Recent Public Services seminars

Recent events on public services and related governance and funding issues, hosted by NCVO's Public Service Delivery Network. Includes presentations given at external events by the team.

2011 seminars

Future Forum consultation. July 2011
Localism: what is the future for Local Authorities. March 2011
Budget Cuts: managing change. February 2011

2010 seminars

Strengthening Contracting Relations. September 2010
Can local strategic commissioning and Total Place survive the time ahead? May 2010

View our presentations at external events

Return to our current events list or our Public Services homepage.

Past Seminars: 2011

NCVO, ACEVO and NAVCA joint consultation event on the NHS Future Forum

In May 2011, NCVO, ACEVO and NAVCA hosted a joint event at the King's Fund to consult with the voluntary and community sector on the NHS Future Forum. Chaired by Sir Stephen Bubb, lead for the Competition and Choice panel of the NHS Future Forum, this event led directly into the Forum's final recommendations.

Read our summary of the event. We were rightly criticised for holding this event in London. We can only apologise - we had a week's notice to organise it.

Localism: what is the future for Local Authorities?

Tuesday 15 March 2011, Central London
Chaired by Sir Richard Leese, (Leader, Manchester City Council)
Panel: Sarah Phillips, (Centre for Public Service Partnerships) and David Boyle, (New Economics Foundation)

Budget Cuts: Managing Change

Tuesday 22 February 2011, NCVO, London
Chaired by Jeremy Swain, (Thames Reach) we discussed the current environment of cuts and redundancies.
Panel: Nick Wilson Young, (Foresight), Natalia Fernandez (BizFizz), Chris Frost (Merton CSV) and Rahat Ahmed-Man (Merton Council)

Notes and discussion on Strategic Foresight: taking the fear out of change by Nick Wilson Young (NCVO Foresight). His powerpoint presentation is here.

Notes and discussion on Managing Change by Jeremy Swain (Thames Reach) and his full presentation.

Notes and discussion on Why is the path to real partnership so terrifying and precarious? by Rahat Ahmed-Man (Merton Council) and Chris Frost (Merton Voluntary Services Council). Their powerpoint presentation is here.

The presentation made on Local Enterprise by Natalia Fernandez of BizFizz (new economics foundation).

'Zero in on Impact' (285KB PDF)

Transition: accessing the Fund

Giving their own examples, the audience spoke of laying off 35% of staff at 5/6 days notice as a trustee of a social work organisation. This was caused by the unexpected loss of contracts with London boroughs and the simultaneous failure to secure Transition Fund money. Despite having looked at the Transition Fund, the organisation had chosen not to bid, afraid of taking on responsibility for repayments to the Fund when they didn’t know how much longer they could remain solvent.

The stipulation to prove loss of income in advance had halted other from applying to the Transition Fund. The one organisation successful in their application suspected they had done so because the process and criteria had excluded so many others. For this organisation, the Fund had enabled them – to a point – to retain current staffing, and given a needed breather for some strategic thinking.

Transition: impact at the grassroots

To Jeremy’s question, ‘is anyone growing?’, Will Longden at Joy of Sound said, ‘yes’. As a small organisation, growth is an easier proportion. Their focus is heavily on the involvement of users, and the resource within co-production; their income is generated by expanding the package of training they deliver. But at the same time they are witnessing an erosion in grassroots volunteering.

Transition: impact in the private sector

In contrast to the grassroots organisations, SERCO have 72,000 employees worldwide. SERCO reported a ‘sea change from the top of the organisation’ as things move ahead. Staff are being asked to focus on how they work within the new commissioning markets: with local authorities; with the voluntary and community sector; and with the public sector outsourced ‘spin-outs’.

When asked how she felt attending events for largely voluntary sector audiences, the SERCO representative said her attendance was proof of the importance managers placed on joint working. Avoiding the cynicism of Big Society, working together is an important commitment.

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Past Seminars 2010

Strengthening Contracting Relations

27 September 2010, NCVO, London
Chaired by Mark Goldring (Mencap)
Panel: Tom Elkins (Compact Voice), Tom Davis (Action for Children) and Andy Pallas (TACT).

Chairing the seminar, Mark told us that Mencap, like so many providers, are taking on contracts that demand ever higher quality of services. This is a real challenge in the future context: less money, less staff, lower costs. Six months ago, the fear was that private consultancies would be employed to negotiate down prices with providers. Now that’s not even happening – there simply isn’t money to employ such intermediary negotiators. The cuts will be bluntly brought in.

Yet opportunities remain in this environment:

‘Any willing provider’ can take their place in the market.
‘Outcomes-based’ contracts provide a new flexibility and responsibility to improve services through the duration of a contract; they are inherently less intrusive new relationships will arise, across the public, voluntary and private sectors.
Big contracts are available, for example the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) Work Programme.
Outsourcing of local authority and other public sector services.
Big Society – we need to make the opportunity within this work.
Ticking along just managing Full Cost Recovery won’t cut it anymore – organisations must take this time to put their houses in order for a sustainable future.
There is still a huge amount of public services to be delivered, even when budgets are cut.

As across the voluntary sector, staff opinion in Mencap is split about these opportunities. Can they reall outweigh the threats brought by the funding cuts? A questions we can keep asking but the facts need to be addressed: whatever we're delivering, we need to deliver in now at a lower cost. That isn't a matter of changing our pricing. It's a matter of us changing to secure our longer term sustainability. We need to be looking at partnership, working with commissiones, and embracing the stimulus of reform.

Compact in Cross-Sector Relations

Tom Elkins, Manager, Compact Voice
The national Compact is being renewed - and to this end all sectors are invited to comment on the new draft by 29th October 2010. Tom reminded delegates that the Compact isn't only to manage conflict, but provides the very guidelines of best practice which mitigate the chance of conflict arising. Time is short to feed in to the new draft - the Government want the renewed Compact in place as the post Spending Review budget cuts begin to bite.

Read and respond to the proposed national Compact draft at the Compact Voice website.

Relationship Management at Action for Children

Tom Davis, Marketing Director, Action for Children

Tom, who has come to the voluntary sector from a career in private sector customer management. With this, Tom has brought a strategic perspective on customer management, exemplified by the measured customer 'portfolio' approach he uses, to developing and managing relationships with public sector and other funders.

Action for Children currently have contracts with around 200 local authoroties, and approximately 85% of their contracts are coming to an end - or for renewal - in March 2011. In normal years, that figure is around 50-60%. How the relationships represented in these contracts are managed and prioritised was the subject of Tom's presentation.

Read Tom's presentation.

Relational Contracting: principles of engagement

Andy Pallas, Partnerships and Contracts Manager, TACT

Andy leads on the strategy for TACT's contract and partnership development. It's clear from TACT's perspective that you can't have one without the other. As such, they have built an enviable reputation as a proficient and positive partners - and through that their contracts have grown considerably in the last few years.

Andy spoke in depth about the positive 'relational contracting' approach that TACT have adopted, focusing on trust, reputation and good-will as the key for mission driven organisations to improve their working relationships with external bodies, and the subsequent improvement in outcomes for the cared-for children TACT exist to support. Read Andy's presentation here.

Andy has helped author a case study about the outcomes and process of this approach - to enable others to implement this value-driven and effective approach to developing relationships with all partners - funders and commissioners included. This case study will shortly be published by the NCVO Public Service Delivery Network.

Read Andy's presentation.

Panel Questions and Answers

After the rich presentations, delegates were invited to discuss amongst themselves, and then with the panel, the key challenges in implementing these strategic approaches to managing relationships. Read the questions and answers. (PDF)

Can local strategic commissioning and Total Place survive the time ahead?

13th July 2010, NCVO, London

Chaired by Richard Gutch (NCVO Funding Commission and ex-CEO Futurebuilders) the Public Service Delivery Network's first post-election seminar examined the role and shape of commissioning to come.

With the challenges ahead of extreme budget cuts and radical policy change, how can effective startegic commissioning be strengthed to realise resources, and deliver fair and effective change?

Seminar delegates

Financial Forecast

Richard Gutch, former CEO of Futurebuilders and Secretary of the NCVO Funding Commission, provided a horizon-scan of the challenges facing public service delivery and the financial context.

Richard's horizon scan and financial forecast is available to download here.

Total Place, regionalism and the conflicts of localism

Robert Beard, Improving Local Partnerships Advisor, NAVCA, led discussion on the policy drivers and challenges of restructuring commisisoning through abolition of regional structures, and fragmentation of the state through Localism, service delivery spin-offs and questions around structural accountability.

Robert's presentation is available here. Discussion and questions raised on fragmentation and accountability are available here.

Re-imagining resources: Holy Cross Centre Trust

Sam Hopley, CEO, Holy Cross Centre Trust (HCCT), explained the shift from an organisation running off a sense of deficit, to one that captured and stimulated a new imagination of resources in Kings Cross.

Sam's insights into HCCT's journey are available here. This includes links to further reading.

Commissioning for Outcomes: making it happen in Camden

Miia Chambers, Social Investment and Strategy Manager, London Borough of Camden, discussed the development and piloting of outcomes-based commissioning models in Camden.

Miia's experience can be read in this Strengthening Contracting Relations Q&A (PDF) - this includes links to further reading.

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Presentations at external events

*NB - a lot of the core content, especially introductory materials from the NCVO Almanac, is repeated in these presentations.

This is a selection of our recent presentations. If you'd like to use any of our material, or like to request us to speak at an event. Please contact the appropriate member of the Public Services team.