News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 12 February 2014

So new Unitary Councils are back on the table in England…

A single council in Leicestershire could save £31.4m a year, says report

A single unitary council in Leicestershire would save over £30m a year and reduce council tax bills by 3.1%, according to a new independent report. Read more >>>

Maybe its time to dust down the reviews of the 2009 Unitary transitions and see what lessons they learned from that process. Mind you there was incentive money on the table then from Gordon Brown (remember him? Nope!) - or maybe that is what the 2014 Local Government transformation fund will be used for?

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Highway Code Updates

You should be tracking the changes to TUPE after the 31^st Jan to assess the impact it may have on your shared services. For example, there are claims that you may be able to harmonise T&Cs after 12 months – but don’t take that as a truth yet till the tribunals kick in...

 

Acas - Transfer of undertakings (TUPE)

The TUPE regulations ensure that when a business transfer occurs, employees moving across to the new employer (known as the incoming employer) bring with them their length of service and terms and conditions, and…Read more >>>

ANALYSIS: TUPE changes bring 'all change, no change'

Changes to law governing the transfer of businesses and contracts and protection of employment (TUPE) that took effect last Friday (31 Jan 2014) could have “potentially wide-ranging implications for outsource partners where contracts change hands”, a recruitment industry executive has said. Read more >>>

Legal protection diluted for outsourced university staff

Outsourced university staff may face inroads on their pay and conditions after legal protections were watered down, unions have warned. Read more >>>

Also G-Cloud Computing is beginning to gain traction as a market place for access to lower-cost SME products and services, and as a provider of cloud based collaboration support…

Public spending on G-Cloud nears £100m

The grand total of public sector spending on IT purchases through the government’s G-Cloud procurement platform nears £100m. Read more >>>

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Why do between 50-70% of private sector collaborations and mergers fail to deliver on the promise of the business case?

It’s not an exam question, it the academic evidence and its revisited here in this useful analysis of private sector internal finance change projects. It’s hard enough for an organisation to do change management internally. Shared services are multi-partner change management projects and that is why they are much more complex and demand big resources…

 

Five Reasons Why Your Finance Transformation Failed

What can we learn from the private sector about change management? In a survey of 45 companies that completed transformation projects, only 27 percent reaped the qualitative and quantitative benefits outlined in their business case and sustained a majority of the cost savings for two years post-implementation. Here are the five reasons why... Read more >>>

News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 5 February 2014

Blue Light Transformation

Well, the list of who won the £25m from the Blue Light Innovation has now been published and is available by clicking here.

Just to remind you, the Police Innovation Fund will be worth up to £50 million a year in 2014 & 15. However, last week, the Home Office released a taster fund of £20 million to Police and Crime Commissioners.

It looks like most police forces in England and Wales received a share of the money which, in classic Whitehall style, is top-sliced from future policing budgets. We have already been approached by two forces who want to run the Shared Service Practitioner sessions for capacity building their project team, which makes sense. Here some examples of projects:

Control room merger for Warwickshire and West Mercier police and fire services ‘an option’

Government funds may be used to help Warwickshire and West Mercia Police forces and the fire services of both regions share resources for their control rooms. Read more >>>

PCC Sets Up Community Innovation Fund

Police and Crime Commissioner for Wiltshire and Swindon Angus Macpherson is commissioning community and voluntary initiatives through his £1 million Innovation Fund. Read more >>>

Sussex and Surrey police team up to bag funding

A joint bid for government funding made by Surrey and Sussex Police is set to improve public online services across the two police forces. Read more >>>

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Highway Code Updates

 

Happy birthday to the Social Value Act! There are still many blank stares from our students on the SS(PRAC) programme when we cover this Act and its implications for shared services, in the Highway Code Of Shared Services session. It impacts on all public-sector funded bodies in England and here is an example of the SVA in action in the Housing sector…

 

The Social Value Act One Year on…

Melanie Mills, SEWM CEO and Tim Edwards, Group Head of Regeneration at The Aspire Group discuss the impact of the Act on its Anniversary. Read more >>>

Also in the Highway Code, for your section on trade union policy on TUPE in relation to shared services, this is a useful understanding of the TUC position on the TUPE changes that came into play last Friday. Did you know there are up to 40,000 TUPE transfers made in the UK each year?

Weakening TUPE law will put hundreds of thousands of workers at risk, warns TUC

Government changes to the Transfer of Undertakings and Protection of Employment (TUPE) will drive down pay and conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers and… Read more >>>

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Local Government

I am a bit embarrassed. I keep referring to shared service working in Scotland, Wales and England and have never referred to the Isle of Man Government’s work in this area. Here is news published this week…

Isle of Mann - £4m to be saved by sharing services

The government is planning to save more than £4 million a year by sharing back office and support functions. Read more >>>

Mainland local government continues to be active in collaborative working too…

Job cuts expected as councils combine to save money

Jobs are ‘likely’ to be cut as two councils strive to make more savings. But councillors were keen to praise the contribution of staff as they seek to bridge a budget gap of over £4million. Read more >>>

'Active discussions' underway on Tri-borough ICT procurement framework expansion

Leaders at the Tri-borough shared services programme are in "active discussion" with five other London local authorities about joining its framework allowing councils to purchase IT services and resources cheaply, consistently and efficiently. Read more >>>

News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 29 January 2014

After reading the new edition of Shared Service Architecture Magazine sent out last week, one of our SS(PRAC)s wrote to say:

Just read the new issue of SSA Magazine, and I have to take a few moments to provide some really positive feedback……  It is excellent!  There is more information in the 44 pages on what is changing, how it is changing, and how I should change with it, than I could ever amass quickly if I went looking for it myself. There is some really tangible ‘stuff’ in here that I can directly relate to work that I have going on at the moment. The Collaborative Leadership pages are very powerful.

If you missed your copy then go to Edition 9 of Shared Service Architecture Magazine.  If you would like to provide an article for the May edition of the magazine then drop me an email.

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EU Procurement – Important Changes (Highway Code Update)

On the 15^th of January, the EU voted through new guidance on public sector procurement. Section 7, in the very valuable guide below to those procurement changes, explains the new TEKAL test factors that impact on Public-to-Public shared services.

The 10 most important features of the EU's overhaul of public procurement law

Laws governing the public sector's procurement of goods and services in the EU are about to undergo the biggest changes since 2004. Read more >>>

You may want to save the document in your Highway Code folder!

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Welsh Local Government Re-organisation

Last week we reported on the WLGA report suggesting that Welsh Local Government re-organisation was all too expensive. Not everyone is in agreement…

 

Welsh council mergers could save £80m

Consolidation of the 22 Welsh local authorities could spark homes surge. Read more >>>

A new report from the Welsh National Audit Office, in the next item, points to the failure of Welsh councils to collaborate with each other to save money. But when why should they have collaborated? Up until now they could afford not to. It was only after the scathing cuts to English Councils in 2010 that collaborative working became a key ambition for them…

 

Cracks beginning to show in Welsh councils, auditors warn

Cracks are beginning to show in Welsh councils as many have failed to implement appropriate budgetary plans, auditors have warned. Read more >>>