What are Community Budgets and what are we doing in Oldham?

“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, the next best time is now”.

Rt Hon Francis Maude MP, quoting an old African proverb

What do we mean by ‘Community Budgets’? How are Community Budgets useful?

Why?

• Massive savings required!

• We’ve always argued that we’d get better value for public sector money if we had the flexibility to use resources more effectively across the public sector • Same argument applies equally to capital and revenue, and to all service areas – economic development, transport, social care, education etc. etc.

• GM Whole Place Community Budget pilot

Generic example:

•   

Vision

= CBs as a tool to make reform of public services happen

Objective

= a tool to prompt multi-agency conversations about joint outcomes and joint investment to achieve those outcomes

Example

= parties x, y & z invest £2m to achieve b outcomes; resulting in savings for party y of £5m. Party y agree to pay £2.5m of these savings back into the common pot

Outcome

= investment-focused mindset and opens potential for range of investors e.g. local partners, private sector, government departments…

Understand who invests & saves

100,000 90,000 80,000 70,000 60,000

£

50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 Criminal Justice System Local Authorities Health Benefits Payments Police Housing Reactive Cost savings Proactive Costs

Milestones in the process

STAGE 1: designing an evidence based community budget proposal and agreeing evidence based outcomes – e.g.

- Research to identify community needs, issues with current public services and local people’s drivers/motivators for change Decision-makers/commissioners across partnership identify their key outcomes based on the evidence - Deliverers across partnership identify options for how to change the delivery system across the partnership to meet the key outcomes, including clarity on which outcomes the proposed intervention will contribute to

STAGE 2: identifying costs and undertaking CBA:

benefit analysis Options appraisal carried out using cost-

STAGE 3:

Partnership decision on which option(s) to go for, and commitment to resource – SIGNING AN INVESTMENT AGREEMENT Implementation and review

Why do we think this will work?

• Because we know there are inefficiencies at the moment; • We also know there are areas where demand for public sector services could be reduced; • E.g. fly-tipping – a range of agencies want to reduce fly-tipping; • Between us, we estimate we spend £3-4m on clearing up fly-tipping • 2 approaches to reducing this spend: – 1. Join up better so we don’t duplicate functions when clearing up fly-tipping – straightforward efficiency; – 2. Reduce demand – if people don’t fly-tip in the first place, we don’t have to clear it up.

What are we doing in Oldham?

Range of ‘social policy’ projects

Yellow = universal services that help prevent families becoming troubled Blue = families who have become troubled, perhaps for multiple reasons

And some more focused ones…

• Failsworth and Hollinwood health and well being • Total Environment – focus on fly-tipping • Fuel poverty

Questions/discussion

Contact details for further information: Liz Hume ( [email protected]

; 0161 7705691; 07753715577)