Feedback from the Total Place pilots, revealed this week by the LGA, makes the point that only a small proportion of local public spending is actually dispensed by local government.
The rest comes under government departments, the NHS and assorted quangos. The LGA makes the not-unreasonable point that to the general public, the local authority is often the body to which it turns, if local services go wrong, even though it has no control over them.
Certainly, I have been at public meetings hosted by councils where questions from the floor have concerned problems to do with buses, trains,
hospitals, crime and youth training – none of which are the direct responsibility of the local authority.
Any idea that public services will be restructured under local authority control is fanciful. But there are other ways, such as a more powerful role for local public service boards, to give one example, with strong local authority involvement. It is also clear that the current system involves much overlapping of public bodies, many without any proper local scrutiny, leading to inefficiency and waste.
It is also obvious that money follows funding streams rather than need, and that a more sensible use of allocating resources through a simplified regime could actually reduce costs.
That much is already clear from the pilots so far. But that was the easy part. Much more difficult, some would even say impossible, is how to turn these conclusions into practice. And while the essence of Total Place is its local approach, changes will require intervention at national level. The two biggest funding streams after all are health and welfare, both controlled centrally.
Total Place is a cross-party issue, and irrespective of which party wins the general election next year, will continue to be the biggest show in town for public services. But it will need jump-starting, probably through a public services Bill, earmarked in the 2010 Queen's Speech, in which progress towards breaking down institutional barriers can be outlined. If so, then work on the contents of such a Bill, guided by the Total Place officers' group under Sir Michael Bichard, should start now.
Michael Burton, Editor, The MJ
