Meeting the challenge in Barnet
Author: Localis |
Meeting the challenge in Barnet
Lessons from becoming the Commissioning Council
Localis has published a pamphlet with the London Borough of Barnet, Meeting the challenge in Barnet: Lessons from becoming the Commissioning Council, which describes how the Council has fundamentally changed how it operates over the last 6 years, in response to austerity and increasing demand on local services, and the challenges that it faced in getting there.
Written by Councillor Richard Cornelius, the Leader of the Council, the pamphlet explains how Barnet responded to the unprecedented financial challenge it faced: the questions they asked themselves; the answers they arrived at; and the resulting actions they took to adjust to an age of austerity for local government.
Since 2008 Barnet has moved away from being an organisation that provides the majority of services directly, to become a ‘Commissioning Council’ which commissions a range of internal and external providers in the market to achieve the best value and the best outcomes for residents. The result has been that Barnet have adopted a wide range of delivery models, with services provided: directly by the council; through charitable trusts; on a shared basis with other Boroughs; and in partnership with the private and voluntary sectors.
The pamphlet concludes with ten lessons that the Council has identified from its journey over the last few years, including ‘take staff with you’, ‘you need to spend money to save money’, and ‘the highest profile things are not necessarily the most important’.