Newham’s Approach to Transformation:
Building Resilience
Dr Graeme Betts
Executive Director of Strategic Commissioning and Community
Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Growth
West Midlands Economic Forum
21 June 2013
Olympic Park
Canary Wharf
Newham’s story - challenges
• We are the 2nd most deprived borough in the country (IMD 2010).
• Employment is 9% below the London average.
• Skills are an issue, with almost half of our residents with no
recognised UK qualification.
• Economic changes in the mid 20th Century – loss of industry and
work in the Docks - left us with real challenges.
• Economic crisis and pressures on public finances had a
disproportionate impact on LBN budget.
Newham’s story - opportunities
• We are one of the most diverse places in the world – with the
largest proportion of households where no adult has English as
their main language of any borough in the country.
• We have a very young, dynamic population.
• Newham’s population is dominated by Prospectors there are
twice as many of this group as in the UK as a whole. This group
is most likely to be satisfied with their area as a place to live.
They want to be central to local activity.
• Strong and vibrant regeneration story including Siemens and
Westfield.
• Olympic Park.
• Our approach.
Our focus – Building Resilience
• Our vision is to help make Newham a place where people
choose to live, work and stay.
• We will only achieve that by building the economic, personal and
community resilience of all our residents.
• Economic resilience – to support residents into sustainable
employment in the face of international competition.
• Personal resilience – to give residents - especially our young
people – the capacity to deal with what life throws at them.
• And community resilience – to build cohesion and strength in the
most diverse place for its size on the planet.
Delivering resilience through transformation…
• Framework for resilience shapes what we do, delivered through a
whole systems, Council wide approach to strategic commissioning.
• Strategic commissioning devised, developed and cascaded
throughout the Council in 2012.
• Twenty-four resilience aspirations are delivered through an
outcomes framework and 12 cross-cutting strategic commissioning
plans breaking down silos.
• Strategic commissioning aligns investment to priorities across
performance and resources around a business cycle of
understand, plan, do, review.
…and through innovative personalised
services
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•
•
•
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Our Council Services to Small Businesses team is developing innovative
models of service delivery such as small businesses, staff mutuals and
payment by results schemes.
It aims to create value for money services that empower and incentivise
frontline staff to provide focused, responsive solutions that meet residents’
needs rather than being a one size fits all offer.
Community Hubs will see community engagement devolved to a hyperlocal level, with elected members at the heart of leadership.
Operationalising commissioning through 8 Community Hubs, led by local
members and bringing together local services to meet resident needs
around environment, libraries, community engagement, reducing ASB.
A team of officers along with lead Councillors will be able to work with
residents to: build community networks, flexibly use community assets,
tackle local issues, collect intelligence, and inform future commissioning.
Approach underpinned by evidence-led policy
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Two-year research and evaluation programme agreed by Sir. Robin
Wales, Executive Mayor, linking to academic research and good practice
evaluation to test public policy programme.
Policy examples include:
– Housing Allocations Policy: prioritising working households on the
waiting list.
– Landlord Licensing: first Council to implement council-wide PRS
licensing to reduce ASB and improving housing standards for
residents.
– Workplace: Council run job brokerage scheme delivered over 17,500
jobs since 2007, half to long-term unemployed Newham residents.
Outstanding track record of job sustainability.
– Every Child Reading: evaluation of 1-1 tutors for under achieving year
1 and 2 primary school children delivering improved NC results.
You can hear more about the three themes
supporting our transformation in the Panel session
• What we mean by strategic commissioning and our approach to
organisational change using a commissioning model.
• How we are operationalising commissioning through community
hubs to deliver improvement at a local level.
• How we are creating new delivery models such as the Mayors
small business programme to deliver more innovative and
personalised services.
For more information
• Please contact Dr Graeme Betts, Executive Director of
Strategic Commissioning and Community,
graeme.betts@newham.gov.uk
Newham’s Approach to Transformation:
Building Resilience
Panel Session
Dr Graeme Betts
Executive Director of Strategic Commissioning and Community
And
Dr Jane Kennedy
Research Business Manager
Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Growth
West Midlands Economic Forum
21 June 2013
Our three transformational themes
• Strategic commissioning and our approach to organisational
change using a commissioning model.
• Operationalising commissioning through community hubs.
• Creating new delivery models to deliver more innovative and
personalised services.
The Resilience Performance Framework
Described as
Commissioning
Strand
Aspirations
Aspiration
measures
Activities
measured by PI
Defined as
Also incorporates
A strong and cohesive community
People have both broad and diverse
networks locally (family, friends,
groups and organisations) that offer
them support.
Volunteering
% who say friendships and associations in
neighbourhood mean a lot to
NI 1 – people from different backgrounds get
along well together
Levels of English for speakers of English as a
second language
Sense of belonging in the neighbourhood
E.g. community engagement, ‘Go for it
Grants’
Politically
defined ‘key
objectives’
Commissioning Cycle
Research &
Community
Engagement
Improvement
&
Performance
Resident Driven
Priorities
Operational
Delivery
Commissioning
and Procurement
Strategic
Business
Planning
Evidence
Based
Policy
Development
Our approach to organisational change
using a commissioning model
• Governance framework agreed for strategic commissioning
led by the Executive Mayor
• We begin the commissioning round with an ‘Understand’
phase, pulling together:
– Elected members’ priorities
– Council research (what works here and what are resident
priorities)
– National and international research
– Performance data and intelligence
• Then we write action plans
• Commission activity
• And evaluate the outcomes
• Part of a constant feedback loop
Our approach to organisational change
using a commissioning model
• Significant organisational change as part of this process
• We have a commissioning / operations split across the
organisation
• Integrating budgets to commissioning leads
• Requires significant member and staff engagement to work –
culture change
• Comes at a time of financial constraints - £25m savings for
2014/15
• 4 pilot plans underway
• 8 more currently in process, to set budgets for 2014/15
Strategic commissioning
• What are the challenges others have faced when moving to
strategic commissioning?
• How do we make sure we learn from the changes we make (e.g.
evaluation, research)?
• How do we break down departmental silos as we commission?
Operationalising commissioning through
Community Hubs
• Building on our nationally recognised community engagement
work.
• Key principles – Councillor-led, inclusive, whole community
approach.
• Hubs bring together libraries, community centres and community
services.
• Small team of officers support Councillors to deliver community
plans.
• Tasked with four key outcomes from the Resilience Performance
Management Framework.
Operationalising commissioning through
Community Hubs
• Tasked with four key outcomes from the Resilience Performance
Management Framework:
– Residents respect and look after each other
– Residents are active locally and take part in community and
civic life
– Residents believe they can influence decisions which affect
them
– Residents respect their local environment
• Will also feed into outcomes around crime, health, and housing.
Operationalising commissioning through
community hubs
• Hubs will work with residents, with their input integral to delivering
community activities.
• Support residents to develop local groups, develop skills, provide
local volunteering opportunities.
• Will maximise use of community spaces.
• Gather evidence base on community activity and where there are
gaps, feed into the commissioning process.
• Will not commission services directly but will have small pots of
funding to support activities.
Operationalising commissioning through
community hubs
• Weekly street visits will provide an intelligence-gathering
function on environmental issues.
• Lead members supported by community officers will ensure
resident priorities on environmental issues and ASB are tackled.
• Hubs will ensure local intelligence feeds into Strategic
Commissioning.
• Currently being piloted in 2 areas – borough-wide roll out in
September.
Community Hubs – delivering at a local
level
• What challenges and risks are there in this approach?
• How do we bring local resident priorities together with Council
strategic aims?
• How else can we make commissioning accountable at a local
level?
Creating new delivery models to deliver
more innovative and personalised
services.
• The Mayor has established the Council Services to Small Business
programme exploring existing services to identify savings through
changes to delivery structures.
• The Programme covers the whole Council.
• Through a full service review, staff are encouraged and supported
to make recommendations about service improvement.
• Projects have the potential to create efficiencies by giving staff
greater control of service they deliver.
• The programme will help the organisation become leaner and more
commercially focussed.
• Full range of options considered including profit making small
businesses, social enterprise, charity, payment by results,
procurement – or just service improvements.
• Employee ownership will play an important part where
new businesses are created.
Creating new delivery models to deliver
more innovative and personalised
services.
• Example 1. The Language Shop
• Already commercially successful, selling its services to public
sector bodies across East London.
• A new company - The Language Shop Ltd will be created in
2013. Staggered transition to the new model
• This will allow growth at full potential so both staff and council
can fully benefit from success of service.
• Example 2. Workplace PbR
• Part of local employment service.
• Staff volunteer for bonuses for high performance, but a salary
sacrifice of 10% if targets are not met.
• Advisors achieved 61% above target – 633 extra jobs – in
2012/13.
• The pilot saved the Council the Council approximately £1.3m –
the cost of commissioning the additional capacity needed to
achieve those outcomes
Creating new delivery models to deliver
more innovative and personalised
services.
• Example 3. activeNewham
• Leisure and Culture Trust established as the most effective
way to manage leisure centres, volunteering service, sports
development service and activities in parks.
• Will allow activeNewham to grow and reduce reliance on
Council management fee, generating savings.
• No drop in quality, and sales and income targets met.
• Steep learning curve for activeNewham staff, and the Council
in dealing with a new partner.
New delivery models
• What models work best to unleash frontline professionals’
creativity?
• How do we ensure we commission services working under
new models for the right outcomes?
• How do we minimise risk from new delivery models?
For more information
• Please contact Dr Graeme Betts, Executive Director of
Strategic Commissioning and Community,
graeme.betts@newham.gov.uk