Shared Services for

Brighton & Hove City Council

Policy & Resources Committee24th January 2013

Drivers for Change – push factors

• The Graph of Doom (….again!)

• Government and public expectations

• Media coverage for positive shared services agenda elsewhere

• Need to demonstrate Value For Money in management costs and support services

• Skills and capacity challenges

Drivers for Change - pull factors

• Positive response as part of a mixed economy of public service provision in Brighton & Hove

• May enable more services to be retained in the local government “family” and/or

• May be a foundation for cross sector partnership working

• Has potential to exploit strengths and address weaknesses

National examples

• Tri-borough partnership in London and locally Adur & Worthing Council

• London Pensions Fund Authority

• Greater Manchester Combined Authority (City Region)

• Southwest One (Joint Venture company)

• East Sussex and Surrey CC joint procurement partnership

B&H current examples

• Joint procurement - Waste PFI with ESCC• Joint commissioning and integrated delivery with

health (Section 75 partnerships) • Integrated Community Safety delivery unit• Support service contracts – SDNPA (Finance),

National Anti Fraud Network, East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service (Legal)

• South East 7 – ICT, Highways, SEN, Waste• Partnerships with Dome and Festival

B&H new work in progress

• The Sussex LINK programme for ICT

• City Deal governance and funding

• West Sussex County Council Green Deal procurement

B&H key questions

• Our approach has been incremental and tactical how do we keep strategic oversight?

• Our relationships are complex- how do we work with the SE7, and with the CCG and the PSB and as part of an emerging City Deal region?

• Is our priority to be considering support service costs, income and capacity; management overheads; joint procurement; or joint commissioning and integrated front line service delivery?

The dilemmas

• Shared services requires give and take• Not everyone can be the host authority • There may be short term financial disbenefits for

long term gain• Do you gain capacity or lose it?• Will we lose clarity and economies of scale

through local complexity?• What governance might be appropriate?• Business case is critical

Proposed guiding principles

• Quality of citizen experience comes first• Joint commissioning / strategic planning and

integrated service delivery cross sector in B&H will be prioritised

• Joint procurement with partners outside B&H when scale is critical to achieving VFM

• Sharing of support services and management costs only when it does not compromise (and ideally enhances) achievement of the above