Public Service Delivery's blog

Fran Pollard, Executive Director Business and Growth at Catch 22 talks about how delivering Payment by Results has made Catch22 better able to understand and respond to risk in the public service market. Catch22 are a member of the NCVO Payment by Results Working Group.

Supply chains, so Government is telling us, are the future delivery model for public services. Most famously of course this is the structure for the Work Programme (a piece on commissioning on which NCVO and many others have been vocal critics).

The first point to concede with payment by results (PBR), is that despite the rhetoric it doesn’t guarantee any kind of ‘win’ by assuring the taxpayer only pays for results. This is a myth. The logic sounds plausible however there are at least five possible failings:

This month the Cabinet Office published a 'progress update' on their policies intended to enable the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector to deliver public services. Feedback on this report will be welcomed.

I often get questions around how to access funding for consortia. Unfortunately there is no fund marked specifically for this, but there are a number of avenues worth exploring. If you know of any more, please let me know - this is very much a crowd-sourcing exercise.

Thanks to Ian Curtis (Collaboration Benefits CIC) and Dave Packwood (Barnardo's) for advice so far.

Consortia funding: places to look

Local Authorities

Much to my own surprise in the last year I've helped Wheels for Wellbeing (where I'm Chair of Trustees) win roughly £600k in two grant bids. It's made me realise there's some tricks to this that anyone can muster.

Just be patient, methodical, and expect it'll take you several more evenings and weekends than you'd like. Go in whole-heartedly, certain that you can use this money to make a difference.

Here's ten tips:

By Chris Sherwood, Co-founder of Guerilla Policy and Director of Policy and Research, Relate

Why does payment by results bring so many fundamental arguments to the fore? And what should the voluntary sector make of it?

Payment by Results must be the most intrinsically agreeable - yet practically nightmarish – idea in the current welfare reforms. Yes, it makes sense to incentivise and reward interventions based on the impact they have on people’s lives; but no, we don’t have the tools yet to ensure the rewards (again, payments) are both right and fair.

Today we're delighted to publish free sets of step by step guides for consortia development. These come with action plan templates for you to complete to track the progress of you development.

These are available to download as:

Hub and Spoke Consortia

The drawback of talking to organisations a lot is I forget to communicate online. A blog is well overdue.

One of the things most discussed has been consortia. Specifically, organisations want to ask me how they do it (the process, the cost, how to get a suitable advisor). But that stuff is just project management: laborious steps in the name of creating a new structure.