, london politics

Last updated 735 days ago by Civil Service World

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