The Local Government Association has welcomed the Chancellor’s additional £1.3 billion for councils for the next financial year, which “will meet some – but not all – of the significant pressures in adult and children’s social care and homelessness support.”
Professor Donna Hall, CBE and Andrew Laird argue that while this extra funding will not fix the underlying weaknesses in the system - it will provide a little breathing space… and a very small window of opportunity to explore a new and radical way of working. This opportunity is not to be missed.
Let’s start with the fundamental problem…
The real increasing costs of public services are locked into the assessments against ever-tightening “eligibility criteria” and handoffs between various commissioned services designed to meet one element of presenting need. Families and individuals are forced to retell their stories dozens of times as they are passed from pillar to post and from one assessment to another, all at great cost to the public purse and for little lasting positive impact. In Wigan, before the Wigan Deal, the lion’s share of public service resources were spent on repeated and separate assessments of people by different organisations (social care, police, mental health, housing, criminal justice) over many years. In some cases, this cost £500,000 per year, per family!
This is still happening across the country. Why is this?
The way local services are funded from central government and the way they are regulated encourages service silos. Linked to this, the concept of New Public Management still dominates the landscape. New Public Management applies principles of private sector competition, individual organisational key performance indicators and treating citizens as customers of a largely fixed service. This has been deeply ingrained in the psyche of many public service professionals since the 1980s.
New Public Management sees people and communities as passive units of presenting need; as consumers; or even worse as “demand” on the system. It doesn’t see them as assets to a community, to a place and a council.
In the last 14 years, we have also seen a dramatic shift in the allocation of public funding away from preventative action in public health, housing, primary care, social care and community-based support towards “providers” in the form of NHS Trusts and their in-built focus on crisis response.
Unlocking innovation and collaboration
This problem has not gone unnoticed. Both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have talked compellingly about the need for reform to accompany any additional funding. The launch of a Public Sector Reform and Innovation Fund worth £165m in 2025/26 to support new approaches to delivering public services is very encouraging. As are some of the appointments, which have been made into key positions such as Former Leeds Council Chief Executive Tom Riordan to Second Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Camden’s Nick Kimber to an influential public service reform post in Cabinet Office.
At Mutual Ventures, we are very focused on how we can help stop the tragic waste of public money and poor outcomes for citizens caused by siloed services and New Public Management. We have been working with several councils and integrated health and care systems to design a new model of Radical Place Leadership. This builds on the experience of designing and implementing the Wigan Deal and also from inspiring programmes such as Changing Futures Northumbria and the “Liberated Method”, developed by Mark Smith. Our focus is on how you create an enabling environment so that this type of working becomes the local system, rather than having to fight against it.
In our research, we have found that excellent person-centred practice often exists at a small scale in ‘bubbles”. These bubbles are usually driven by one or two committed individuals (the “rebel alliance”) who recognise the dysfunction and give their frontline teams permission to innovate. Sometimes, the bubble is kept inflated by external, time-limited funding. When the funding runs out the bubble bursts and things go back to normal.
Changing this requires a mindset shift. In Wigan there was a realisation that citizens were not passive recipients of public services, units of individual organisational need; they were the true assets of a community and of the place. Front-line teams were liberated across health, council, housing, DWP, police, fire, community and voluntary sector in integrated neighbourhood teams to do the right thing locally to improve lives. But this required leaders to get together to agree to support this different way of working, which transcended organisations and siloed professions seamlessly.
You shouldn’t feel like you need to be part of a “Rebel Alliance” to work in this way… and this shouldn’t need to be called “Radical” Place Leadership. But, we are where we are. The budget has created a small window of opportunity to explore new, more sustainable ways of working. Don’t waste it.
You can see more on how we have helped create more enabling and effective places here: - Silos, Bubbles and Radical Place Leadership
If you would like to know more, please contact andrew@mutualventures.co.uk.
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