Survey suggests "sea-change" in approach to sharing front line services
There has been a “sea change” in local authority attitudes towards merging front line services, it has been claimed.
A survey by law firm Browne Jacobson of 150 senior local authority managers in England revealed that nine out of ten councils are looking to share front line and back office functions within the next two years.
Key findings from the report include:
- Some 89% of local authorities are already sharing services, whether back office functions, front line services or a combination of the two. One in nine authorities (11%) has no shared services arrangements in place.
- 68% of respondents are looking for more sharing of front line services in the next year, with 91% targeting front line services within the next two years
- 65% are looking for more sharing of back office functions within the next 12 months with 89% considering sharing back office functions within the next two years
- 70% of senior managers identified environmental services and 34% social care as the two service areas most likely to be shared by their authority in the future. These are also the two areas most likely to be shared already.
- 63% of respondents plan to save up to 10% of their total budget savings by sharing services in the financial year ending April 2012
- 98% of authorities said they would be comfortable sharing services with another public sector partner, but 78% would also consider working in partnership with the private sector in the future delivery of services
- More than eight out of ten managers (85%) would consider outsourcing services on a service-by-service basis. One third would be prepared to sign up to a large scale outsourcing project
- Political and public opposition is seen by 28% of senior managers interviewed as the biggest barrier to delivering shared services in the local government sector
- 84% of senior managers believe the long term rewards from shared services justify the short term pain
- 77% of respondents said shared services arrangements between public organisations are “attractive but hard to deliver”.
A similar survey conducted by Browne Jacobson three years ago revealed that less than half of public sector managers saw the potential to merge front line services. Just 5% said they saw opportunities of working with the private sector.
The law firm’s head of shared services, Dominic Swift, said: “The government’s austerity bombshell is clearly forcing authorities to look at innovative and radical ways in which to deliver their services. We can also see a noticeable sea change in attitudes towards merging front line services.
“Councils are starting to think outside the box and previous no-go areas such as the private sector and large scale outsourcing are also back on the agenda. With local authorities up and down the country already feeling the financial pinch the next step is to turn the shared services rhetoric into action.”
The Browne Jacobson report can be downloaded here.
A paper on shared services by a working group of the Procurement Lawyers Association recently warned of a number of misconceptions about how procurement rules apply to these arrangements.
The paper addressed the eight most common misconceptions. It said, for example, that the correct position was that UK government policy did not overrule European law and cannot be used to justify circumvention of EU procurement rules.
Philip Hoult
