Ministers move to take action on community budgets
Author: Local Government Chronicle |
A ministerial group tasked with boosting the community budgets programme has been launched, as documents obtained by LGC revealed the extent to which a turbulent spending review period has hampered the programme’s progress.
Junior local government minister Baroness Hanham (Con) is chairing the group, which met for the first time last week and includes chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, communities secretary Eric Pickles and minister for children and families Tim Loughton (Con).
The formation of the ministerial group highlights a renewed interest in the programme, LGC understands.
Community budgets, which are to focus on families with complex needs, are set to be the focus of a “second phase” of the local government resource review to start next month, in which payment-by-results mechanisms will be explored.
The group’s formation follows a turbulent period since the pilots were unveiled in the October spending review – all of which is laid bare by documents obtained by LGC this week through a Freedom of Information request.
A letter from the Department for Communities & Local Government, dated 4 November, to the cross-Whitehall community budgets group chaired by Lord Bichard revealed that the spending review had rendered irrelevant the ‘high-level count’ work done under the predecessor Total Place programme.
“We do not have a complete list of funding lines that may be available to go into the [community] budget, as departments need to work through the implications of the spending review announcement,” the letter read.
“Some funds will already have been shifted into formula grant and area-based grant under the reduction in funding streams and removal of ring-fences announced in the spending review,” the letter added.
We are moving to a model where councils have to demonstrate a private-sector approach to delivering their services
A paper discussed at a meeting of the Bichard group in January then revealed that funding for the community budgets had still not been identified.
“We are too late in [the spending review] cycle to develop a mechanism to deliver this funding as a single stream from Whitehall, indeed the funding has already been allocated to a range of organisations,” a “crib-sheet” on community budgets read.
“The ‘offer’ to places is, therefore, to agree what elements of relevant funding should be used collectively by local budget-holders to tackle these [problem] families, rather than being used in a silo way or diverted into other activities over time.”
Local Government Association improvement board chair David Parsons (Con) said he was hopeful the ministerial group could replicate the success of the steering group of the Total Place programme, which was headed by then Treasury minister Liam Byrne and communities secretary John Denham.
Cllr Parsons said last week’s meeting had been positive and added that ministers were open to piloting payment-by-results models to reward councils with some of the pilots.
The minutes of the January meeting of the Bichard group revealed that such an approach could link with work being led by Emma Harrison, the chair of welfare-to-work giant A4e, on getting troubled families into employment.
The 16 pilots have been offered the chance to become ‘exemplar’ projects, entitling them to work with Ms Harrison and receive £150,000 each.
Cllr Parsons said: “I think the reward for success principle in community budgets represents the welcome arrival of a free market principle into the public sector.
“In the past, councils could be funded for indifferent or lacklustre performance. That era is now clearly over, and we are moving to a model where councils have to demonstrate a private-sector approach to delivering their services.”
Lord Bichard’s ‘High-Level Risk Register’ for community budget pilotsLack of commitment and ambition from key departments: “Important Whitehall departments not actively driving implementation on themes or cross-theme budgets, leading to unambitious budgets.”Lack of alignment of other government policies and initiatives may mean community budgets are not “optimised”.The impact of the spending review “on funding for families with complex needs” may mean departments and pilot areas are “unable to cope”.The “very tight timetable” could mean that “not all places may have capacity to deliver on time”.