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Can local Charities save the public sector £16bn…
13th March 2014
It has been suggested by the umbrella body Locality that, if local authorities commission services on a ‘local-by-default basis’, it could offer budget savings of £16bn a year. Locality, in partnership with Professor John Seddon of Vanguard, published the report entitled, ‘Saving money by doing the right thing: why ‘local by default’ must replace ‘diseconomies of scale’’. The report suggests that the systems used by local authority commissioner is inefficient and that that they need to ‘abandon unhelpful beliefs about ‘economies of scale’ and standardisation’.
Comprehensive research tracked clients’ demand to understand how the system was meeting their needs, including looking at case notes, database records, files, phone calls and other interactions. The research found that people shop around from service to service until they find what they are looking for and that this in turn creates unnecessary work and cost.
The Work Programme is used as an example of ‘bulk buying’, support at ‘rock bottom prices’ that could be improved by “local by default’.
The CEO of Locality stated that “the drive towards standardisation and larger and larger contracts has generated billions of pounds’ worth of unnecessary demand on public services, and has fed the monster of corporate greed. We must stop feeding this monster.”
Civil Society
- Charity registration
- Restructuring
- Governance and constitutional issues
- Trustees' duties and responsibilities
- Mergers and joint working
- Commercial contracts
- Company law and company secretarial
- Regulations and compliance
- Strategy and sustainability
- Funding