An Introduction to Community Budgets

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An Introduction to Community Budgets

• ELS SSP 29-07-13

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What are Community Budgets?

• The core idea of community budgets is that a
  broad range of partners should agree common
  outcomes, pool resources and join up activities
  to achieve those outcomes.
• Important dimensions are improving quality,
  efficient use of public money, promoting choice,
  localism, enabling civil society and prevention
  of social and economic problems.

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The Policy Context

• Evolved and builds on the work of Total Place
  that ended in 2010. Total Place was designed to
  improve public services and save money by
  bringing organisations and their budgets
  together
• A central theme of the scheme was a whole area
  approach that would reduce overlap and
  duplication by sharing objectives across multiple
  agencies.
• Following the General Election the Coalition
  stated that it wished to build on some of the
  lessons of Total Place with Community Budgets.

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The Policy Context

• Community Budgets are linked to both the
  governments Open Public Services White Paper and
  the Localism agenda.
• Both are based on the premise that public
  services should be configured around meeting the
  needs of the individual and the community.
  Services that might be national in nature should
  be delivered directly to the citizen via a method
  as close to the citizen as possible.
• Open Public Services White Paper sets out five
  key principles behind the re-configuration of
  Public Services

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The Policy Context

• Choice Wherever possible citizen centred choice
  will be increased.
• Decentralisation Power should be decentralised
  to the lowest appropriate level.
• Diversity Public services should be open to a
  range of providers.
• Fairness We will ensure fair access to public
  services.
• Accountability Public services should be
  accountable to users and taxpayers

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Community budgets can help organisations that
provide local public services to

• make better use of their resources by
  establishing joint budgets and sharing local
  knowledge, community assets and voluntary effort
• remove central rules and regulations so local
  professionals can provide better services that
  suit their area
• give people greater control over their local
  public services
• support local partnership and governance
  arrangements to create a unified approach for a
  given area.

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Types of Community Budget

• Sixteen first-phase Community Budgets for
  families with multiple problems were announced in
  April 2011 as part of the effort to help turn
  round the lives of at least 10,000 families over
  4 years.
• Following consultation, 2 further types of budget
  pilots were announced on 21 December 2011.

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Types of Community Budget

• Whole-place Community Budgets test how to bring
  together all funding for local public services in
  an area to design better services and achieve
  better outcomes .
• Neighbourhood level Community Budgets give
  communities more power and control over local
  services and budgets whole-place Community Budgets

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Whole Place Budgets

• May bring all funding on local public services
  from the area into a single pot, or pool and
  align different funding streams as appropriate to
  test how to create the right local financial set
  up to deliver better services that people want.
• Four pilot areas established (including Cheshire
  West and Chester and Greater Manchester) and
  business cases now developed.
• Challenge and Learning Network established to
  share learning of the pilots with others.

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Neighbourhood Level Budgets

• Smaller scale Community Budgets that give
  residents a micro-local level say over the
  services they want and use.
• The local community play a leading role, working
  with the local council and other services, to
  shape the services they receive so they work from
  a customer's perspective.
• 10 pilots selected.

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Whole Place Budgets

• Assume that all functions of national and local
  government, all public spending and all public
  services will be within scope.
• Breaking down barriers is key because the more
  control and flexibility local partners have, the
  closer they can work with communities and more
  flexibly respond to their needs .

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Potential Barriers

• Multiple, uncoordinated funding streams at local
  level and savings not directly benefitting
  agencies investing.
• Reactive approaches waiting until a problem
  becomes a serious issue instead of prevention and
  early intervention.
• Lack of understanding and use of evidence, and
  the ability to share information across
  organisational boundaries.
• Short term planning of public finances, with
  councils required to balance budgets in year.
• Lack of effective structures e.g. if local
  partnerships have no legal standing does this
  prevent pooling on the scale required?

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Factors for success

• An agreed clear vision between partners
• Common outcomes and outcome based approach.
• Local innovation and co-design.
• Local delivery mechanisms.
• Commitment to data sharing.
• Removal of barriers (organisational, sharing
  funding, legislation etc).
• Scaleable.

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Pilots to date have

• designed new models of service delivery
• identified the changes needed to national
  policies
• developed robust, evidence based business cases
  based on CBA
• agreement on sharing both risk and savings across
  all partners
• strengthened partnership arrangements and worked
  collaboratively to develop place based leadership.

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Work-ready individuals what will change West
Cheshire

• Day One Deliverables
• A number of multi-agency Work Zones featuring
  JCP, Council Employment and Skills, NCS, Housing
  and others
• Tailored offers for high priority cohorts
• New assessment process to drive joint working
  between employment and skills services
• New process to integrate work programme and JCP
  warm hand over in line with DWP operations
  directive
• New governance structure to ensure Employment and
  Skills provision is linked to the locality agenda

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Lessons Learnt West Cheshire

• 1. Pick a deadline and stick to it Focus and
  ambition
• 2. Integrated where it makes sense You cant
  make one budget for place, so its better to
  target efforts.
• 3. Avoid new silos If you integrate on a project
  by project basis, you must make sure that you
  retain a view of the bigger picture.
• 4. Collaborative Leadership All leaders from all
  partners have a role to play.
• 5. Invest in analysis This can't be a nice to
  do. To make a difference it needs to be
  financially sustainable. Invest in cost benefit
  analysis to ensure every partner is clear on
  their return on investment and you can evidence
  impact.
• 6. Dont forget the community Redesigning
  services and budgets only goes so far. A new
  settlement between citizen and state is required.
  
• 7. Keep up the momentum Policy Commissions
  Elected Members and partners identifying new
  solutions to future challenges

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Where next?

• The Local Government Association commissioned
  Ernst and Young to review the potential for the
  aggregation of whole place community budgets.
• The report notes that community budgets have the
  potential to deliver better outcomes and realise
  substantial financial benefits by aggregating
  themes of health and social care, troubled
  families and work and skills with the potential
  of a net benefit of five years of between 9.4bn
  and 20.6bn

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Where next?

• The 2013 Budget statement confirmed that the
  Government are committed to extending the
  Community Budget concept
• Public Service Transformation network established
  with funding support as part of this to spread
  innovation and learning from the pilots.
• Councils and other local agencies were invited to
  express their interest in being one of a number
  of areas who will work intensely with the
  network. These areas will be announced in the
  summer