Joanne Pitt, Senior Policy Manager
Improving productivity in the public sector is a worthy ambition but one that must be treated with the respect and difficulty it deserves if it's to be anything more than cost cutting or smoke and mirrors.
Go back a few months and you may remember that Councils in England were asked to compile productivity plans by the previous government before the surprise July general election was announced. In the absence of any formal change to this request most Councils dutifully completed this task.
The plans needed to cover services transformation, opportunities to use technology and make better use of data, outline barriers that central government could help to reduce and also identify ways to reduce wasteful spend.
The original intention for these plans were that once submitted to DLUHC a newly established panel called the “long term sustainability panel” made up of sector stakeholders and experts would be asked to consider the key emerging themes. Then identify opportunities for further productivity gains across the local government sector by summer 2025.
Of course, the results of the election with a Labour victory and a new Prime Minister now resident at No 10 probably means that productivity plans and this panel in the current form will be consigned to history. However, few in the public sector deny the need for greater productivity.
So the question is: can any benefit be obtained from the work submitted to take the sector forward?
I would suggest two things are probably most useful, firstly the very fact that the conversation about productivity was on the agenda in a formal way was helpful. It means at senior leadership level there has to be agreement and buy in. This type of consensus can never be taken for granted but once reached means corporate action becomes more likely.
Secondly, as a byproduct of the plan the discussion about barriers will be a useful one. If all councils identify similar barriers this amplifies a message to the new Government about where change needs to happen and that the relationship between local and central needs to reflect the future direction of policy.
From the feedback we have had about barrier there are certainly some strong messages that should be heard by Angela Rayner, the new Secretary of State for Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government.
Help to stabilize the financial environment for councils is top of many lists along with the call for multiyear settlements and greater freedom and flexibility. We certainly would not argue with any of these barriers to productivity but a couple of others that have been raised are also worthy of consideration and include the electoral cycle which again can make longer term decisions difficult and the challenges with workforce and capacity and capability, which mean even if you have the best produced plan it is fairly toothless if you have no body to deliver it.
So before we wave a farewell to these plans let’s hope someone in Whitehall captures what the sector has to say and puts it in the Himalayan sized in tray currently on the Prime Minister’s desk.