Pickles unveils "whole place" and neighbourhood-level Community Budget pilots

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has unveiled plans to pilot two “localist” approaches to integrating services.

One pilot will see two areas invited to design and run a ‘neighbourhood level’ Community Budget. The second will see two more areas invited to put together a ‘whole place’ Community Budget. This would set out in practice what a single budget comprising all funding for local public services, or options for pooling and aligning resources, would look like.

The two whole-place pilot areas will be tasked with taking forward a "proof of concept". However the government also wants ten areas to act as "friends of the pilots" through a challenge and learning network.

The four pilot areas will receive support “to break through Whitehall’s bureaucracy”, with the government suggesting the projects could be up and running by April 2013.

Details of the pilots, which will be selected by the end of the year, are contained in a Community Budgets prospectus. A copy of the prospectus can be downloaded here.

Writing in the foreword, Eric Pickles said: "Open Public Services set out how Community Budgets are being used to re-design services for troubled families. They put control in the hands of those who are best placed to shape public services around the needs of local people – public service leaders and local people themselves.

"But we want to go further and to test how local places can make best use of all the money that is spent in their area on public services on a wide range of problems. The pilots set out in the prospectus provide a real opportunity to overcome the long-standing barriers to real local design and leadership of services."

In a speech to the Local Government Association today, the Communities Secretary said: “This is your opportunity to change the future of the way public services are funded and be the thumping heart of your community".

He added: “Test your ambitions to the limit. And the old hands in Whitehall won't realise they've lost control until it's too late.”