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The Commons local government and communities committee has an interesting report on localism out today.

After a quick skim through it, the most interesting point to me seemed to be the luke warm reaction to the way in which the Department for Community and Local Government replaced Total Place with 'community budgets'.

The MPs said the new scheme "is welcome but so far limited; there is no guarantee or even indication at this stage that all government departments will be willing to devolve budgetary control to the extent needed to make it a success".

They also contrasted unfavourably the 16 community budget pilots (which focus on families with complex needs) with the "wide range of policy areas addressed by the Total Place pilots".

The report noted there is "some dissatisfaction" with the government's approach and added:

"So far, the signs about whether the government is prepared to tackle the obstacles to meaningful place-based budgeting are mixed."

While the community budgets are to be focused on high-need families with significant benefit costs, there is said to be no evidence of the Department for Work and Pensions making a financial contribution.

And other key departments seem disinterested in the DCLG's scheme.

"We asked the Minister for Policing, Nick Herbert and the Minister for Employment, Chris Grayling, what contribution their departments were intending to make to the community budgets programme. Neither volunteered any information on this point, although Mr Herbert commented that Home Office involvement 'is quite possible'."

The MPs hoped this lack of interest "does not presage a damp squib".

Other government reforms such as GP commissioning, elected police commissioners and free schools "may fragment accountability, and make it more difficult to corral public resources in any one area into a Total Place-type vision".

And the committee said:

"We support the Government's community budgets programme. Although it seems to us an overly cautious, slow start to a programme which ought eventually to be revolutionary, we do not doubt the Government's intention to expand and build on it rapidly. It is inescapable, however, that the model's success will depend on the willingness of each government department to relinquish some control over its own budgets. We are mindful of criticism of a previous initiative, Local Area Agreements, that the promise of 'freedoms and flexibilities' to local authorities to enable them to join up services was realised in only a limited way."

It is pretty hard not to conclude that the MPs think the government is now re-learning the lessons of the Total Place pilots, except with less ambition.

And paradoxically, by focusing solely on families with complex needs rather than the broad range of subjects covered by Total Place, the whole set of community budget pilots could be undermined if the DWP and Home Office remain unenthusiastic.

In two previous posts about the Total Place pilots, I listed 40 common problems in public services and considered whether the British state could be described as unfit for purpose.

In the latter post I argued that the Total Place experiments are important for pointing the way forward, but are missing an important element.

The same government department involved in Total Place, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), is also involved in a separate set of pilots using participatory budgeting (which I've previously written about), in which the public is given a decisive say over how funds are spent in their community.

But for some reason the DCLG has failed to join up the two projects or realise how one could impact on the other.

The interim evaluation report on participatory budgeting in England found that the schemes "improve relationships within communities and between communities and service providers".

This lack of understanding between service providers and citizens is one of the key weaknesses identified by the Total Place experiments.

In addition, participatory budgeting was found to draw on "local knowledge and opinions to ensure resources are spent on what matters to local people" - again one of the core aims of Total Place.

As the evaluation report found:

"Where public sector agencies wish to engage more often, more meaningfully and effectively with the public than traditional approaches allow, participatory budgeting offers a workable option."

Yet despite this conclusion, the Total Place evaluation reports had surprisingly little to say about involving the public, and nothing at all to say about giving the public a say over their services.

Missing out the public

Despite being one of the most radical experimenters with Total Place, Birmingham's evaluation report was typical of most others in its approach to public engagement.

It spoke of drawing on the knowledge of local councillors to understand the needs of communities, and said that the "swathe of ideas will be tested with local residents".

And the report on Total Place in Worcestershire focused on the needs of "leaders, politicians and non-executive directors, managers and professional staff across the public sector".

What this illustrates is the extent to which the Total Place projects remain the inward-looking preserve of professionals, who are keen to maintain control of the change process.

While it might be an improvement that the public will be consulted on their proposals, it is nowhere near as radical a step as it should be.

Perhaps the most stunning comment of all was included in the Manchester City Region report.

"In our training sessions we met some nervousness when we suggested delegates went out and talked to people to try and hear how they experienced parenthood, followed by amazement at how happy people were to talk: 'I was completely gobsmacked that people on the street really wanted to speak to me and I was so surprised about the level of detail they wanted share. I can really see how using this method can help me to think differently about our service.'"

It speaks volumes about existing approaches to engagement that talking to parents is seen as a novel way of gaining an understanding about the needs of parents.

Learning the lesson

The Croydon evaluation report comes close to accepting the need for radical change.

It notes that the top-down linear model of delivering public services is "coming to the end of its useful life".

"Attempts to reform services down single departmental, professional or issue-based lines have often given rise to unintended consequences; thinking narrowly about policy solutions can mitigate one need, but exacerbate others. We need to take a systems thinking approach.

"Transformative innovation tends to happen when new voices enter the design or policy-making process. We do not have all the answers. Government will need to become more porous: we are convinced that there is power in letting people into the previously closed systems of policy making. The people who can often offer the most – and often have been least welcomed – are the users of public services themselves, and indeed those who choose not to use them...

"We were particularly struck by the tenacity and capacity very ordinary families demonstrated in trying to secure what they needed for their children; and the articulate way in which they described the effort they put in to overcome 'the system'. It made us realise that we often inadvertently treat citizens as passive recipients of services, rather than active and energetic participants in improving outcomes. We realised that - together - we are 'the system' which sometimes can feel such a hindrance rather than a help. Citizens and their wider families should be seen as significant contributors to securing better outcomes."

And the Bradford report also accepts that:

"By engaging and empowering our communities and our citizens and by adopting the culture of people and place rather than organisation and/or department at a central and local level we can significantly change the way public services are accessed and delivered."

Yet none seem to have made the step between engagement and control.

There is much talk of redesigning services around people, mapping user journeys and developing case studies of customer experiences. But nowhere in the process do the public actually seem to be in control of any of the decisions being made about the changes to the services they are paying for and receiving.

The Lewisham report makes a nod in that direction by suggesting one of its options is for more "user directed change" in which citizens purchase their services.

But this is to miss the opportunities for engaging residents not as consumers but as citizens capable of making active choices about the public services they wish to receive and how their taxes should be allocated.

Missed opportunities

So Total Place, while focusing on better services, isn't giving the public any extra control over what they should be.

Will engagement and outcomes be any better if the people who design the new services are the people who designed the old services?

I mentioned at the start that it seems a major omission that the DCLG hasn't joined up the dots between its Total Place and Participatory Budgeting trials.

It is also odd that chief secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne also missed the opportunity, given that the Treasury is the co-sponsor of Total Place, while Byrne has taken a close interest in public control over public services.

It is not just Labour that is missing the opportunities, however.

Total Place has cross-party support yet the Conservatives have also failed to make much of the link to participatory budgeting, despite the natural fit with David Cameron's vision of a 'big society'.

Knowing where to cut

There is another pressing reason for greater public engagement.

In an era of significant spending cuts, it is clear that the required savings will have to come not just from greater efficiency but from dropping some programmes.

And if services are to be reduced, allowing the public to make decisions about priorities is one way to reduce the fall-out and secure collective acceptance of the results.

This also highlights one of the other weaknesses in Total Place - that it appears not to be systematically addressing which services should be dropped and what new ones should be implemented. Its main focus is on making existing services better, but if they are not the right services in the first place then is this an optimal approach?

Once in a lifetime

The Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire evaluation report says there is now a "once in a lifetime opportunity to transform public service delivery and the relationship with citizens".

If that is the case, the relationship needs to be recast with a far greater role for the public.

The report on participatory budgeting found that among its benefits are greater community pride and sense of ownership, community cohesion, increased awareness of how local services work, a better understanding of how public money is spent and clearer lines of accountability.

If Total Place leads to an overhaul of public service delivery, it would be a huge missed opportunity if the public is once again excluded.

In a previous post, I listed 40 of the failures in public services that the Total Place evaluation reports had highlighted.

These reports provide simultaneously an inspiring and depressing analysis of the structure and effectiveness of the British state.

They are inspiring in what they say about the dedication of those involved, their recognition of the need for change and their enthusiasm for bringing it about.

And the revolutionary potential of the scheme is clear from every evaluation.

At the very least, it has injected energy into changes that were beginning to take place, while in other cases it is providing the basis for a rethink of entire services.

Yet despite this, the 13 pilot schemes are depressing because of the major failings they reveal in the way the state currently functions.

Childcare, support for the unemployed, housing, education, health, the justice system, care for the elderly - across every area in which the pilot schemes were undertaken there were structural impediments to effective service delivery.

Perhaps it should not be surprising, but the underlying message of the reports is just how much the present structure of the public sector seems designed to deliver the opposite of good government.

Unfit for purpose?

Given so many fundamental problems, it is hard not to wonder if the entire British state is, in John Reid's phrase about parts of the Home Office, unfit for purpose.

It is important to remember that while there are many problems, they don't all occur in the same place at the same time and in the same way.

But it is equally clear that the public sector is not applying best practice in a systematic way.

In fact, the position is worse than that because there are legal and regulatory factors, amongst others, which actually prevent best practices from being applied.

When Reid made his now famous comment about the failings of the Home Office's Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), back in 2006, he described the problem like this:

"Our system is not fit for purpose. It is inadequate in terms of its scope, it is inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management systems and processes."

Throughout its troubles, IND did continue to function, but like other services it did so sub-optimally, without the efficiency or consistency that it should have done.

While Reid was talking about failings within a single organisation, Total Place makes it clear that much the same can be said of the range of public services.

Overhaul

The system, it appears, is in need of a major overhaul.

It is to the credit of all those involved that Total Place is focusing attention on the problems and forcing more thought about how to fix them.

Many of the evaluations cite the economic downturn as a driver, albeit recognising that efficiency gains shouldn't be the only focus of reform.

But why has it prompted a lack of cash to force this rethink? It would surely have been better to do it when budgets were growing and reform could be implemented without a background fear of cost cutting and job losses.

It may be a simplification, but it does seem that the system cannot innovate effectively and systematically unless it is put under intense pressure.

That was, in fact, one of the lessons of Michael Barber's time at the Number 10 Delivery Unit.

His book, Instruction to Deliver, revealed the vast amount of prime ministerial effort needed to ensure action on a handful of top priorities.

Without such intense focus, it is not hard to imagine the inertia which would have hindered the much larger number of low and medium priorities.

The central government response to the Total Place reports suggests that Whitehall sees its role as being mostly about removing a few obstacles and 'working with partners'.

It is not clear that Whitehall understands its central role in creating the problems, or exactly how it can be the problem.

The problems that Barber identified in Whitehall, particularly around operational silos, are carried through to frontline services - except that by the time service delivery takes place on the ground, these problems have been multiplied over and over.

So Total Place offers the opportunity to recognise these failings and take a big step forward in how the public sector works.

But despite its potential, there was one big issue that seemed to be missing from the evaluations. I'll discuss what that was in the next post.