Mutuals to be handed greater role in housing,children's centres and health and social care

Mutuals will be given a key role in health and social care, housing and Sure Start children’s centres under plans announced today by the Cabinet Office.

In its report Mutual Benefit: giving people control of public services, the government proposes five key changes:

• A pilot running children’s centres as part of local mutual federations. This pilot will take place in up to five local areas, with on average 20-25 children’s centres involved
• A fast-track route to establish Local Management Agreements or small-scale management services, to give control to tenants over housing services such as maintaining the grounds of their housing estate. The government wants to halve the time it currently takes (18 months) to set up such arrangements. The Homes and Communities Agency is also to improve opportunities for communities to build and run homes on a co-operative basis
• Immediate removal of the current lower limit of 50 units for applications for Public Land Initiative sites. This is intended to help facilitate smaller, community-led housing projects
• An investigation into allowing continued access to the NHS pension scheme for those NHS staff transferred to mutual organisations as well as other social enterprises and third sector organisations, and
• Development of detailed proposals on mandating community governance in the Right to Request Assurance Framework, which empowers NHS staff to set up a social enterprise.

Tessa Jowell, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “This is not a Whitehall prescribed national blueprint, but enabling new collaboration to develop in an organic way within communities. That is why the government is taking measure to improve and enhance opportunities for local people and professionals to realise the full potential of mutual forms of organisation.”