We all know that if a commission were set up to look at the best way of delivering locally-based public services, it would not end up recommending the current patchwork quilt of overlapping and even-competitive authorities.
And I don't just mean districts and counties, but also the bodies covering health, police, further education, fire and rescue, parishes, sundry quangos – in fact, the whole nine yards.
A commission would, in all likelihood, propose a cross-boundary organisation, or at least a kind of federated structure, with all the various public sector bodies within it, sharing back-office costs, not a million miles away, perhaps, from the idea of Public Service Boards once proposed by Kent CC.
Now, Hampshire has come up with a new model which it calls the senate (see p3 and p12-13). The aim is the same, to get all the various bodies providing public services around the table in a given area, in this case, the county. Apart from councils, it will include, at its inaugural meeting this week, the chairs of the police authority, fire, PCT, the LSP, and the parishes. County leader, Ken Thornber, chairman of the County Councils' Network as well as the Innovation Forum, sees it as an alternative to further council reorganisation which he plainly believes remains an option, whatever ministers say.
But, in theory, it will also promote more joined-up working across services. He cites an example of how the county has pledged to plug a funding gap to maintain a non-emergency police number. We already have the example of councils stepping in to fund local post offices which face the chop. It is by no means fanciful to envisage postal services being provided from county or town halls, although the latter tend to be more high street-based and therefore, more accessible to the public.
Such activity is a prime example of councils taking their community leadership role seriously. Hopefully, initiatives such as Hampshire's senate will prove successful, despite the cultural obstacles that constantly knobble all attempts at cross-boundary working.
Michael Burton
Editor, The MJ
