Deep dive

Posted by: Jules Birch

22/02/2010

I’m still finding it hard not to be a bit cynical about Total Place, the initiative that is meant to deliver big savings in spending on local services through better co-ordination and ending duplication.

It should be an idea whose time has come. With public spending about to be cut, the idea that we can save £20bn by making better use of assets, better co-ordination and ending duplication, as communities secretary John Denham told yesterday’s Observer, sounds a bit like finding an extra set of lifeboats on the Titanic.

‘Total Place is helping identify where blockages exist which prevent change across the board, overcoming the long-standing professional, cultural and funding barriers which have historically proved a big stumbling block to reform,’ he says. ‘It means a much more open debate about the best way to provide services locally.

‘Rather than services protecting their own territory and budgets, it means switching resources between different providers. This cuts out duplication, waste and bureaucracy, saving professionals’ time and services’ money – running into millions of pounds – which can be reinvested.’

Housing should in theory be well placed to benefit from a process like that. Years of lobbying about the effects of housing investment on health, education, crime and jobs could pay off.  A classic example came last week with a joint plea by the Chartered Institutes of Housing and Environmental Health on the human and financial costs of poor housing: they quote a new report that says that 4m seriously unhealthy homes in the private sector cost the NHS £600m a year and society as a whole a further £1.5bn.

Denham’s confidence is based on the initial results from the Total Place pilots - such as better co-ordination between the benefits, prison, housing and probation services in Bedfordshire to reduce re-offending; or the housing and regeneration pilot in Durham that identifies 47 different funding streams. 

The initiative certainly seems to have enough backing across the political spectrum and in local government to succeed, with the Conservatives saying they would implement it faster than Labour.

I hope I’m wrong but it’s partly that level of cross-party agreement that makes me uneasy. It’s one thing to back a process that appears to offer savings without cuts ahead of an election; quite another to deliver it over the next few years.

It’s partly the jargon that runs through the Total Place reports. Insight workstreams, engagement plans and customer journey mapping offer the depressing possibility that the real ‘deep dive’ is going to be into the budget to pay consultants. 

And it’s partly thinking about another programme that drew together different funding streams and apparently saved £2 for every £1 spent before being left to local authorities to decide what’s best: look what’s happening to Supporting People on the Isle of Wight.