Local Government Information Unit Submission to the Communities and Local Government Committee

Local Government Information Unit submission to The Communities and Local Government Committee inquiry into Community Budgets

1. Executive summary

Local Government Information Unit has been working with Kingston Council on their Neighbourhood Community Budget Pilot. Through our work we conclude that the pilot provided huge potential to develop local public services to deliver better outcomes. Spend mapping is a useful exercise to provide context and can provide evidence for change, although we found that it was not the most important part of the pilot. Finally, we concluded that the pilot offered a number of long term benefits for citizens and communities, but in the short term, is unlikely to deliver significant savings or cost reductions.

We found that Neighbourhood Community Budget can:

Encourage increased engagement and involvement from local communities
Incentivise increased and strengthened partnership working
Make the case for aligning service spending more closely towards prevention and early intervention
Build community capacity and deliver long term benefits to communities

We found a series of challenges that the need to be considered if the programme is to develop and be adopted as an approach by more local authorities; and recommend that the following themes are addressed:

Incentives and powers: what, if any additional incentives or powers will be given to local authorities and key partners to progress the programmes?
Name of the programme: the name could raise expectations within communities that they will receive a devolved budget.
Partnership working: DCLG should continue to press the case nationally for greater (and more proactive) collaboration across Whitehall in the programme.
Sharing learning: DCLG should undertake a programme to encourage shared learning across the NCB pilots to ensure local authorities have access to ‘good practice’.
Linking with other initiatives: There is a need to understand how Neighbourhood Community Budgets, Whole Place Community Budgets and other initiatives, such as City Deal, work together.

2. Introduction

Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) has been closely involved in the One Norbiton Neighbourhood Community Budget Pilot (NCB) in the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames (Kingston) since October 2012. We were commissioned to support the pilot to identify priorities, complete their spend mapping, draw conclusions from the work and suggest areas for possible pooling and alignment of budgets.

During the course of our commission, we undertook:

Desk research, familiarised ourselves with the ward and attended various community meetings and project steering groups;
Interviews and discussions with a breadth of stakeholders involved in the pilot.
Co-design workshops with the council, partners and the community to establish themes, develop a vision, and design services in line with priorities;
Co-design workshops to map services and provision for NEETs and Community Safety in the borough;
Detailed analysis of service budgets and financial modeling to understand the extent of spend on key themes in the ward;
Final written report to the project board, outlining findings, conclusions and recommendations for next steps of the pilot.

3. About One Norbiton

One Norbiton set out to: ‘To improve the lives of communities in Norbiton by giving them more control and influence over services’. As part of this, the pilot wanted to look at radical proposals for local service re-design in Norbiton by mapping and pooling budgets in line with community priorities in order to devolve power to the local level.
Five broad objectives were set for the pilot:

To raise awareness of the initiative across all residents and communities in Norbiton so that all have the opportunity to be informed and involved at the level of their choosing.
To access the expertise that exists within Communities and Local Government to align the concept of Community Budgets with our ambitions for Local Integrated Services. Specifically, this would involve considering how control of services and the budgets to run them can be mapped and pooled then devolved to communities and neighbourhoods.
To test the possibilities and limits of co-commissioning with residents, transforming the way that local public services are designed and managed, and learning how this can be replicated on a wider scale.
Ultimately, to develop a Plan and Neighbourhood Community Budget ready for implementation by April 2013.
To share learning with other pilot areas throughout the project.

The pilot was local authority led, with close involvement of the community in Norbiton. In particular, the community has established themselves as the One Norbiton Company, in order to take forward aspects of the pilot.

4. Findings

We found huge potential in the NCB approach to developing local public services as a means to deliver better outcomes. One Norbiton was particularly successful in providing opportunities for community participation in the pilot, which will give a strong platform for increased involvement in the future.

We found:

NCBs provide local communities with the opportunity to have increased engagement and involvement in setting local priorities, which could lead to better outcomes locally.
NCBs incentivise increased and strengthened local partnership working, including through sharing of data, devising common outcomes and thinking about how budgets can be more closely pooled and aligned across different organisations. At present however, there are barriers to pooling and aligning budgets as councils and partners do not have the freedoms and flexibilities to share potential savings and ‘benefits’ from improved outcomes that reduce spend.
NCBs make the case for the need to align service spending more closely towards prevention and early intervention; spend mapping revealed that the cost of responsive and acute services far out ways all other spend.
Although a useful exercise in providing contextual information to build a case for change; spend mapping is problematic, and not the most important part of the pilot.

NCBs build capacity within the local community to have close involvement in the design and delivery of local services.

NCBs offer a number of long-term benefits for citizens and communities, and for public service reform through neighbourhood management and greater community involvement in the design and delivery of services. However, in the short term it is unlikely to deliver significant savings/cost reductions.

There are however, a series of barriers that need to be overcome if the programme is to develop further and be adopted by more local authorities.

This includes:

Clarity over the name of the programme.
Silo working within Whitehall.
Clarity over resources that will be available for local authorities undertaking this approach.
Examining any additional freedoms and flexibilities that can be given to local authorities and partners regarding budgets to incentivise pooling and aligning of budgets and joint activities.

Based on our experience of undertaking a NCB pilot at local level in Kingston, we recommend that the following factors are crucial to the progression of any project, and should be considered in full beforecommencement:

4.1 Leadership

Leadership from the council was crucial; in establishing the pilot, securing involvement of key partners and in sustaining the project. This buy-in at strategic level ensured that that the council approached the pilot with the desire to explore new ways of delivering services and defining priorities and was able to influence strategic partners to adopt the same approach.

The One Norbiton community were involved from the outset and provided a focal point for broader community involvement; in additional to providing transparency around governance and accountability by establishing themselves as a limited company.

4.2 Vision and priorities

A shared and agreed vision and list of priorities needs to be agreed before any substantive work begins. Without this, there is risk that the NCB will not progress, or deliver anticipated outcomes. In itself, reaching a shared vision can take time and dedicated resources to understandand translate the different needs and aspirations of all stakeholders involved into a shared vision.

4.3 Geography

Geography has a key role to play in both the scale at which any resource mapping takes place and characteristics of the community taking part in the pilot. The pilot in Norbiton was undertaken on a ward basis; but other geographies or particular characteristics of the community, for instance a housing estate, could have formed the basis of the pilot. It is particularly important to define geography before any spend mapping commences as it is highly likely that assumptions on population will need to be made for counting purposes.

4.4 Community

Having agreement regarding the community or communities that are participating in the NCBwill determine, to an extent, who is empowered and involved in the project. This should be closely related to the geography of the pilot; particularly as communities often span different geographical boundaries.It is also important to be clear about who is being empowered as community groups may have different aspirations and asks from an NCB, and this has to be balanced against wider community needs and capacity. Working with a specific community group as ‘one voice’ of the community has advantages, but there should be recognition that it will be challenging for this to be representative of the whole community.

4.5 Spend mapping

We mapped services using a thematic, bottom-up approach, whereby we analysed data based on key priorities identified by the community. This approach is based on shared assumptions as to the services and costs associated with ‘outcomes’ relevant to the selected priority themes. It provides an illustration of the public spending resulting from activity in each priority area. Bottom up mapping produces a much clearer picture of how locally influenced resources are spent and can identify where local effort and resources may be duplicated.

Through the One Norbiton project we found spend mapping to be verychallenging, and concluded that spend mapping is not the most important aspect of a NCB. Spend mapping is not an accounting based solution to identifying where service changes are required. Instead it provides contextual information about the resources at play in an area and how they are spent, which can be used in order to build a case for change. For instance, in Kingston we were able to identify the relative spend within preventative and responsive services, and found that much greater resource is currently targeted at responding to negative outcomes, rather than on preventative services.

Accounting at ward level is particularly difficult, as often accounting and performance management data is not compiled or available at a ward level. For instance, in Kingston, we found particular challenges in extracting data from Job Centre Plus. As a result, assumptions about spending have to be made through use of population and other local data, which means that spend mapping is a ‘best guess’ rather than accurate account of local resources. The assumptions on data must be shared by all partners involved to ensure that there is a common understanding and acceptance of the data produced.

4.6 Partnership working: locally and nationally

The NCBs have been successful inproviding increased opportunity for partnership working locally; including in setting joint priorities, outcomes and actions for the local area. They also provide the impetus to examine in a holistic manner, the services currently in place, their performance in achieving desired outcomes and how they can be shaped with the input of the local community.

NCBs must be built on existing partnerships and data-sharing agreements locally, as transparency around data and finance is essential to progress. One fundamental point of learning is that Whitehall needs to re-think how it engages with this programme, and work across departments; at present, there appeared to be a silo mentality. This cannot continue to be a DCLG led programme if it is to deliver the sort of results that are expected and engagement from other departments is essential.

4.7 Capacity building

Capacity building is an important element of any NCB; and relates to the skills and resources needed within the community to meaningfully engage in the process. In itself, this will require resources and questions remain about how councils can fund this type of activity.

5. Next steps for the programme

In terms of wider learning and next steps for the national NCB programme, we recommend that Whitehall will need to consider the following factors:

5.1 Incentives and powers

A necessary part of the programme moving forward has to examine which organisations and stakeholders locally will financially benefit from any revised outcomes or interventions, and whether there are any freedoms and flexibilities to incentivise a more joined up approach locally. For instance, if the council invests in preventative measures that are successful in reducing the number of young people not in employment, education or training in their area, it is likely that Job Centre Plus will financially benefit from this, through a decreased number of benefit claimants.Systems for being able to reinvest savings into preventative services across the local public sector will incentivise partnership working and pooling of budgets. There is also a case for considering how budgets are distributed locally across the public sector to allow for flexibility to spend and commission preventative services in a more coordinated fashion.

Local authorities need a clear understanding from Whitehall about the financial incentives that will be on offer to councils and communities that adopt the NCB approach. This includes clarity on future budgets following the next Comprehensive Spending Review. Support from DCLG and other Whitehall departments will be essential in encouraging local authorities and partners to move forward with the programme.

5.2 Name of the programme

The name of the programme could raise expectations within communities that they will be given devolved budgets. This is not the most important aspect of the programmes, as they are much more about encouraging greater community involvement in the design and delivery of services. Changing the name of the programme could help to manage these expectations.

5.3 Partnership working

DCLG should continue to press the case nationally for greater (and more proactive) collaboration across Whitehall in the programme. Particularly, from DWP, its agencies and programmes, schools and colleges (through DfE), health, MoJ and Home Office in local and neighbourhood management developments. This needs to include a willingness to co-invest in greater preventative and early intervention activity.

5.4 Sharing learning

DCLG should undertake a programme to encourage shared learning across the NCB pilots to ensure local authorities who have been involved in the pilots have access to ‘good practice’ and some continuing peer and government support for the implementation phases of this exercise. Areas considering adopting this approach will require evidence of outcomes and support in establishing their own NCBs.

5.5 Linking with other initiatives

Learning and experience from the Whole Place pilots must be considered alongside the learning from the NCBs. Moving forward, the two programmes need to work much more closely together, and work needs to be done to understand how the two programmes can interact. There is also the need to understand how NCBs, Whole Place Community Budgets and other initiatives, such as City Deal, work together. There could be huge opportunities in joining together the different programmes and approaches for increased savings and achievement of outcomes.

6. Conclusions

Kingston Council has been bold to embark on the One Norbiton NCB. The progress made with the community and the One Norbiton NCB itself is impressive, and the process through which they and partners have travelled is valuable both in its own right, and for wider lessons about neighbourhood management. Limitations of resource mapping due to data availability restrict the contribution this can make to the evolution of neighbourhood management. However, it does provide some insights into how local budgets are aligned to preventative and responsive spend and could make the case for future pooling and aligning of budgets around key outcomes.

April 2013

Submission prepared by: Laura Wilkes, Policy Manager, LGiU

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