£410 million for council services that put people first

3 Apr 2014 12:30 PM

Eric Pickles announces £410 million in funding to help councils transform the way they run local services to put the user first.

Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles yesterday (2 April 2014) announced £410 million in funding to help councils transform the way they run local services to put the user first.

Following on from the Budget last month, the government has unveiled a major package of incentives that will reward authorities that cut duplication and build services around the needs of local people, including £90 million which will be distributed immediately.

Building on this momentum, a further £320 million is to be made available in 2014 to 2015 and 2015 to 2016 to areas with ambitious plans for improving services that could include integrating health and social care; getting the unemployed back to work; or early intervention to get children ready for school. At the heart of all these plans will be a renewed drive to redesign public services in a way that works for users, as well as efforts to reduce long-term costs to the taxpayer by making public bodies both more efficient and more effective.

The Budget also announced that the government’s successful Troubled Families programme will be accelerated, with up to 40,000 additional families to be worked with a year earlier than planned: getting children back in school; cutting youth crime and antisocial behaviour; and putting parents on a path back to work, as well as dealing with problems in the home such as domestic violence.

New figures yesterday showed that over 100,000 families have now been identified as meeting the criteria for the programme, with councils actively working with more than 78,000 of them. Local authorities will be asked to submit expressions of interests to work with additional families in 2014 to 2015 if they are performing well in the current programme and have an ambitious and achievable plan for further service reform.

Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said:

This £410 million funding package will help to fundamentally change the way local public services are delivered to residents. The Troubled Families programme has led the way in showing how services can be improved by building them around what people want and need, not how agencies want to organise themselves.

We now want to take the same approach to all services, starting with joined up health and social care through our £3.8 billion Better Care Fund, which will help keep people out of hospital and provide high-quality care at home. This funding will help councils to transform their services faster and provide a better deal for the taxpayer too.

Local Government Minister Brandon Lewis added that:

Ambitious authorities such as those working with the Public Service Transformation Network have shown how local partnerships and a complete redesign of services around individuals, not organisations, can mean better outcomes for people.

Residents’ satisfaction with local government is either constant or improved compared to 2010, and that trend will continue if others learn from the best and deliver better services and a better deal for local people.

Some of the authorities whose transformation plans will receive immediate support include:

The bidding process for the £320 million Transformation Challenge Award has also opened yesterday (2 April 2014).

The £410 million funding is made up of:

The prospectus and bidding deadlines for the Transformation Challenge Award 2014 to 2016 will be published shortly.

Transformation Challenge Award 2013 to 2014: additional successful bidders

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