Slavery

I notice that Communities Minister Andrew Stunell has today in Liverpool taken part in a ceremony to mark the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. We must remember however that an illegal slave trade still exists and sadly appears to be flourishing. We tend to call it "people trafficking" these days. Check out www.thea21campaign.org and prepared to be shocked by the statistics.

Foundation Councils

We've heard of Foundation Schools and Hospitals what about Foundation Councils? Here is an interesting article I came across. It's written by Cllr Colin Barrow leader of Westminster City Council. I wonder if the idea will catch on?

"Councils are hampered in their ability to innovate and provide good quality low cost services by three factors:

An onerous, centrally-imposed performance framework – despite the welcome end of the CAA and Audit Commission, we still have the onerous regimes of Ofsted and CQC plus the ‘control freakery’ from Whitehall departments with directives, guidance and data demands requiring us to produce numerous plans and strategies implementing Government priorities. This leads directly to the next factor and leads to Whitehall telling local authorities how to run their services.

Insufficient operational freedom to design services that suit local circumstances - local authorities are best placed to know what will work at a local level, are directly accountable to local residents and operate effective partnerships with other local public service providers. As we will detail over the next few days, local services should be freed from central control to design services around the needs of the customer and produce better outcomes at lower cost.

Lack of financial control in their areas - businesses in Westminster contribute £1.2bn in business rates to the national economy, but the council receives only 12% of this to invest locally. Meanwhile, nationally-set fees and charges, for example in planning and licensing, mean that councils are unable to recover their costs.
Legislation to permit locally differentiated charging based on a full cost-recovery model would have saved Westminster Council £2.8m in 2009-10.

The solution

We believe that the solution to these issues is the creation of Foundation Councils - a concept that has been jointly developed by three authorities with a long established track record of delivering high-quality, value for money services - Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth and Westminster.

Foundation Councils would automatically be granted powers to:

• set local fees and charges, including variable business rates, to enable them to recover costs and generate a profit for reinvestment in local public services;
• generate income and save money through full freedom to trade and share services;
• exempt them from regulatory burdens, including the excess of Ofsted and CQC requirements. We recognise that in areas of high risk social care, assurances are needed but these two regimes have gone beyond ‘safeguarding’ to regulate local authority activity in these areas;
• introduce bye-laws and manage the public realm without reference to specific enabling legislation;
• present “offers” to central Government for more specific powers, freedoms and flexibilities in particular areas, such as employment and skills services, where it can be demonstrated that these would improve performance, increase satisfaction, and reduce cost.

We believe that the establishment of Foundation Councils would:

• Support government in its ambitions to decentralise
• Demonstrate the savings and better outcomes possible from reducing the duplication of local and national agencies.
• Match payments and results. The growth in public spending over the last decade has not been correlated with results. Productivity and competitiveness must be built into the DNA of local public services. The specific grants, targets and inspection regimes of the last decade have been enfeebling and counter-productive. Foundation Councils now give us the opportunity to drive this major and necessary change where payment is by results.

Over the next few days I will be setting out further details of how Foundation Councils could work and the sort of powers and areas that we believe they could make a genuine difference to delivering high quality, cost effective public services."

10 tips to avoid wasting time at meetings

This month’s theme in South Holland’s ongoing campaign to cut waste is “wasted time”. One of the ways in which we waste time is in unnecessary or unproductive meetings. We have a lot of meetings in Local Government so you’d think we’d be experts at running good ones but this isn’t always so. Here are my 10 top tips 

1. Is the meeting really necessary? Be clear on its purpose don’t just roll over from one meeting to the next because that’s the way its always been. 
2. Are the right people at the meeting? Invite only the people who are needed ( the fewer the better) and if its a long meeting with a number of agenda items invite people for specific agenda items only. 
3. Consider a suitable venue for the meeting - do all attendees have to be physically present in the room or would a telephone conference or video conference be better. 
4. Plan the meeting beforehand including start and finishing times, make sure all attendees understand why the meeting has been called, why they have been invited and what is expected of them. 
5. Start on time and expect attendees to arrive on time - don’t excuse lateness 
6. Expect attendees to come prepared having read papers circulated with the agenda before they arrive at the meeting. 
7. Ban multi-tasking. No mobile phones, text messaging, emails during the meeting. 
8. Insist attendees speak in plain English and avoid jargon so that all present can understand and follow what is being said. 
9. Make sure the meeting has an effective chairperson to keep the meeting focused on its purpose, deal with confusion or conflict, and assign actions to individuals 
10. Don’t automatically set the date for the next meeting - check that one is really necessary 

Please let me know if you have any further tips. 

There are some great quotations on meetings please share your favourite. Here’s one to get you started

  “ Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything” J.K.Galbraith

An exciting future

In the past 24 hours Breckland and South Holland Councils have formally agreed to appoint me as their joint chief executive. I consider this to be an immense honour and privilege. This is the first step towards the two Councils establishing joint senior management and implementing closer working in order to deliver savings and efficiencies.
All Councils are facing cuts in their finances and the Leaders and elected members of these two Councils are positioning them for a positive and sustainable future where each will continue to provide effective local government to their communities. These will be tough times for local government and it's great to be part of such a forward looking and positive approach where we will shape and determine our own futures and not sit back to be victims of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Welcome

Welcome to this new blog which I have set up as a place where from time to time I'll share my thoughts and reflections and let you know what I'm doing. My hope is that it will help you to keep in touch with me and that you'll use the comments feature to let me know what you think.