“The bigger you go, the less you know”
Collaborate has worked with Test Valley Borough Council to build the case for why place-based, relational approaches to public services should be core to local government reorganisation.
Local government reorganisation offers a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-examine and re-shape the operating model of local government.
The English Devolution White Paper set out the government’s vision for simpler, local government structures. It proposes that these structures can lead to better outcomes for residents, improved local accountability, and savings which can then be reinvested in public services. It doesn’t say how this will be achieved. Instead it is for each place to determine an effective organisational and administrative structure, based on what they know about the people who live there and the geography in which they live.
This process is an opportunity to remind ourselves and recommit to what local government is for, what it can do, and why it matters. It’s an opportunity to put purpose at the heart of decisions about what new, old, and amalgamated institutions and their partners do, how they do it, and who they do it for.
Based on a comprehensive literature review, interviews with practitioners and Collaborate’s own work in places across the country, our paper sets out the benefits of place-based, relational approaches to public services. We outline the underlying conditions that enable these approaches to be effective and give examples of what the work looks like in practice, illustrated by brief case studies.
This evidence base supports the argument that place-based, relational working should be at the heart of the operating model for new unitary authorities. That this is the only way to deliver trust and public service reform at the scale required, and will have a correlating impact on economic opportunity.
Read the full report “The bigger you go, the less you know”
Why place-based, relational approaches to public services must be core to Local Government Reorganisation
See the latest version of our model for change below and via this link for download.
Contact Jenni Lloyd via email [email protected] to find out more and explore how Collaborate could support you with Local Government Reorganisation and other placed-based challenges.
