Open Eye:Chat

Efficiency in the public sector - getting more for less

Just lately I’ve been noticing that there seems to be a growing consensus that the severe economic outlook not only brings significant challenges, but opportunities to be siezed.

July’s McKinsey Quarterly, presenting ‘The case for government reform now’ argues that:

‘The idea that “a crisis is too good an opportunity to waste” is becoming commonplace.

Businesses around the world are seizing this opportunity to rethink their operating assumptions and even reinvent themselves, often radically. Governments must do the same.

The crisis may well mark a “structural break from the past—a moment when many of the critical assumptions that have driven our previous behavior and attitudes no longer seem correct or appropriate.’

The widely distributed John Harris Memorial Lecture ‘The Implications of the Economic Downturn for Policing’ by Richard Lambert, CBI Director-General, positions itself in the same territory. Mr Lambert stating that  “The country faces a choice. It can decide to get out the salami slicer, and keep it whirling through our public services for eight hard years to come.  Or it can determine to make necessity the mother of innovation. To look at radically different ways of delivering services to citizens of the quality and breadth that they have a right to expect. We can use the opportunity of a crisis to think about ideas that might have seemed impossible in calmer times.”

Ploughing straight into this agenda is a booklet, published today by Demos, called ‘Getting more for less - efficiency in the public sector’ and authored by Jamie Bartlett.

It’s not a particularly light read, but it is an interesting one and raises a number of thought provoking issues.The premise is that ‘For the next decade the most urgent public policy question will be: how can public services achieve more for less — providing services that meet people’s needs, while costing less?’

Mr Bartlett’s contention is that ‘The way to make savings in the public sector is to make sure it is effective. Effective services are personalised — driven by people’s needs, they take aim at the cause of problems rather than the consequences and they are delivered collaboratively.’ In common with other commentators he suggests that ‘The current climate offers a real opportunity to transform the way services are delivered’ and that ‘Efficiency comes from solving problems not managing them’.

The paper, which outlines three routes to efficiency: Peronalisation through personal budgets, Prevention and Collaboration, looks at the application of these three routes across a wide range of public services. It provides a really useful look at the commissioning role, it’s uses, strengths and difficulties and suggests a new approach to defining ‘performance’, suggesting that the public sector needs ‘new approaches to efficiency that are less about streamlining individual processes and more about service redesign’

In terms of the development of policing, commissioning and collaboration, it’s not hard to see that the concept of a local authority stimulating and then commissioning services from a varied and vibrant supply side has interesting potential and application to, for instance, the delivery of neighbourhood safety services.

The paper argues that ‘The general view is that accruing efficiencies out of partnerships is the ‘next phase’ of the agenda’ but ‘for such efficiency gains to be realised, there needs to be a change in the way that partnerships work.

The new landscape of local service delivery points to a different kind of model. Traditional partnerships have involved a very linear form of contracting or performance monitoring. The commissioner sets goals, provides managers with the freedom to meet those goals, and then links payment to delivery. Citizens benefit because, in theory at least, the service improves. Accountability is assumed to operate through central government inspections and the electoral system, but the prime relationship is that between commissioner and deliverer, with the public and other agencies seldom involved. Efficiency in this model is about the way that an individual service delivers the outputs that the commissioner wants — how much it costs to produce a particular level of improvement in recycling levels, for instance.

However, partnerships of the future will need to work on different principles. Councils seeking to deliver place shaping outcomes for their local area will need to broker collaboration between different parts of the public sector, and bring private and third-sector organisations together to work on problems too. In this model, efficiency has to be sought not just within an individual service, but through whole area efficiency, where outcomes are achieved for less’.

This is clearly the intended model through which area services will increasingly be delivered and the paper provides a good overview of some of the issues and challenges associated with it. The paper can be downloaded here or in the sidebar under Miscellaneous.

Assessing Police Performance: Giving the public a voice

About a year ago Barry Loveday (Reader in Criminal Justice at the University of Portsmouth) wrote an interesting article, in the Police Professional magazine I think, outlining his views that the performance target culture had created a generation of middle managers at the expense of leaders. His contention was that the obsession with delivering central government performance targets required  little more than compliance and developed managerial skills at the expense of what the police, really needed, leadership and innovation.

Interesting than to see Peter Fahy, GMP's Chief Constable, arguing in the Daily Telegraph a couple of weeks ago that the government's culture of central control has produced a generation of middle and senior managers who are expert administrators with no instinct on how to how best to catch criminals.  He went on to explain that, in his view,  the police service is now hampered by an 'addiction' to targets  and that forces' ability to catch criminals is being undermined by perfomance targets and form-filling.

So, with that as the background context, now seemed a particularly good time to take a look at HMIC's new police performance inspection regime 'Rounded Assessment'.

The document which sets out the new regime: 'Assessing Police Performance: giving the public a voice' is currently out for consultation, with responses required by Friday, 26 June. Available here and in the sidebar under HMIC.

 Make no mistake, this one really is required reading, as it will define the performance inspection agenda for some years to come. It will most certainly occupy a place high in the thoughts of police authority and chief officer colleagues and, by extension, BCU command teams

Whilst the full document needs to be read and understood in detail, a couple of things worth highlighting:

As with the existing APACS, which it will replace, there will be five domains. These are:

Confidence and Satisfaction
Local Crime and Policing
Protection from Serious Harm
Value for Money and Productivity
Managing the Organisation

As far as is practicable, these five areas are mutually exclusive – ie, a particular activity or performance measure will feature in only one domain. The grading system applied to each domain will be excellent, good, fair or poor. Poor will be a very uncomfortable and very visible place to be. 

One of the key criticisms of previous performance inspection regimes has been the lack of context and professional judgement. Rounded assessment seeks to address this, and in each domain a professional judgement will be applied by HMIC to the range of quantitative and qualitative information available to arrive at a domain grade or score.

As always, one of the most difficult areas to  assess is Confidence and Satisfaction. The Confidence and Satisfaction domain will reflect the Home Secretary’s single target focus on confidence, measured by a BCS question (are the police and local councils dealing with anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter in their area.)

HMIC's view is that in order to see the bigger picture and provide the best diagnosis of police performance, it may be helpful to set results from this measure alongside another BCS measure – the % of respondents saying they are confident/very confident in the local police. So far so good.

They then go on to suggest that 'Further understanding could be gleaned from robust local surveys on confidence and satisfaction'.  The problem with this is that currently only roughly a quarter of forces meet the  Home Office criteria for robustness in respect of their surveying.

The paper says that 'Statistics will be used sparingly, as research shows that the public is neither interested in, nor trusting of, statistics. We will focus on where the public is put at risk through poor performance, using easily understood graphics to convey key messages and explain relative performance to the public'

The critical thing to note about rounded assessment is that it is not designed as 'a practitioner dialogue'. It will be much more public-facing. Supporting this approach HMIC have already designed a public facing website to display the results of the inspections. It's striking how similar this website is in feel and approach to the Audit Commission's website which details the results of Comprehensive Area Assessment.

There is no doubt that,  driven by the old 'what gets measured gets done' adage, Rounded Assessment will significantly impact everyone's performance agenda. It will be interesting to see how the focus on these broad range of de facto targets affects future managerial behaviour. Peter Fahy has a clear view:

"Capturing the most prolific, the most dangerous, the most harmful is the best way to reduce crime, increase public confidence, and lift the souls of our staff. In my experience if you get this right there is a clear sense of purpose and, yes, a buzz in a team or division/department then the key figures will look after themselves."

'Local policing and health care services remain insufficiently accountable to their local populations.'

Whilst it’s tempting to focus on things of direct and immediate interest to policing performance, like the Policing Pledge, there is a bigger picture and that bigger picture continue to evolve.

There was an interesting report published by the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee on 20 May, entitled: The Balance of Power: Central and Local Government

The report looks at the current role of local government, assessing where it could be more proactive in making best use of existing structures, and where change is required elsewhere, by central government and its agencies and by Parliament, to increase the scope for autonomous local government activity. Pages 30 -36 of the report take a look at ‘The delivery of local police, health and healthcare services: the role of local government’. I have put together an extract which can be found here. The full report is in the sidebar under DCLG.

The position of the Committee in relation to the localism versus national agenda is made clear: ‘During the course of this inquiry we have come to recognise the potential benefits of greater decentralisation in terms of outcomes both for local people and communities and for the democratic process’. It goes on ‘Local authorities should have the freedom to shape the development of their communities and the scope to unlock the full potential of local innovation’

The Committee asked a wide range of key practitioners (ACPO’s Sir Ken Jones gave evidence) whether local government’s role and influence needed to be strengthened in relation to local policing and health services. The answer from local government, and local government think-tanks, was “yes”

Andy Sawford, Chief Executive of the Local Government Information Unit, observed that in polls they had commissioned “both the public and councillors feel that there should be stronger accountability at a local level around policing and healthcare. Policing comes out as the number one issue that people want a say over in their community, and one where there is least opportunity for them to do it.”

A number of different local government and think-tank witnesses who gave evidence advocated a model where local authorities would commission local health and policing services from the local NHS or police authority. The Association of North East Councils felt that a commissioning model “under which the local authority would hold the budget for, and be responsible for the commissioning of, local health and policing services” would “be a bold innovation but it would take us a long way forward in securing democratic accountability”, and suggested that the model be trialled “in the first instance in a few authorities”.

The Chair of the local authority representative body, London Councils, was of the opinion that 'the way ahead is for commissioning to be carried out along with the budget for level one policing, particularly neighbourhood policing, in other words to be joined to the budget that local authorities spend, which is often quite substantial these days, pool those together and then for the local authority to commission the borough commander to deliver level one policing in our area'.

Not surprisingly, the Home Office take a different view. When Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker was asked for his response to the proposal that neighbourhood policing should move to local authorities, who would become commissioners for these police services, he was described as ‘taken aback’, appearing more comfortable envisaging local authorities in purely supportive crime prevention roles, observing that: “we see the involvement of local authorities in a crime reduction role”

Game on then, because the Committee felt that ‘local policing and health care services remain insufficiently accountable to their local populations. If local councils commissioned these local services, local accountability through the ballot box would be much stronger. At present, local councils are unable fully to assimilate local policing and health and healthcare services into their strategic vision for the locality. So long as two such important local services, arguably the most important for most local people, remain outside its scope, the full benefits of an empowered, autonomous local government cannot be realised’.

They expressed their concern that ‘neither the Home Office nor the Department of Health, on the evidence put before us, are ready to allow local authorities a real role in local policing and health and healthcare services. Despite recent changes that have brought in greater transparency and more consultation, the balance of power remains very firmly in favour of Ministers and the policing and health professionals over locally elected politicians. Whilst we acknowledge that there is much useful joined-up working going on in some aspects of local policing and health services, involving some joint commissioning, it is by no means sufficient to alter the overall balance of power’.

To make sure that the debate continues, they have recommended that the Department of Health and Home Office work with Communities and Local Government to establish a local authority commissioning model for local policing and health and health care, and, as a first step, the bringing forward of pilot projects in localities where there are matching boundaries and where some joint commissioning already takes place.

The Pledge: a promising start.

HMIC have recently completed their first round inspections of the police and pledge. They visited seven forces ( Avon and Somerset, Cumbria, Essex, the Met, Northants, South Wales and West Yorkshire) as well as undertaking reality checks and website reviews.

They have delivered a generally favourable state of the nation review, finding that there is strong leadership and personal commitment to the pledge at chief officer and operational level. They identify gaps in the communication (both internal and external) of the pledge and express concern that few forces appeared to be effectively monitoring the delivery of what has been pledged.

Overall then, a promising start. Some detailed points from the report:

All seven police forces visited had a clear direction from chief officers, together with a set of values that help underpin their commitment to provide a highly professional service. The forces all had clear diversity and equality strategies in place. The forces had also carried out a range of reviews to assess and improve access to services.

There were some good examples of getting through to harder to reach groups, but there was little evidence of the Pledge itself being translated into other languages; and formal consultation with minority groups or independent advisory groups on the Pledge itself.

The IPCC has identified incivility as one of the highest causes of customer dissatisfaction yet HMIC state that ‘We have not found very effective practice in responding to dissatisfaction, nor evidence of any considerable capacity to capture, analyse and learn from experiences to support organisational learning'.

Pledge point 2
Overall the work of neighbourhood teams is generally well explained on force websites

Pledge point 3
Assessing the amount of time teams spend in neighbourhoods is problematic.

Pledge point 4
There was evidence of a real commitment on the part of staff to get back to members of the public quickly. However, it is also true that this is a difficult area to monitor.

Pledge points 5 & 6:
Generally HMIC identified a very strong customer service ethos among staff who deal with
calls from the public on a daily basis. Their visits showed that staff have a good knowledge of the Pledge and an understanding of the key role they have to play in delivering it. All seven forces demonstrated that they have a well-developed performance monitoring regime within contact management centres and a strong commitment to improving performance was very apparent.

HMIC also found some good work being done in respect of advice and guidance to staff concerning vulnerable or upset members of the public. They identified some excellent processes within contact management centres to ensure that neighbourhood priorities were instantly flagged to the staff. However, areas of challenge remain, including: a force being confident in estimating the time of arrival for a response unit; ensuring that calls relating to agreed neighbourhood priorities are responded to within the 60-minute target; and appointment systems, where they exist, are somewhat embryonic.

HMIC state that ‘This is a critical area of work for forces as they develop their delivery of the Pledge and will be subject to further reality checking’

Pledge point 7
There was good evidence of meetings taking place but HMIC considered that there was still
a wide variation in terms of how the meeting was run. (There is clearly a training and skills issue associated with this point)

Pledge point 8
All forces have introduced crime mapping and some good practice exists, such as the e-cops electronic update in Cambridgeshire, in terms of providing updates on crime and policing issues. However, once again, this is an area for development, particularly with regard to consistency and sophistication.

A few forces which are particularly strong in terms of their approach to Citizen Focus policing encourage feedback from the public and use that feedback to improve their services. Critical to this approach is that the public can make their comments relatively easily, for example by using links from the police force home page, from quality of service pages or from the Pledge itself.

There are some examples of forces taking quick action to address any dissatisfaction or concerns. However, HMIC found that while all forces have well-established systems for dealing with what has been traditionally referred to as ‘complaints against the police’, there was little evidence of a systematic approach to managing general dissatisfaction. They found it ‘particularly challenging’ to find any robust evidence of forces acknowledging dissatisfaction with the service within 24 hours of it being reported. This will be a further area for testing during inspection.

About half of all complaint allegations relate to incivility, yet it was apparent from some focus groups run by HMIC that there was little local awareness about which issues were being raised by local people in terms of dissatisfaction – or how to resolve them.

Comprehensive communication strategies were evident in all the forces HMIC visited, however awareness and understanding of the Pledge varied. Contact management and Neighbourhood Policing staff were very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Elsewhere in the organisation, awareness levels were below acceptable.

HMIC’s advice: Forces would be advised to check their overall communications strategy and processes for monitoring delivery of the Policing Pledge.

HMIC’s conclusion: The Policing Pledge is a commitment to the public. Early signs from scoping work are encouraging; however, there is no room for complacency. Forces need to ‘step up a gear’ and focus their efforts to ensure that the Pledge becomes a reality.

The full report can be found in the sidebar under HMIC.

Police use of Web 2.0

I had an interesting meeting with Rick Muir at the Institute for Public Policy Research this week.

Rick is a Senior Research Fellow on the Democracy and Power Team at the ippr. They are currently doing a piece of work for the NPIA called policing 2.0  (which is essentially exploring the impact and uses of web 2.0 technologies in the police service).

Rick is trying to establish what has been, and is being, done so far (for example: use of online tools for police-to-citizen, citizen-to-citizen and officer-to-officer collaboration in crime reduction).

I have highlighted a number of things being done in places like Cumbria, North Northants BCU, Nottingham City BCU, Hull, GMP and West Midlands and have discussed some of the people and units using services such as Twitter, but, if you're doing good things and striding boldly into the use of 2.0 technologies, then I would encourage you to contribute to the report and contact Rick directly (please let me know too ! twitter.com/openeyecomms).

Rick can be reached through the ippr switchboard at 020 7470 6100 or directly on Twitter at twitter.com/rickmuir77

Public Purse McCarthyism

There can be little doubt in anyone’s mind that a new form of McCarthyism is alive, well and firmly entrenched in the psyche of the nation. Public Purse McCarthyism.

Times are hard and anyone seen spending money, or abusing the privilege of access to money, is to be vilified and castigated. It matters not that the spend may be justified and legitimate in a business sense, the mere appearance of the spend is cause, in the eye of the public, for irritation and offence.

The private sector led the way with high profile examples receiving blanket coverage.The corporate giants of motor manufacturing in America (GM, Ford, Chrysler) going to Washington to seek Government aid for a financial bailout totalling billions of dollars, but arriving in Washington on their corporate jets. In the UK it was bankers receiving massive Government financial aid, but still paying bonuses and dispensing lavish corporate hospitality.

If the private sector led the way, then the public sector, with the ongoing scandal over politicians expenses, has most definitely and comprehensively completed the job. As a consequence of the public mood there is talk of over 300 MP’s being deselected before the next election.

Quite simply, people feel that those in whom trust has been vested have abused their positions, and there is a sense of anger and mistrust. This anger and mistrust is manifesting itself in a mood of ‘public purse McCarthyism’. Public money which doesn’t need to be spent, shouldn’t be spent, and that which is spent had better be justified. No matter how sensible and justified the spend, it not only has to be justified it has to appear justified. The slightest doubt, the most minor questionability and those in the vanguard of ‘defending’ the public purse will vent and shrill.

So, why am I raising issues that you are all well aware of on this blog? Two reasons really: Freedom of Information requests and brand management.

With public leaders firmly under scrutiny (and a general election on the horizon), can there be a Chief Officer (or even a BCU Commander) in the land who doubts that journalists have already filed FOI requests to establish their expenses claims? To prove that the rot spreads wider into public service than just our politicians?

In my mind the question is not when will a Chief Officer find themselves in the glare of ‘public purse’ publicity, but rather who will be the first Chief Officer to face it.

Which leads me onto the second point, Brand Management.

Can there ever have been a time when the need to articulate corporate values, duty, and the nobility of public service was more obvious or pressing? With the public angry and tired of sleeze and the whiff of corrupt practice, isn’t now the time to talk about what the police service stands for, to express more clearly the ‘why’ of what we do, rather than just the ‘what’?

In marketing terms this means looking at the brand and its performance in the context in which it exists and making adjustments to meet the changes.

Yet, as I look around the police service, do I see that adjustment evidenced in the service’s media output? No is the answer.

What I see is essentially the same, routine stuff being churned out with little or no regard for the new context. Carry on regardless. Has any force adjusted its marketing strategy to reflect the new public mood? Is any BCU recognising the local implications and changing its media stance, actively and cognitively promoting values, duty and service as essential underpinnings of the confidence agenda? If they have, I’d love to hear about it.

Or is it a case of keep calm and carry on?

Views on the CJS?

Got any views on the Criminal Justice System ? Just a few, you say.... Well now's the time to get them off your chest. The Ministry of Justice recently published a consultation Green Paper ‘Engaging Communities in Criminal Justice' seeking your views on proposals for reform.

The paper sets out the Government’s proposals for transforming criminal justice from a system that does things to communities into (in their words) a true service that does things for and with communities.

Integration is the theme running through the paper (of both services and information provision) and Louise Casey’s footprint appears throughout. The vision of the paper is of ‘a criminal justice service in which all partners are focused on local communities and work together to tackle crime, deliver justice and provide high-quality services that inspire public confidence’.

The rationale is that if communities trust the system to deliver on its promises, they will be more willing to report crime; to come forward to give evidence as witnesses; to participate as volunteers and jurors or (maybe stretching the point here) to consider a career in the CJS.

The Green Paper proposals are centred on three areas:
strengthening the connections between communities and the prosecution and court services;
ensuring that justice outcomes are more responsive and more visible and,
improving communication between local people and their criminal justice services.

Crucial to the whole plan is improving the responsiveness and accountability of the CPS and the magistrates’ courts to the communities they serve. So Community Prosecutors will be introduced in at least 30 pathfinder areas for 12 months in 2009-10. The intention is that they will be more involved with their communities, more aware of local concerns and better able to reflect those concerns when making case decisions.

Community Impact Statements are also being trialled. The Community Impact Statement is a
summary of crimes committed in a local area which includes a section on the concerns of local people. The statement ensures crime and justice agencies are aware of the feelings of individuals and the wider community and enables practitioners to take into account the harm inflicted on both individuals and the community as a whole.

The level of detail in these will be interesting to see, as will the interpretation of ‘the community as a whole’. Whose data sets will be used, who will be compiling them and how representative will they actually be? Communities of interest, geography, or demography ? Does an overview of crimes committed in an area correlate with what concerns the community (whatever ‘the community’ means) or would ‘signal crimes’ that have been established as linking to the local confidence agenda be a more appropriate indicator for inclusion? Going to be an interesting one to watch. Community Impact Statements will be tested in at least 12 areas for six months and the results will then be assessed to inform national rollout.

Continuing the ‘lets involve the public’ theme, the paper proposes that people will be given more
opportunities to have a say on what work should be done under the Community Payback scheme in their area. The Citizens Panel concept, which provides the vehicle for local people to have a say in the work that is undertaken, is to be extended to the 60 Neighbourhood Crime and Justice Pioneer Areas by the end of 2009.

Apparently, nine out of ten respondents to the Casey Review questionnaire (there she is again) said they weren’t told enough about outcomes of arrests. The intention therefore, is to provide the outcomes of criminal court hearings on a public-facing website. The site will provide the final outcome of court hearings as this is considered the information of most interest to communities.

Staying ‘joined up’, the NPIA is working with the Office for Criminal Justice Reform to explore how information about aggregate CJS outcomes could be linked to crime maps so that they also show justice information at as local level as possible. A beta website, highlighting the outcomes of knife possession cases tried in the adult magistrates’ courts (supporting the current initiative on tackling knife crime) is available for the duration of the Green Paper consultation.

All in all, there are some pretty interesting things in the paper. As always, the devil is in the detail. The consultation runs to Friday 31 July 2009. You can contribute your views online here or by email to engagingcommunities@cjs.gsi.gov.uk  Go on, you know you want to...

Five go hunting...efficiencies.

One of the fun things about writing this blog is that the scanning you need to do to stay on top of unfolding events allows you to watch the strands of policy being woven into an emerging direction.

Three things have caught my eye in the last week, all of which appear to support a greater emerging focus on efficiencies.

The findings of the so called ‘five wise men’ of the Treasury, the extension of the ‘Total Place’ pilot schemes and the review of Local Strategic Partnerships by the Audit Commission. Join them together and you have a clear sense of travel. Maybe.

So, firstly to the findings of the Treasury ‘five wise men’. In short, they believe that there are still significant savings to be made by way of greater efficiencies in the public sector. The public sector has delivered 5 bn pounds of efficiency savings above the target for the last three years, but the five advisors (commissioned by HM Treasury for a year long programme examining operational spending in the public sector) believe there is scope for an additional 15 bn pounds of efficiency savings.

Each advisor examined the scope for savings in their area of expertise. Back office operations can deliver 4 bn pounds of savings a year and a further 3.2 bn pounds of savings a year on IT spending. This can be achieved through better management information, benchmarking and review of costs and better governance of IT-enabled change programmes.

Collaborative procurement can produce 6.1 bn pounds of savings a year through harnessing the public sector’s collective buying power by buying more goods in a collaborative way and driving more procurement spending through collaborative channels.

Property could result in savings of 1.5 bn of annual running cost efficiencies by 2013-14, rising to 5 bn pounds a year over a ten year period.

A further 20 bn pounds of proceeds from property sales, excluding council housing, may be possible over a ten year period.

They also believe that local incentives and empowerment have the potential for further efficiency savings.

Enter the second of the three issues, the ‘Total Place’ programme (you will recognise the increasing tendency for a focus on ‘place’, consistent with the ‘place shaping’ agenda and the sense of ‘place’ that underpins Comprehensive Area Assessment) part of Sir Michael Bichard's work on the Operational Efficiency Programme looking at the scope for efficiency savings in the public sector.

The ‘Total Place’ programme will map flows of public spending in local areas and make links between services to identify where public money can be spent more effectively. It has been trialled in two areas and now the programme is to be extended to 12 other locations. These are: Dorset/ Poole Bournemouth, Kent, Croydon, Lewisham, Luton/ Central Beds, Leicestershire/ Leicester City, Coventry, Worcestershire, Birmingham, Bradford, 10 Manchester LAs and Warrington, South Tyneside/ Gateshead/ Sunderland and Durham.

DCLG’s view is that the Total Place programme will lead to practical new ways of working - closer cooperation, more joint projects and greater pooling of budgets across local public services.

Coincidentally (why waste a good conspiracy theory though) the Audit Commission last week called for a firmer grip on partnership working. In their report ‘Working better together?’ (available in the sidebar under DCLG) which takes an in depth look at how local strategic partnerships are performing, they conclude more needs to be done in terms of governance and resource management.

Their findings suggest that resource allocation is not well managed (and if budgets are to be pooled within a ‘Total Place’ approach, then effective resource allocation and management is essential).

Most LSPs lack mechanisms for assigning mainstream resources towards achieving the goals of the sustainable community strategy and the local area agreement and few LSPs have assessed the costs and benefits of joint working. They also fail to align planning and reporting cycles and this makes it difficult for local agencies to align performance and resource management systems.

The Commission is also critical of overview and scrutiny arrangements to hold LSPs and partners to account. It found little evidence that governance arrangements are supporting LSPs’ accountabilities to member organisations and through them to local people. It recommends that overview and scrutiny committees should focus on one-off activities or events and review systems and risks. They should also assess performance in different themes and review performance data from LSPs and partners.

So, Treasury savings, Total Place and better resource management by LSP’s. Enid Blyton or clear links to an emerging agenda ? Time will tell.

Not about Twitter

Whilst I get the list of Forces and colleagues that use Twitter together, I thought that I would round up a couple of things from the last three weeks that you may find of interest.

Firstly, off to North Northants BCU where they have a cctv system that climbs lamp posts and an interesting approach to increasing familiarity with the local PCSO.

To combat anti social behaviour and crime in the area, the BCU has invested in several Sherpa Portable Rapid Deployment camera systems. The cameras, which can be deployed and set up within 15 minutes, can be fitted on a pole in any locality and can then be controlled remotely from a single location either by radio transmission (upto 1.2 km) or Wi-Fi.

The cameras, which have been tested in Northern Ireland, crawl up the lamp posts to any desired height, and are designed to withstand most vandal attacks.

The really cool bit is that and once set up they can be viewed from a BlackBerry handheld device, which all Safer Community staff on the BCU have been issued with.

So just who is my local Safer Community PCSO? What do they look like ? That was the public question that the BCU set out to respond to. The staff suggestion: cardboard cut-outs of the local PCSO displayed at strategic locations and times in the area to improve accessibility and visibility.

However, there is a steady turnover of Safer Community Staff so, with costs firmly in mind, full colour cardboard cut-outs with interchangeable heads have been developed. A generic uniformed body is used and different PCSO's can then use the cut out with their face. Clever solution and an instant diet if one is needed. Great.

Finally, a bit of self promotion (well HMIC are inspecting the Hallmarks of Citizen Focus at the moment, so it is topical), working together with Diane Lowe from Maxlowe, we have developed a scenario based approach to Citizen Focus training.

Aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at Inspector and Sgt level, the training provides a highly interactive and 'real world' approach to understanding Citizen Focus. Delegates get inputs about CF and then spend a day looking at a fictional location, understanding the complexity of partnership delivery and applying the Hallmarks of Citizen Focus to the scenario. In the last couple of weeks we have run the course for colleagues in North Wales. We had a great time and by their responses ( "So much packed into every day", "Thought provoking, I feel inspired", "Put it all into context") so did they.  If you're interested in getting this good stuff for your colleagues, give us a call.

I'm a copper get me out of here

The news last week was filled with Lord Laming and issues affecting children. The Nottingham Youth Crime Conference will be in session soon and the Youth Justice Board will shortly be undertaking a practitioner workshop with North West forces.

I thought that it might be a good time therefore, to highlight a couple of schemes that directly work with children and offer them opportunities for growth and development.

Gallomanor run the highly successful 'I'm a xxxx, get me out of here' programme. Based on the 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here' concept, Gallomanor have run 'I'm a councillor, get me out of here' across more than 70 local authority areas and are now running an 'I'm a scientist, get me out of here' series.

Run in conjunction with local schools, the candidates discuss and highlight their position on issues of note (be that local/national politics in the case of 'I'm a councillor' or science issues in the case of 'I'm a scientist') and the kids debate the issues and vote  candidates off until there is an eventual winner.

The series are very popular. They are interactive and supported with publicity and learning materials and everyone seems to benefit from them. Having spoken at length to Gallomanor, I know that they would like to run an 'I'm a copper, get me out of here series' based around neighbourhood policing teams (either a one area, one team approach or across a BCU, where the kids vote on, and for, the approaches, views and engagement methods of the various neighbourhood teams across the BCU). If you are interested in this approach then contact me and I will put you in touch with the right person.

The other initiative that I thought worth highlighting is the approach taken by Safelink Resources. They run a thing called the Recreate Youth Project. This is essentially a peer education programme. The purpose is to tap into the information that young people think will influence their peers and to drive behavioural change. This approach has been successfully delivered in ten London Boroughs. The mechanism for engagement in this case, is the creation and development of a film. The young people help develop the script, write the storyboard and, working with professional film makers, and within the school curriculum, create the film.

Again, if you are interested in the Recreate Project, get in touch and I will give you the details of the right person.