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Guest blog: Learning from Whitehall – how we adapted the PMDU to local government

Even though the Coalition government scrapped the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit in 2010, the model continues to inspire public service reformers.

Even though the Coalition government scrapped the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit in 2010, the PMDU model continues to inspire public service reformers. Here, the Leader and Chief Executive of Haringey Borough Council reflect on their experience of setting up a Corporate Delivery Unit based on the PMDU, the subject of a new InsideOUT report from the Institute for Government. They argue that other local authorities can learn from and adapt this central government innovation.

Haringey Borough Council, like many local authorities across the country, faces the challenge of having to do more and better with less money. We have to save £70m over the next three years (about a quarter of what remains of our current budget). And that is on top of the £117m we have saved since 2010. In many ways we have the perfect storm – rising demand for services, in part down to a growing population and shrinking budgets because of the reduction in Government grants. This is forcing a gear shift in how we see the role of the Council itself, one that is less about being the sole provider of services in favour of a ‘systems leadership’ role that is better equipped to marshal resources, objectives and outcomes from a range of partners. Setting up the Corporate Delivery Unit (CDU) in 2013 was a signal of our determination for better services, bringing capacity and capability into the council to help realise our ambitions for the organisation and for the borough we serve. With the CDU pursuing delivery targets across a number of priority areas, we as leaders feel reassured that issues are being addressed rather than left to drift. Working closely with services, CDU is strengthening our delivery planning and using data to better understand what drives performance. The small but diverse team, including experienced staff from Haringey and a number of external secondees, offers different perspectives and approaches that have brought a wealth of experience to the organisation. We welcomed the independent review into the progress of CDU over its first 18 months – the Unit’s influence in such a small space of time has been incredible. We have seen sustained improvements in areas from timeliness of housing repairs to recycling take-up and have laid the groundwork for many more. We will take forward the suggestions from the review about how to ensure it has an even greater impact in the future. As with any reform, we have encountered challenges, many of which are set out honestly in the InsideOUT report, but we have also found ways to overcome these, learning lessons which may be useful for others to reflect on. First, it can be difficult for a new team working across very different areas to get buy-in from service leads who are already hard-pressed. In Haringey, we have found that the credibility and visibility of the CDU has helped service leads to see the unit as a partner getting alongside them, rather than simply the centre getting on top of them. For instance, the ‘priority reviews’ that CDU has undertaken jointly with service managers to diagnose delivery challenges have resulted in a shared analysis of the problems and the priorities for action. Second, the work of CDU has identified capability gaps in services, particularly around data analysis. But in a number of areas CDU has spurred-on the service – initial support in the use of data and plotting trajectories for future performance has given heads of service greater confidence in their ability to improve outcomes; in some areas their teams are now going further than the CDU, asking more probing questions of their own performance. Third, it has not always been clear how elected cabinet members would work with operational leads from services and the CDU. But in a number of areas we are beginning to see cabinet members taking ownership of the CDU’s delivery summaries to inform their discussions with the services they oversee. The result is a sharper and more constructive sense of accountability. As a borough and as a council, we have substantial strengths and opportunities that we can build on. We have faced up to our weaknesses and sought innovative ways of addressing them. Creating the CDU has been a successful part of this – and now the CDU is central to taking forward Haringey’s Corporate Plan for 2015-18, which will renew our commitment to delivering real outcomes for our residents. We’re proud that Haringey has led the way in showing what the delivery unit model can offer local government. While we drew heavily on the PMDU experience, we didn’t simply import it wholesale. We have thought carefully about how the tools and routines fit into Haringey’s structure and culture and we are open to changing this as it matures. In many ways it is surprising that we are the first local authority to have applied this approach and we hope that other councils operating in a similarly challenging environment will find the lessons from our experience helpful in considering whether a unit like ours could help them deliver for their residents.
Publisher
Institute for Government

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