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Here in Kent, we are a pilot for the Total Place initiative – one of only a handful of the pilots which involves multi-tier local government. The possibilities and opportunities presented by the initiative are immense, not only across local authorities – whether horizontally or vertically – but also across the other public sector, private sector and community and voluntary service providers which also operate locally. Significantly, it also has the potential to draw in both other central government spend, for example, by the Department for Work and Pensions, and quasi-public sector spend, such as direct, by local housing associations and the learning and skills sector. These are the areas where real gains are to be made, and I particularly ask my erstwhile colleague Darra Singh, newly-appointed chief executive of Jobcentre Plus, to bring that agency to the Total Place table as soon as he possibly can. Additionally, since central government now owns, or has some investment in a number of banks and other newly-‘nationalised industries', there is also a local asset footprint available from these. It will be interesting to figure out what part they could play going forward. Meanwhile, back in the land of the day job, a number of challenges to councils acting together for the good of local people, or at least the good of the national purse, have arisen. We have recently witnessed the threats of a split following the pay offer which was made by Local Government Employers; the arguments that there must be another approach following [housing minister] John Healey's invitation to find a way of sharing housing debt across all stock-owning councils to enable them to exit from the HR; and the appearance of another ‘debate' about unitary government for remaining two-tier county areas. While separate issues, these are all forces which drive the sector apart, or expose differences of opinion or position, thus militating against efforts to act with a single voice. Is Total Place a strong enough force to overcome these and other differences, and bring us together? Sadly, I doubt it, partly because there are, after all, only 13 pilots at this stage, but also because there is little evidence that central government and non-departmental public bodies' ‘hearts and minds' are really at the table, let alone the insidious and corrosive impact that discussions on new unitaries will have on real joint working. The tensions between sovereignty and subsidiarity I strongly suspect will remain with us for some time to come.

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FINANCE

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