Much has been written about ‘productivity plans' – an ask of local authorities to produce documents setting out how they will improve service performance and reduce ‘wasteful expenditure to ensure every area is making best use of taxpayers' money'.
It's certainly right and proper for any organisation – public or private – to evaluate constantly whether its programmes, products or services continue to deliver value for money. It's right to scrutinise whether further efficiencies can be made. It's right to have uncomfortable conversations about legacy spend and honest conversations about what a future local authority offer should be.
Via many of our commercial programmes, from our contract management through to hands on sourcing and procurement support, we see daily how further enhancements can be made to improve both productivity and ultimately financial outcomes. This depends on proper planning, strategic thinking, good governance, solid project management and laser-like commercial thinking and acumen being brought to bear on every piece of expenditure.
More than 75% of local authority spend is with third parties – £70bn in England alone. While spend is heavily scrutinised at the sourcing, procuring and awarding stages, our experience suggests much less so at delivery phase. Industry data shows ‘value leakage' of 10% during the course of a contract's lifetime. After purchase, delivery is often devolved to multiple parts of an authority with ongoing scrutiny decentralised and no authorial oversight as to how every pound spent should be made to count.
Is your local authority centrally tracking its external spend and, most importantly, how it is managed? Do you have consistent and cross-cutting metrics for monitoring and evaluation? Do you have benchmarks and are you aware of how your performance fares against comparable authorities?
To help the sector be more consistently able to answer yes to all of the above, we worked with 20 pioneer authorities on contract management fundamentals to promote and disseminate best practice, and tools and guidance for better contract management outcomes. Supported by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, we also worked with four local authorities providing short-term support for long-term solutions to ensure enhanced contract management performance.
Councils must produce the plans by Parliament's summer recess on 23 July. Local Partnerships can provide capacity and capability support in that endeavour.
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