rural service delivery

Our work with the University of Gloucestershire on Alternative Service Delivery Models is now in full swing. Jessica and I are looking at a “Faith in Affordable Housing” Project with examples in Kewsick and Gloucester, a very extensive “Pub is the Hub” facility in Ennerdale and the asset transfer of Jubilee Park in Woodhall Spa. Other members of the team are working on 9 additional case studies. Mutuals are a fascinating area of interest. I suspect one of the challenges they raise in rural areas is additional cost linked to the hoary old chestnut of higher unit costs of delivery. I wonder if this makes the economic case for them more challenging and therefore might act as a deterrent to staff opting to mutualise services. Alternatively as we often see in the context of rural affordable housing, it might lead them to go mainly for the “low hanging” fruit of working in urban fringe places, neglecting deep rural needs. I run slightly before my horse to market however, before considering these issues in detail you might like to read below about some of the drivers behind the mutual phenomenon, in this case in the context of youth services. This article starts with the tell tale explanation that the money is running out. It goes on to say…Faced with this situation, many local authorities have concluded that the least worst option is to reduce spending on youth services and look for ways of getting more value for money. Where this strategy is being worked out in dialogue with youth workers, the idea of a spin-out from the council, with lower overheads and the ability to trade, is proving attractive. The idea is sound, but the devil is in the detail. Trading to raise additional income sounds simple, but identifying where the income will come from and establishing that it can be raised profitably and without compromising the core service can be difficult. In many cases, it will be hard to avoid a conversation with staff about them bearing some of the pain of the reduced budget, very uncomfortably in redundancies or pay reductions, or less uncomfortably in changes to working methods to produce higher productivity. The business plan is key, and writing it will mean facing difficult questions. All of this explains why mutual structures are being talked about as part of the future for youth services. The realisation that the services are unlikely to survive within the council in their present form provides a backdrop and youth workers would rather face change in an organisation in which they have a stake than in one in which they are just Tupe transfers.