Allowing local government organisations to learn from each other is more effective than top-down government initiatives in improving services, the Institute for Government (IfG) has said.

IfG researchers spoke to those working in central government, local government and representative and professional bodies, and found them consistently complaining that guidance on improving and integrating public services focused on best practice, not learning from mistakes.

In a new briefing paper, it said the only way to avoid this was to encourage more face-to-face conversations between people on the same level but from different professional backgrounds.

Dr Jo Casebourne, programme director at the IfG, said: “Better collaboration between local organisations is crucial to improving public services. But those on the ground still don’t have the support they need. Particularly with money and resources so stretched, the government must invest properly and only fund programmes that we know actually work.”

A recent joint report from the LGA, NHS Confederation, Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) and NHS Clinical Commissioners said that integrated public services should be ‘business as usual’ by 2020, but warned that this may be harder to achieve because of funding problems.

The IfG said that government departments and national bodies should focus their limited funds on programmes that encouraged real-time learning from mistakes.

It also said that the growth of English devolution “provides an opportunity to reset the relationship between Whitehall and local government,” where Whitehall listens more to the lessons learned from local public sector reforms and grants powers as appropriate.

It also recommended that leaders of local public sector and professional bodies should do more to encourage staff to share concerns, including the greater use of cross-sector events to facilitate learning. For example, the challenges of health and employment integration could be addressed by bringing together nurses, social workers, GPs, employment providers and Jobcentre Plus staff.

When the library and post office in Blakelaw, Newcastle, were threatened with closure, the community took matters into its own hands…it all began when residents and councillors came together to form the Blakelaw ward community partnership, a charity to build and support strong and sustainable public services, social enterprise, new jobs and resilient communities. Assisted by a £10,000 grant from the Design Council, the partnership came up with a plan to fix some of the estates’s issues, and we persuaded the council to spend £2m to implement it.

But Rredesigning the housing estate was just the beginning of their revolution: We have projects to support young residents, including a code club to teach computer programming to the next generation. We have activities for older residents, a local creche, environmental services to support the council, apprenticeships and community allotments. We also have gardening schemes, a community cafe and a project led by local charity, Hearts with Goals, to install defibrillators into every public building in the ward. And with the post office under threat of closure the residents have stepped in once again. By January 2016 the post office will be relocated to the community centre and library. They also want to overturn the post office model, where profits flow into the pockets of the owner. So, over the past two years, they have also developed a plan to bring our post office into public ownership. The Blakelaw partnership charity, of which every resident of the ward is a member, will run the post office and plough the profits into public services for the community.

To me the really interesting bit is the ploughing of the profits back into other areas of market failure which is most inspirational and which underpins my village companies ideas for rural adult domiciliary care.