What next for public land?
Author: Steven Howell, LGC |
It’s too easy to feel as if it’s Groundhog Day in the world of local government policy.
The potential benefits of the latest ‘big push’ towards integration and the joining up of public services feels very familiar.
That such restructuring can deliver better results, save money across the public sector, and better reflect the intricacies of local areas are points made often.
We hope the next government will go further down the path of community budget-like approaches and wider integration of services.
But what is intrinsically linked to this, yet remarked on far less often, is how the public sector makes best use of its asset base.
Localis has just launched an agenda-setting pamphlet with Cathedral Group that asks: What next for public land?
This pamphlet launches an in-depth research project on how such public assets are, and could be, utilised.
For example, could the public sector be more joined up in identifying these assets?
Indeed, some areas are already looking to audit and identify their public asset holdings.
Essex CC and colleagues are developing a property asset map for example, showing all of the major public sector land holdings online, and so helping to identify underused and vacant assets.
Just as the joining up of services can make the public sector as a whole more effective, we’ll be asking whether joining up assets could have a similar effect.
For example, we’ll be looking at whether estates could be run better together and what the opportunities for co-location could be.
And not only that, but also: what are the ‘agglomeration’ benefits – i.e. are people innovating more because they are located closer together?
Some of this is already under way. Barnet LBC, for example, has placed social workers in their local hospitals, helping to join up health and social care services across the traditional silos of local government and the NHS.
And of course, if community budgets and wider integration result in reductions in demand, could we equally imagine less demand for current public assets?
The question then becomes: could public assets act as a resource for new uses over the longer term?
And, importantly, how can the public sector get the best value from these?
Through busting the ghosts of public land usage past and trying to avoid losing our findings in translation (any excuse for a Bill Murray reference), we hope to shed some light on some of these questions and more later in the year.
Steven Howell, director of policy and research, Localis