All for one, one for all in town hall revolution

Published on Monday 23 November 2009 21:58

A BLUEPRINT for local council reform to improve healthcare, transport and education services was published yesterday.

• Glasgow Council could be sharing responsibility with other authorities across the Clyde Valley under the new plans

Under the radical proposals, put forward by Sir John Arbuthnott, many services in the eight local authority areas of Clyde Valley would be integrated to help battle a looming budget crisis brought on by the recession. But academics warned that the plans would require significant "political will" to get off the ground and unions raised fears that jobs could be at risk.

In his review, Sir John said there was a need for the councils to display "urgent momentum" to fight a real-terms funding cut that he warned could be as much as 15 per cent over the next four years, as local authorities were forced to stump up for PFI deals and currently unfunded pension commitments.

Under the plans, which are being considered by the councils and Scottish ministers, local authority staff could be shared across several boundaries to increase the availability of expertise, and council properties could be grouped into one arms-length organisation to manage and sell them off if necessary.

If enacted, the reforms would represent the biggest overhaul of local government services since unitary authorities were introduced in 1996, and could pave the way for similar arrangements in other areas of Scotland.

Last week, the leaders of Edinburgh, Lothians, Scottish Borders and Fife councils announced their intention to step up the number of services delivered across their local authority boundaries.

The Arbuthnott review takes matters a stage further, proposing a range of long-term measures that would tie local councils together permanently in delivering services. It sets out a "road map" for the eight local authorities – North and South Lanarkshire, East and West Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire, Glasgow and Inverclyde – to move to an integrated model of service delivery in certain key areas.

The review envisages that, by 2014-15, the councils could have merged health and community care services, and a joint road maintenance programme and shared office hubs for administrative operations such as payroll.

Before that, Sir John forecasts "positive benefits" from a pooling of social care procurement and a sharing of property management and maintenance, as well as a shared fleet of council vehicles managed centrally. This, he says, could be in place by 2013-14 alongside an integrated waste management strategy.

The recommendations were welcomed by the Clyde Valley councils, but greeted with scepticism by Unison, Scotland's largest public service union.

Mike Kirby, the organisation's Scottish convener, warned that jobs could be at risk, adding: "All the evidence is that shared services don't deliver savings in the short term – if at all. Indeed, they mean increased expense initially as new processes and systems, accommodation and IT have to be bought."

His caution was shared by Eddie Frizzell, a professor of public services management at Queen Margaret University, who noted that the notion of shared services had been on the agenda for a long time and needed "a clear political will" to drive it forward.

"No government so far has been willing to say where you make savings in services if you don't cut the number of people employed," he said. "There has been a fudging of the real issue behind this – what is the implication for public sector jobs?"

He went on: "If you share services and you still have the same number of people on your payroll, it is not entirely clear to me where the benefit is. To make actual cash savings, it seems to me, jobs are in the frame."

Prof Frizzell also warned that the plans may not be fully embraced by the public sector: "You should not underestimate the huge cultural resistance to this among managers.

"As a manager, you are never wholly confident you will get the service you need from the shared service. The cultural resistance to that has to be overcome – there is a big job to persuade managers."

Sir John's review began in March and was commissioned by the councils. Local authority leaders will meet on 18 December and again in early January to decide how to proceed.

The services that could be shared

Health and social care

THE Clyde Valley review notes that NHS health care – delivered by two health boards over more than one council area – and social care supplied in the community are already "inextricably linked" as people are discharged from hospital into the community.

It calls for these links to be extended and several specific areas to be addressed, including the current disparity in pay between NHS employees and council staff delivering similar care.

According to its recommendations, councils should explore greater co-operation on the care of the elderly, especially in relation to admission and discharge from acute care.

They should also examine the delivery of social care services, in particular residential care for young people and those with special needs.

Drug and alcohol services should be streamlined as should the specialist services for mental health.

The review says a consortium between the councils and the two NHS boards should be established immediately and report within a year.

Education

THE report says councils in the Clyde Valley area should consider centralising the recruitment and management of its supply teachers, and introduce shared specialist services in teaching and child psychology.

This, it says, would help the authorities avoid duplication of effort as well as widening access to expertise across the council boundaries and allowing the curriculum to be developed in a wider geographical area. Education is an area, the report says, that would benefit from a shared payroll function, and could take the lead in this regard because of the size of its workforce.

It would also form part of a wider social transport effort that would manage the purchase and allocation of common vehicles such as school buses.

In addition, school properties would be wrapped into the property management proposals that could see maintenance efforts spread over the region.

Waste management

THE eight councils in the region should, "as a matter of urgency", sit down with the Scottish Government and agree a policy on waste management, Sir John says.

He recommends that the future of the two waste facilities currently in the process of being commissioned by North Lanarkshire and Glasgow councils should be confirmed immediately as "both are approaching a point of no return in the procurement process". The local authorities are urged to declare formally whether they will subscribe to use either of the treatment plants.

The review also says a Clyde Valley-wide approach to meeting waste reduction targets is required, including a harmonisation of recycling policies across the region. It says that will help minimise the penalties paid by councils.

The report suggests discussions on funding for help in meeting these targets should begin as soon as possible with the Scottish Government.

Transport

THE review suggests a new arms-length body should be set up to implement and manage a social transport service across the Clyde Valley region.

The report suggests the details of such an organisation should be worked out by the local authorities themselves but does concede it may be the case that social transport might be better managed between smaller groups of councils.

The report calls on the councils to involve Strathclyde Partnership for Transport to work up a scheme to schedule social transport, such as council minibuses, in order to reduce the amount of "down time" for vehicles and specialist drivers in each local authority.

The review also concludes that better co-ordination is required for social transport services such as dial-a-ride and ring-a-ride services. The school bus system should be improved, as should the process by which council transport is bought, managed and leased.

The review notes extensive economies of scale in fleet purchasing could be achieved by a group effort.

Road Maintenance

ALREADY the subject of discussions by other groups of councils, such as Edinburgh, Lothians, Fife and Borders, the provision of road maintenance services across the Clyde Valley region would, according to the report, offer benefits to smaller councils within that region.

Initial suggestions for how this can be achieved include the suggestion councils should consider pooling and sharing expert road engineering staff as part of a wider joint workforce strategy. This would spread the expertise for particularly difficult jobs across more than one council.

This area would also benefit from the proposals to pool vehicle resources.

However, the review warns that road maintenance policy should be considered on a national level in discussions with other local authorities as well as the Scottish Government.

Sir John Arbuthnott calls on the Clyde Valley group to instigate such discussions as soon as possible.

Property management

SIR John says the development of a "robust" asset register should be a matter of priority for the councils.

He calls on them to begin this process immediately using examples of good practice from other local authorities across the UK.

This would be the first step in a joint property management set up.

Areas such as property maintenance and the use of public buildings for events could be managed centrally via a database as could the disposal of property assets.

The report challenges councils to have a strategic asset management plan in place by 2010-11, before asset disposals are agreed in 2011-12 and finally concluded a year later when the property market is expected to have improved.

It cites an arms-length body, recently set up by Glasgow City Council to deal with property sales, as an example the other councils may wish to follow.

Back-office functions

SHARING of administrative functions such as human resources, payroll, and transaction processing is something already being discussed by other councils.

Sir John Arbuthnott says this type of working offers clear potential, and points to pilot projects already in place within Clyde Valley that could point the way.

He says councils should look at their customer services offerings, as well as their administrative functions used to offer business support.

Information management is another area that could potentially see shared services, as could the management of human resources.

He calls on the councils to come together to agree a single joint approach in all of these areas, before carrying out a review of their potential in order to identify the benefits of such administrative pooling.

Also recommended is a joint approach to fees, which could harmonise the charges for local authority services across the group.

This could be supported by a joint function to process such payments.

PROFILE

PROFESSOR Sir John Arbuthnott, a former microbiologist, was a high- profile figure in the academic world and has headed a number of complex reviews and commissions.

In 1997, he chaired a national review of resource allocation whose remit was to have an independent look at the way funding was allocated to Scottish health boards.

The outcome – known as "the Arbuthnott Formula" – uses key indicators such as population, inequalities and poverty in each of the boards to assess how the money should be handed out.