The 13 total Place pilot projects which have looked at how public money is spent in a local area and how it can be used more efficiently to improve local services have delivered their reports to ministers. They show that focusing on the customer and cutting out duplication and overlap will open the way for radical changes to public services which will bring improvements at a lower cost.

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Central Bedfordshire and Luton is the first of 13 Total Place pilot projects to publish its findings. The report has more than 50 proposals to cut crime and improve the welfare benefits system. The project has also paved the way for future profitable collaboration between public services including local councils, central government and voluntary organisations.

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Total Place is about mapping public expenditure in a locality and identifying efficiencies through partnership working. Birmingham is a city of a million people and a financial mapping exercise led by Be Birmingham, Birmingham’s local strategic partnership, identified over £7.5 billion of public investment coming into the city each year.

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The paper illustrates the need for more innovation in public service and for a greater focus on decentralization. The authors, from the National School for Government, have drawn their conclusions from the Total Place initiatives. Policy development on public service reform has shifted towards a more decentralised, less command-and-control based approach, but a whole generation of Whitehall staff has grown up in that world, having little direct knowledge of the front line and no capacity to see things from a local perspective.

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