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Michael Burton talks to council chief executive Joyce Redfearn about her regional role and membership of the national Total Place officers group. Well into her third local authority chief executive's post, Joyce Redfearn has now added a new Whitehall brief – Total Place. Joyce Refearn believes there are some hearts and minds to win over in parts of the public sector Previously chief executive at Monmouthshire and then Gloucestershire CC she took on the top job at Wigan MBC four years ago. More recently her work with the North West RIEP where she is chair of its management board and her chairing of the (national) chief executives' efficiency task force led to her becoming a member of Sir Michael Bichard's Total Place officers' group. The North West RIEP became involved in Total Place when it was consulted by the CLG – along with the other RIEPs – about suitable pilots. In its patch it already had two trailblazers in Cumbria, where the Leadership Centre had carried out its groundbreaking studies Counting Cumbria and Calling Cumbria, and Blackburn with Darwen Council. It was the latter which first launched the pioneering ‘resource mapping' survey to establish how public spending was allocated locally. The North West RIEP also includes perhaps the most developed sub-national grouping, the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, now a city region pilot, so it was unsurprising that the region's Total Place pilot should be AGMA and its associate Warrington Council. The Total Place officers' steering group meets in London each month at the CLG, ‘for about two hours' according to Joyce and along with her are other local government colleagues like Suffolk CC's Andrea Hill as well as representatives from police and health. Recent topics have concerned the pilots and the support they have needed until their submissions last month. She says: ‘I believe Total Place is a really exciting opportunity and will help to shape public sector reform. It will change organisations. And when you're with health, police and so on, they're all talking about the same issues.' She admits that there remain some hearts and minds yet to win over from other parts of the public sector like the NHS even though locally councils and PCTs, through adult services provision in particular, work closely. She says ‘we have to get the message across more in the health sector though at local level here in Wigan we have huge support.' Perhaps the acronyms and the jargon are one barrier to better communication as local government, she admits, tends to ‘talk in initials.' One question is whether, or more likely how, the Total Place agenda will survive a possible change of Government. It is known that the Conservatives back the concept – there is after all, no other game in town – even if they rename it. But how does the steering group and other officials manage the process during what is effectively a general election campaign? Joyce says they can ‘see below the political radar' adding: ‘The "how" bit and the way we build relationships with other partners is easier to make apolitical.' So what happens now the pilots have made their submissions? The lessons from the pilots will be out in February and their work from then on as pilots is officially over. But for the non-pilots, the so-called parallel places i.e. the rest, it is just the beginning.

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WHITEHALL

Putting the North West in its place

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