Insourcing of Publica for Councils

Case Study 4 – Supporting the development of a shared vision for transformation

Local Partnerships have supported a variety of councils, and transformation projects through the LGA’s Sector Support Improvement programme funded by the UK Government. These case studies explore the key activities and learnings from these projects and highlight both best practice and common challenges.

Insourcing of Publica

Cotswold District Council, Cheltenham Borough Council, Forest of Dean and West Oxfordshire District Council are all shareholders of Publica, a Local Authority Teckal Company (LATCO) which has been delivering the majority of council services for the past six years. Since Publica was formed, the context for the shareholders has changed because of changes to political control and changes at senior management level, with all four councils having re-instated Chief Executive positions.

A recent LGA peer review recommended that the delivery options for some services should be reviewed, including whether they should be brought back in-house. It also recommended that the commissioner/provider relationship between Publica and the councils be re-considered. Following this, the councils commissioned an independent strategic review of Publica services to provide options for the future of service delivery, the outcome of which was that it was recommended that the majority of services would benefit from being brought back in-house.

The challenge

The councils’ challenge is to ensure that Publica services are insourced effectively. To support this, they identified a set of agreed design principles:

• Being responsive and business like – adopting a more commercial mindset when considering engagement with businesses, residents, and key stakeholders, ensuring a cost recovery approach is implemented wherever possible to maximise service efficiencies etc.
  • Shaping delivery of services – being more mindful of efficient working methodologies (travel routes etc.)
  • How best to repatriate staff – where staff work across multiple councils (taking the provisions of TUPE into account), considering factors such as historic pension strain, relationship lead roles with specific councils, whether as part of a shared role, the majority of work is undertaken principally for a particular council 
  • Cost – recognising that there is a cost to bringing services back in-house and it may be difficult to quantify any short/medium-term savings such as senior management salaries and reduced costs of running a company
  • Employing people locally, being accessible and visible, with the ambition of making services more local with greater accountability and transparency
  • Group services to accelerate efficiencies, by identifying synergies between certain services before moving services.

These criteria are important in ensuring clarity is provided to staff and members on the repatriation process as this is a sensitive matter.

The solution

The project entailed conducting interviews and workshops with officers. From this, an outline transition framework was developed. The deliverable was a report setting out this plan and suggested timescales. Some early wins in the first six months to demonstrate progress were identified, with some of the relatively more straightforward services moving across. In addition the report set out some key recommendations which are highly likely to be adopted by the councils.

The impact

The councils have said that the work and outline transition framework has enabled them to take it and developed it into a more detailed plan for implementation. The councils have found this very helpful to act as bridging model between the original options report conducted by another firm and the detailed transition plan which is being taken forward by the councils.

How is the new approach being sustained?

As noted above, the councils are using the outline transition framework to take forward the implementation. The framework has enabled the programme team to develop a more detailed set of actions which has been helpful in taking the programme forward with a new Target Operating Model.

Further work to support the Target Operating Model has been made possible through additional LGA funding and extra support from LGA associates. This should support the success of the programme.

Lessons learned

The councils have learned that it is helpful to involve external support when dealing with sensitive projects such as this that have implications for staff. Feedback has shown that the breadth of knowledge and experience demonstrated by the LP team supporting this programme was very well received and assisted the CEOs in presenting this work to their respective councils.

More transformation case studies

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