Posted on October 6th, 2009
The notion of local councils and their partners looking at the totality of what they spend in their areas with a view to making the best use of the very considerable sums involved is not new. Doncaster MBC under its then mayor Martin Winter promoted the concept of a Borough Budget in 2003. However the need to find practical ways to achieve economies of scale through this process is now critical.
In Lewisham we have looked for overlaps between services rather than gaps – only if we can achieve saving through eliminating overlaps will we be able to afford to start plugging the gaps. We are a borough where the strategic level partnerships work well and there is good front line co-operation but the progress towards organisational integration has been dreadfully slow.
There is no single reason for this but things like differing pay and pensions, accounting and data collection have played a part but so has the uncertainty about how the savings would be distributed. These problems must be overcome cheap canadian pharmacy and Total Place offers the chance to find solutions rather than identify even more obstacles.
For this to happen local viagra propecia buy online authorities will need to take a very pragmatic approach. This they can do because they have a democratic legitimacy that no other partner shares and through their leadership of the locality they can exercise enormous influence even where services are being delivered by others. What matters is what will work not who delivers.
Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) have grown in importance since their inception and Total Place is likely to push them centre stage. As the chair of an LSP this seems to me to be a welcome development but there remain unresolved questions about the relationship of LSPs to other governance structures – not least how they are scrutinised which will need to be addressed.
And Government will have to ensure that its departments are on message at all levels if this is going to work – it must eliminate announcements and advice being issued that make co-operative working harder. The will is there in local government and among its partners but the centre must play its part too.
Find out more about the work going on in Lewisham at their pilot page.
Category: leadership
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