News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 7th May 2014

Hi,

I left you alone over Easter (there wasn’t much news anyway). However, whilst you and I were celebrating the long weekend, our colleague Alasdair Robertson was down in his dark statistical cave poring over the underlying stats from the LGA Shared Service Map.

Alasdair’s 18-page, “deep dive” notes evidence some interesting outputs from the map data. For example:

·         There are pockets of activity where big savings are claimed to be made.

·         Whilst almost every council claims to be involved in shared services, the actual or predicted gains for many are very small.

·         There are regions which seem to be more inclined to sharing than others.

This regional finding is delighting us because there appears to be a relationship between the regions more inclined to share (North West, West Midlands, East Midlands, East of England and London) and the number of leaders and managers in those regions that have attended our programmes. For example, in the North West over 200 local government leaders and managers attended the SS(PRAC) programme,  in the East Midlands over 160 and in the East of England over 200.

Where we have not taught the SS(PRAC) programme, for example South East, South West and North East, there are much smaller numbers of collaborations on the LGA map. We would like to think that this shows the impact of our teaching as a contribution to the success of shared service working.

You can read Alasdair’s findings at http://www.i-three.co.uk/shared-services-analysing-lga-data/

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Higher Education

HEFCE are working hard to increase the amount of shared service working across HE. This March 2014 Conference has a number of valuable presentations online, to support their work…

 

Efficiency Minutes: video interviews from the Working for a Smarter, Stronger Sector conference

The 3rd annual efficiency conference on 27 March 2014 included a range of presentations and workshops on delivering efficiency, effectiveness and value for money in higher education. Here are short video interviews with speakers and their slides from the event. Read more >>>

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Local Government

Here is one for your Highway Code folder on legal vehicles being used for collaborations. Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire county councils – which operate under shared service arrangement LGSS –  are about to apply for a joint Alternative Business Structure license…

Councils look to ABS status for survival

The number of local authorities seeking alternative business structure status for their legal departments is set to mushroom, Gazetteresearch reveals. Read more >>>

Two councils agree £1.5m shared ICT deal

South Hams District Council and West Devon Borough Council have signed a £1.5m deal to share ICT services. The contract with Civica will see the two authorities creating an online portal allowing customer accounts to be integrated with back-office processes. Read more >>>

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Health & Social Care

Health and social care needs you! If you are looking for a future in collaborative working, you really don’t need to look much further than the Health and Social Care agenda. Whilst the minister may be “inspired” by plans in West Norfolk, they will need strong collaborative leadership skills to pull it off…

Care minister praises new integrated care plan for West Norfolk

Plans for greater integration of health and social care services in West Norfolk have been described as “inspiring” by a government minister. Read more >>>

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Blue Light Services

Hands up if you remember the “Triangle Of Desire” tool in the SSA Trust & Vision Toolbox! It describes the three key outcomes in public sector collaborative working: Efficiency Gains, Effectiveness Gains and Political Gains.

With the re-election of Police and Crime Commissioners next year, maybe there is a political issue in play here (avoiding the loss of 70 jobs) as one of many contributory factors on the decision not to go ahead with the Norfolk-Suffolk police control room merger.

Norfolk-Suffolk police control room merger plan scrapped

Plans to merge the control rooms serving Norfolk and Suffolk police and save £1.85m, have been scrapped. At a meeting the Suffolk Police and Crime Commissioner Tim Passmore said the risks were too great. Read more >>>

Welsh emergency services collaboration scoops Geoplace award

A collaborative initiative to share information between emergency service bodies in Wales using the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) as a common identifier has won this year's GeoPlace Exemplar Awards. Read more >>>

Shared blue light premises is catching on fast in Wales and England, and now Scotland has joined in too.

Blue light services unite at new station

Personnel from all three blue light organisations will be working from the same venue for the first time in Scotland following the launch of a new tri-service station. Read more >>>

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