Times are changing: different models and different methods for different times

Evaluate potential service options

Emphasise solutions that promote economic growth

Mutuals and cooperative models

Participate actively in pooling resources

Become better commissioners

Relearn skills of municipal enterprise

Catalyst Councils

Ensuring Council Enabling Council

Stewardship of place Strategic commissioning

core services in house + public employment Preference for private and voluntary sectors as service providers

Maintain core capacity Divestment to alternative providers

Collaborative relationships Contractual relationships

Local representative + participative democracy

Market democracy and individual choice

Collective community outcomes Individual user outcomes

Joined up services meet needs of communities and delivering wider strategic objectives

Fragmented services lacking strategic coordination to deliver wider policy objectives

The Ensuring CouncilSource: APSE: “The Ensuring Council”

Ensuring Council: different viewpoints

• Public stewards: In house services give best opportunity to control costs and deliver value for money. Strategic advantages of in house provision. LAs need core capacity to help shape social economic and envt wellbeing.

• Local Brokers: more open to different models of service delivery where can add real value. Sceptical about ability of voluntary sector to provide public services in long term.

• Public Valuers: more focused on LA as community leader and democratic guarantor. Keen on empowering local communities to achieve socially just outcomes for all citizens. Favour more mixed economy.

The entrepreneurial state• Previously a picture has been painted of the state as

“bureaucratic,” and “meddling”. Even described as “enemies of enterprise”. All that is required is to provide the conditions for innovation to flourish.

• This view is challenged and it is proposed a far more proactive role is required. It is argued there is a need for a targeted, proactive, entrepreneurial state, able to take risks, harnessing the best of the private sector for the national good over a medium to long term time horizon.

• The state as lead investor, and a creator of the knowledge economy.

• The state defines new radical technologies rather than just reacts to them.

• The state even takes on the most risky entrepreneurial risk taking and creates new types of economic dynamism

Civic Enterprise

1. Becoming civic entrepreneurs: whole place leadership to replace managerialist hierarchical partnership approach. Roles for Councillors.

2. Stimulating jobs, homes and good growth. Local govt creates conditions for enterprise. Invest in infrastructure and skills. Maybe TIF. Share risk and provide loan guarantees, municipal bonds.

Civic Enterprise contd.

3. Establish 21st century infrastructure: eg ultrafast broadband, low carbon energy, cheaper fuel bills, housing for first time buyers and older people and transport systems. Multi use public service hubs.

4. A new social contract. Collective action led by local government to support needs of older people families and children. Includes troubled families initiative.

5. Solve the English Question. The Barnet formula should be reviewed. English devolution. City deals

Leader of Leeds City Council: Keith Wakefield

Municipal Entrepreneurship

• Increasing importance of commercial skills

• New ideas and practices brought into implementation

• “Catalysts” identify opportunities for innovation and transformation ( a key skill is listening to and engaging the workforce); “stewards” establish the collaborative arena and the interactions between stakeholders which enable creative thinking and innovation ( a key ability is to overcome silo thinking) ; “Mediators” manage and diffuse any potential conflicts in the process, arbitrating between different stakeholders

Future Councils

Residual councilsClustered Councils

Commercial Councils

Lifestyle Councils

Source NLGN: Simon Parker

Local Perspectives

Managerial PerspectivesPolitical Perspectives

Text

Co-ordinating

Easy

Ensuring Commissioning

Catalyst

Co-operative

Civic entrepreneurEnabling

Source: University of Birmingham: A new Model for public services

§

“

internal

external

external

SERVICES

PO

WE

R

The shape of local government by 2015.

Ideal type council Core purpose Approach to services

Attitude to communities

Councils that might pursue this route

Neo traditional Community leadership + economic growth

Mostly in house but reviewed for cost + effectiveness

Community engagement through democratic structures

N Mets + counties, districts not facing deep cuts

Pragmatic Varies- generally to protect vulnerable in face of cuts

Review on case by case basis with varying degree of radicalism

Varies on service by service basis

Bulk of local government

Commissioning councils

Customer service Move to arms length delivery, emphasis on markets and choice

Communities supported to rapidly take over divested services

Southern Counties

Co-operative councils

Community development

Co-produced with citizens taking on more responsibility

Blurred line between service provision and community activism

Next generation labour councils in London N West and parts of north East

Source: Future Councils, S Parker

AND

PUBLIC RESULTS

DEMOCRATIC RESULTS

GOVERNMENT(AUTHORITY)

GOVERNANCE(COLLECTIVE POWER)

Societal

System wide

Networks

Agency

Transparency/Accountability

Access

Voice

Choice

Action

Provide

services

Tax/

Spend

Legislate Prote

ctE

mpow

erEnabl

ePartn

er

Performance Emergence

Compliance Resilience

Source: J Bourgon (2009)

PredictableUnpredictable

AND

PUBLIC RESULTS

DEMOCRATIC RESULTS

GOVERNMENT(AUTHORITY)

GOVERNANCE(COLLECTIVE POWER)

Societal

System wide

Networks

Agency

Transparency/Accountability

Access

Voice

Choice

Action

Provide

services

Tax/

Spend

Legislate Prote

ctE

mpow

erEnabl

ePartn

er

Performance Emergence

Compliance Resilience

Source: J Bourgon (2009)

Predictable Unpredictable

Active Citizens• Councils shift public

expectations. Instead of asking “what do you want?” and “what should the Council do?” ask “ what assets do all of us already have?” and “what can we all do to make things better?”

• Provide citizens with advice, skills and confidence to be active

• Role for Councillors• Build strong relationships

with third sector

Behavioural economicsHow to influence individual decisions

• Incentives: lower pricing structures/rewards• Framing; frames are powerful nudges• Spotlight effect: people think others are looking at them

more than they are ( odd one out)• Priming: asking people in advance ( voting)• Defaults: pad the path of least resistance ( organ

donation, continuous subscriptions)• Give feedback ( eg energy monitor)• Structure complex choices• Collaborative filtering ( eg Amazon)• Social influences and peer pressure

Network theory

• Scale free networks• Small world

networks• Random networks

Transformation

PhilosophyBase mgt decisions on a long term philosophyEven at the expense of short term financial goals

Process(eliminate waste)

People and partners(respect, challenge and grow them)

Problem-solving (continuous improvement through Ruthless reflection ( hansei); and continuous improvement ( kaizen))

Sources• Catalyst Councils: (Sept 2012) A new future for local

public service delivery: Daniel Crowe, edited by Steven Howell. Foreword by Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP Localis, Capita Symonds

• The Entrepreneurial state: ( 2011) Mariana Mazzucato: Demos.

• Unlocking Local Capacity: ( 2012) Why active citizens need active Councils . Rob Francis OPM

• Future Councils: Life after the spending cuts ( Sept 2011) Simon Parker: NLGN

• “Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and Happiness” (2008) R Thaler and C Sunstein Yale University Press

• No Stone unturned; In pursuit of growth (Oct 2012) Rt Hon Lord Hestletine of Thenford CH

Sources cont• Commission on the future of local government ( July

2012) Leeds, Glasgow and Cardiff Councils.• New Governance and Public Administration:

Towards a Dynamic synthesis: (Feb 2009) Hon J Bourgon

• The Ensuring Council : An alternative vision for the future of local government ( May 2012) APSE

• A new model for public services? ( Oct 2012) discussion paper .University of Birmingham

• Connected: the amazing power of social networks and how they shape our lives (2010) Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. Harper Press

• Positive Linking: How networks can revolutionise the world ( 2012) P. Ormerod Faber and Faber

Sources contd.

• The Localist Manifesto (2012) Principal author Simon Parker. The final output of NLGN commission comprising R Behr

( Chair) I. Johar, P. John, S. Parker, Dr. A Povey and C Staite