People, Places and Partnerships - where next for local areas?

The People, Places and Partnerships event, jointly held by Inclusion and the Local Government Association on 24 January 2012, offered a great opportunity to explore the role of local government in delivering employment-related services.

The Rt Hon. Chris Grayling MP opened the conference by setting out how the Work Programme’s success is dependent upon strong partnerships. Local authorities’ services, he argued, need to join up with back to work support in order to help the most disadvantaged families. Payment-by-results models – through the Work Programme, support for troubled families, social investment – are becoming increasingly central to the delivery of public services.

Peter Box CBE from the Local Government Association then made the case for putting local enterprise partnerships at the centre of promoting regeneration of communities, so increasing local jobs. The economy is still creating new jobs but there needs to be a better joining-up of jobseekers’ skills with local business needs.

Chris Grayling and Peter Box’s points were echoed by Andrew Dutton, chief executive of A4e – local partnerships need to lead local economic development, while Work Programme providers have a key role to play in filling local jobs. More and better joint working will be essential – particularly to support those furthest from work.

So far, so much consensus. But how is this working in practice? A few examples from later in the day were instructive – benefit reform, and Work Programme delivery.

The plenary on benefit reform began to tease out just how far the local authority role will change as Universal Credit begins to be rolled out. Local authorities will have increasingly less and less of a role in delivering Housing Benefits (which will be centralised in the Department for Work and Pensions) but at the same time will have to set up replacements for Social Fund and Council Tax Benefit. Also, in what will be a pretty complicated local landscape, local authorities will need to link together Work Programme providers, local employers, colleges and training providers (as Paul Martin from Wandsworth Council argued). Where that leaves the voluntary sector – who the Centre for Social Justice argued have a better track record in delivering truly personalised support to the hardest to help – is not clear.

On Work Programme delivery, the panel discussion suggested some ongoing problems between providers and local authorities in some areas – with some local authorities worried that providers may only invest in areas where they think that they will get most financial return, leaving the local authority to fill in the gaps; while providers were concerned that pessimism or prejudice about the Work Programme could lead to some claimants being discriminated against in other services.

The workshop on community budgets, raised concerns about how local authorities’ attempts to support troubles families link to Work Programme initiatives to support disadvantaged families into work. Benefits were identified in sharing budgets to ensure shared targets among local authority departments. They offer opportunities for local authorities to experiment with what works based on local needs and to share best practice.

The Rt Hon. Stephen Timms MP ended the day with a challenging and thought-provoking speech, arguing that an opportunity has been missed for local authorities to have a more strategic role in forming the Work Programme. This may have created a contradiction, where national targets are set for the Work Programme but ultimately success will depend on what’s delivered at a local level. For Stephen Timms, Work Programme providers need local authorities to share in service delivery, and vice versa – making money go further and joining up funding streams (as community budgets are testing) would be key.

In sum, the event offered a great insight into how local partnerships are evolving, but it also showed how much is still to be worked through. In some ways for all of the moves to less prescriptive and more outcome-based funding, the future looks as complicated and uncertain as ever. The challenge now will be for local authorities, Work Programme providers, the Department for Work and Pensions, and employers to learn from each other and find their own ways through.

Download all the presentations from the conference here.