Best service delivery model

Cornwall Council with Carefree

Leaving care services

The council works in partnership with Carefree, a 
local voluntary organisation that co-ordinates the participation and consultation role and provides one third of the personal adviser service. The partnership has resulted in care leavers working as social workers in the leaving care service and participation service. It has also enabled care leavers to be personal advisers. Carefree also has an apprentice personal adviser who is care experienced. This has helped provide a unique insight into the lives of care leavers and considerably helped develop the service.

East Ayrshire Council

Respectful Funeral Service

East Ayrshire Council’s Respectful Funeral Service provides an affordable, professional and dignified bereavement service and allows the bereaved to have a clear understanding of funeral services and costs. The service delivered savings of £169,000 in its first year of operation. Many UK councils have taken interest and are considering setting up similar models. This could potentially result in a wider transformation of services, providing a business model that supports the bereaved when they are at their most vulnerable.

Cheltenham BC, Cotswold DC, Forest of Dean DC and West Oxfordshire DC 


Publica

Publica is rewriting the rules of public sector delivery and creating a culture where pushing boundaries and challenging the norm is welcome. The joint venture company’s purpose is to deliver great services locally, with key aims to facilitate savings by delivering efficient services, to become a resilient organisation fuelled by sharing expertise and to support service improvements. The company has already achieved significant savings and aims to achieve £41m of savings over the next 10 years.

Kent CC with Connect2Kent

Commercial Services Group

Kent CC’s Connect2Kent is a master vendor recruitment managed service, providing all categories of temporary, interim and contract positions. Connect2Kent’s team consists of sector and role-specific specialists, which ensures the council has a high percentage of direct supply across all skill requirements. While it takes great pride in the fact its services positively affect local communities through the quality staff it provides, Connect2Kent’s greatest pride comes from the annual dividend it returns to its shareholder for future investment in services in Kent.

Leeds City Council

Suicide bereavement service

Suicides are preventable and a key public health priority. This service reduces them. It provides compassionate, effective peer-led interventions for those bereaved by suicide and a range of one-to-one, group and family peer support alongside counselling. The service, launched in September 2015 and initially funded for a three-year pilot, is accessible for anyone affected by suicide in a flexible and compassionate pathway suiting the needs of individuals. The evaluation demonstrated effectiveness and a reduction in suicidal ideation of those bereaved. The service was recommissioned to include flexible pathway and family therapy approach.

Liverpool City Council

Ways to Work

Historical levels of parents engaging in programmes linked to training and employment in Liverpool were extremely low. Feedback showed many needed support in building self-confidence and addressing issues that impeded on them moving forward. This resulted in the city’s children’s centres introducing an innovative new way of working in which centre staff took on a more prominent role. It included staff delivering accredited learning, supporting a significant increase in parents achieving their first qualifications and centres participating in the European Social Fund’s Ways to Work programme – making them the only centres in the UK directly involved in a major EU-funded employment initiative.

Sefton MBC

Living Well Sefton

The Living Well Sefton service has evolved in the past two years. Providers are expected to work together to ensure their own specific, professional expertise and experience working with communities will be shared for the benefits of services users and to strengthen the service. Many interventions had focused on single issues, such as smoking, weight management, food and health, and assumed people’s needs fit specifically in one box. The Living Well Sefton approach has moved beyond looking at single-issue healthy lifestyle services that focus on illness, and instead aims to take an integrated whole-person and community approach to improving health.

Solihull MBC

Taking back control of leisure facilities

In 2006, Solihull MBC chose a public-private partnership to replace one sports centre and refurbish another. The risks on financing, design, build, operation and maintenance transferred to the partnership, with the council paying an annual unitary charge. Since then, the introduction of new financial flexibilities has given the council an opportunity to reconsider its options. The result is that Solihull MBC has terminated its public-private partnership contract, taken back future maintenance, and retendered and awarded a new enhanced leisure contract. The council turned a £1.8m annual cost into a £500,000 annual income stream to reinvest in enhancing its leisure services.

South Lakeland DC and Right2Work

Bulky waste collection service

South Lakeland DC procured the contract for its bulky waste collection service in April 2018. The service delivers high levels of customer service, is cost neutral to the council and provides training opportunities. Service provider Right2Work provides collections at a time agreed with the customer. Collected items are resold, reused, refurbished and recycled wherever possible. About 70% of the materials collected are diverted from landfill. The contract delivers with excellent customer service, high recycling rates and training and skills for people in need of help.

JUDGES

Amanda Deeks, chief executive, South Gloucestershire Council

Steven Halls, chief executive, Three Rivers DC

Dennis Skinner, head of improvement, Local Government Association

Wendy Thomson, former managing director, Norfolk CC

Will Tuckley, chief executive, Tower Hamlets LBC