Results from 13 Total Place pilots across England show better services can be delivered at less cost, if public sector organisations work collaboratively and put citizens at the heart of designing services.
The report, Total Place: a whole area approach to public services, details work undertaken in the pilot areas, covering 63 local authorities, 34 Primary Care Trusts, 12 fire authorities and 13 police authorities. Each pilot had its own theme and mapped all of the public spending in their area.
Analysis of spending on key local priorities was also carried out, and views were sought from the customer’s perspective. This gave participating organisations a clearer picture of how benefits from spending might be enhanced.
Testing of Total Place in services for older people was led by three councils and two primary care trusts in Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole.
In addition to mapping spending, expenditure on avoidable admissions and residential care was also examined.
Ways of shifting the balance of care towards the community were identified, for example, instituting joint case management of people with long term conditions by integrated health and social care teams.
The pilot concluded savings could be made by reducing avoidable hospital admissions by 15%.
The report also outlines a new approach to delivering public services that includes:
• freedom from centralised performance and financial controls
• freedom and incentives to encourage local collaboration
• freedom to invest in prevention
• freedom to drive growth
Most of these freedoms have been taken up in the new Community Budgets to be introduced in April 2011, and have been backed up by the abolition of a raft of reporting and inspection requirements, including national indicators used to monitor council performance.
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