Local Government

Ministers say they’re pro-devolution, but don’t they listen even to themselves?

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Chris Game

The signs are that we’ll be seeing fewer overseas students in Birmingham in the future. Which is regrettable in so many ways and deserves public airing and protest – but it isn’t, I confess, the real prompt for this blog. The best link I can manage is to suggest that, were students from a pretty high proportion of the 150-odd nations represented on our campus to read some of this week’s media headlines, they’d surely be surprised at how centrally dominated and fiscally weaker even England’s biggest local authorities (like Birmingham City Council) seem than sub-national governments in their own, often reputedly less democratic, countries.

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Can we commission for outcomes?

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Anniina Tirronen

‘Outcomes-based commissioning’ has become the dominant approach to commissioning services in the United Kingdom, with similar concepts such as value-based purchasing and payment by results being explored in the United States and Australia.  Instead of determining the volume or exact nature of services, outcomes-based commissioning focuses on desired ‘outcomes’, such as changes, healing or other effects that take place as a result of services, allowing producers and clients to shape the way targets are reached.  But what effect does commissioning for outcomes have, and is it a better way to commission services?

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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

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Professor Catherine Staite

Something very bad is happening to our country. The sense of solidarity and common humanity that has helped our complex society to function is being eroded.  Empathy has fled and so children escaping the terrors of war are feared and despised, not welcomed.  We are peddled the old lies that immigrants are dark strangers who cause our problems, even though they are net contributors to our economy, as well as essential to endeavors as diverse as the NHS and agriculture. Hate is becoming embedded in political discourse, encouraged by the tabloid press and has unleashed shocking levels of bullying, racism and misogyny.

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‘Secret plans to close hospitals’: the perils of centralism

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Catherine Staite

The Kings Fund’s warning, that there are ‘secret plans’ to close hospitals, comes as no surprise to local government. A number of local authorities, including Birmingham City Council, Sutton and Camden have decided to publish the NHS’s ‘Sustainable Transformation Plan’ (STP) for their area, against the wishes of the NHS, because of concerns about lack of transparency and particularly the lack of engagement with communities about the best outcomes.

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Keeping it simple

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Claire Baxter

Sally Philips’s recent documentary about parenting a child with Down’s Syndrome explored the ethics of antenatal testing, but I couldn’t help being drawn to the back story; the families’ experiences of public services.

Earlier this year I managed a small charity, School for Parents, on an interim basis. It provides weekly classes for children with disabilities, teaching groups the skills others take for granted such as moving, communicating and eating.  During this time Dr Anne Emerson of the University of Nottingham conducted research to understand the experiences of the parents.  This provided a valuable opportunity to explore how families we worked with encountered public policy and services, and to appreciate the role university research can play.

What did I learn?

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Local government re-organisation: the debate that goes round in circles

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Catherine Staite

I do like the unitarisation debate. It has everything going for it. We’ve heard all the arguments countless times, so there are no surprises. It’s been running for so many years that it’s become a constant in a time of great uncertainty. Quite comforting really.

In 2008/9, I was part of the team that was asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the 2009 unitaries, in terms of their financial health, service performance and effective community engagement. The aim of the ‘Form and Function’ study, commissioned by DCLG was to answer the question ‘do unitaries perform better than two tier areas?’ We were asked to compare the performance of the new councils with the four, two-tier Pathfinders. Do you remember them? They argued that they could achieve all of the benefits of re-organisation without any unpleasant side effects, like change.

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