The pilot projects cover a wide range of topics including providing better and more efficient services for children, young people, the elderly and the vulnerable. Crime reduction is also part of the agenda, as is tackling its causes such as abuse of drugs and alcohol. Cost savings are also being pursued through better asset management by making more efficient use of buildings.
Moving from where public services are now to a Total Place approach will require radical transformation. Whatever measure is used to calibrate the scale of the change, be it number of people, work traditions, money involved, they are all at the top of the scale. The change management challenge is massive and no one would expect it to go smoothly. The first glitch has appeared with Whitehall departments failing to get the message out to people on the ground.
The Pre Budget Report presented by the Chancellor gives no indication of the potential efficiency savings that might result from the Total Place initiative. It was expected that the PBR would give something of the flavour of the initiative and possibly a broad indication of benefits. There is, however, a promise that by Budget 2010, the Government will respond to detailed evidence from Total Place about the added value of freeing up front-line services and encouraging collaboration in terms of better services at less cost.
Read more on PRE BUDGET REPORT DAMPENS EXPECTATIONS ABOUT TOTAL PLACE…
Interim findings from the Bedfordshire and Luton Total Place pilot project have revealed a mishmash of complicated and uncoordinated processes for dealing with welfare payments and managing crime. Work is now going on to find better ways to improve service to benefit claimants and reduce reoffending. It is expected that this can be achieved with substantial cost savings.
Read more on TOTAL PLACE PILOT FINDS WAYS TO IMPROVE WELFARE REDUCE CRIME AND CUT COSTS…
Front line organisations across the country will soon be involved in the budget cutting Total Place initiative. The savings from Total Place will be achieved by all public sector organisations in every area getting together to find out how much taxpayer’s money they spend and then searching for ways to cut costs and do a better job. But a Publicnet survey has revealed that most public bodies know nothing about Total Place, because Whitehall departments have remained silent.
Read more on WHITEHALL FAILS TO GIVE FRONT LINE SUPPORT TO TOTAL PLACE COST CUTTING INITIATIVE…
The Audit Commission’s annual comprehensive performance assessment has been replaced by ‘Oneplace’ a collaborative venture by six inspectorates. ‘Oneplace’ presents an overall view of how public services are performing in each of the 152 areas of England covered by Local Area Agreements. By taking down their orgainisational boundaries the inspectorates are now fully lined up with the Total Place holistic approach to public services.
Children’s Services provided by nine local authorities have been judged to be poor in the first Ofsted annual ratings measuring performance in 152 councils in England. More than two-thirds of councils are delivering excellent or good services and forty others have been rated as merely adequate in today’s report.
Read more on OFSTED RATES CHILDREN’S SERVICES POOR IN NINE COUNCILS…
There is to be a full scale assessment of the Government’s drive to improve England’s social housing stock amid fears that some local authorities seem to be going backwards. The Housing Minister, John Healey, said the programme, which began in 2001, had been a “massive national refurbishment of unprecedented scale”.
Read more on SOME COUNCILS ‘GOING BACKWARDS’ IN DECENT HOMES DRIVE…
By Piers Ibbotson
People need a degree of free choice for creativity and change to happen. But they must also have boundaries. At one level this is what politics and business are all about. Too much of the wrong sort of control and the system becomes bureaucratic or tyrannical, too little and it becomes arbitrary and chaotic.
A new report says cuts need to be mader in front line public sector staff to make services more efficient and to help salvage public finances. The right-leaning think tank, Reform, says the Prime Minister and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, are wrong to pledge protection for front line services.
Read more on PUBLIC SECTOR SAVINGS DEBATE MOVES TO ‘FRONT LINE’…
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