Councillor Rodger Phillips, Member, Hertfordshire Council & Resources Portfolio Member, LGA
(Time: 00:15 – 00:57)
Well we all recognise in local government whether an elected member or an officer, these are very challenging times that we're living in and of course developing commercialism within our local authorities is important. But obviously that's a change in culture, something that we've got to do with the challenges that are ahead. I think it's about doing things in a different way and it's about ensuring that we're making savings but that we're actually earning income as well and also that above all we sustain services and sustain local communities. In this podcast you're going to hear examples of good practice And from authorities who've already started down this journey, as well as some of the challenges they had and some of the successes and perhaps some of the things they'd do differently.
Tom Whiting, Director of Resources, London Borough of Harrow
(Time: 00:58 – 01:06)
Commercialism in Harrow is about bringing in new sources of income, so that local services and local people and councillors value, can be put onto a sustainable basis into the future.
Sandra Tai, School Improvement Liverpool
(Time: 01:07 – 01:19
I see commercialisation as an opportunity for the local authority to be more creative in the way that it delivers services. To be more flexible, to achieve efficiencies and to be able to compete better with the private sector.
Craig Cusack, Head of Commercial, Warwickshire County Council
(Time: 01:20 – 01:29)
Commercialism means to me taking more control of local government's future for ourselves. We all know the challenges we have, it's how we deal with them and make sure that we're in the right place, as it happens.
Peter Haigh, Managing Director, Bristol Energy
(Time: 01:30 – 01:46)
We're a wholly owned subsidiary of Bristol Council we're there to provide energy retailing, be a force for social good. So for us it's an embodiment of the Council's strategy, it's the delivery of an energy policy and most of all, it's about doling the right thing in energy retailing.
Craig Cusack, Head of Commercial, Warwickshire County Council
(Time: 01:47 –02:37)
The way we're going about energy retailing in Warwickshire County Council by firstly recognising that it's not an easy fix. I'll give you three examples if I can, firstly we're looking at service design, thinking through how we deliver more value to residents and customers. Secondly we're thinking through our whole people support and our cultural programme, giving people the tools and support they need to operate more commercially. And thirdly, we're looking at finances more commercially, instead of just looking at net and bottom line, as a lot of local government does, we're looking at gross expenditures and thinking how and where we put resources differently. And just to share one example of results, we have a quite large trading programme within the County Council, about £30 million of income we bring in. We've seen a big turnaround in those fortunes by concentrating on those three things.
Peter Haigh, Managing Director, Bristol Energy
(Time: 02:38 – 02:54)
The goal is to provide a sustainable return to our shareholder and at the same time offering fair and equitable energy prices. We are in the very early stages, we are fewer than 40 colleagues all in one room in Bristol and we've just set up business this week.
Sandra Tai, School Improvement Liverpool
(Time: 02:55 – 03:17)
In Liverpool we've already set up a private sector company. It's a traded service between school improvement officers and our local authority's schools and academies. We're also trading outside of the City Council as well. And in the first six months of trading, we've been able to generate and income of half a million pounds which we're using to reinvest into our services to further develop them.
Tom Whiting, Director of Resources, London Borough of Harrow
(Time: 03:18 – 03.48)
In Harrow we're looking at a whole set of new shared service arrangements with a range of neighbouring councils. We're looking at new businesses we can launch and new trading companies. We're looking at services we currently provide where we may have lost customers, where we can win back new customers, we need to make them more competitive, we're looking at how we invest our money and we're looking at the commercial opportunities that can come from regeneration of property development. And as a result of those opportunities, we are publicly committing to achieving about £5 million worth of new income to support local services into the future.
Peter Haigh, Managing Director, Bristol Energy
(Time: 03:49 – 04:05)
The key challenge is to deliver on the promise of our shareholder, Bristol City Council and deliver fair and equitable energy for all. It's about developing the business and growing from programme to business. It's about making Bristol energy fulfil it's potential for both customers and colleagues.
Tom Whiting, Director of Resources, London Borough of Harrow
(Time: 04:06 – 04:27)
Key challenges – setting up trading companies can be done, but it's tricky and can be a lot of work. Secondly I think capacity, we've got an awful lot going on at the moment. And thirdly, controversially, yes we need a few people with more commercial skills, but a local authority is a place with a lot of innovation, a lot of commitment, a lot of ideas and a huge amount of energy.
Sandra Tai, School Improvement, Liverpool
(Time: 04:28 – 04:57)
There are lots of challenges and we've had to work to overcome those. The first one I would say is that local authorities tend to be risk adverse, so we had to offer many reassurances, to an awful lot of stakeholders, in what we were doing to develop in a private sector environment. Secondly I'd say that in an ideal world we would have had extra resources to be able to invest into the new development, but at the moment we're under financial restrictions, so we had to develop our new company within existing resources.
Craig Cusack, Head of Commercial, Warwickshire County Council
(Time: 04:58 – 05:43)
I think we face three fundamental challenges in local government and I'll just briefly summarise them. The first one is culture. It's quite easy to look at tangible things like structure and change them, but intangible things, the informal things like the way people think and the way they act is the hardest challenge. The second thing for me is turbulence. The whole of the public sector is trying to change at the same time, be it blue light, be it NHS as well as local government, we can't control that, but we have to try and compete in the same place for change and for attention. And the third thing for me is clarity. I've found that whenever we look at hard challenges people tend to jump straight away into the weeds of detail. I think it's important that you focus on two things before that, your objective and your strategy to get there, way before you get lost in the weeds.
Bridgette Cameron, Chief Executive, Alpine Resourcing
(Time: 05:44 – 06:29)
My tips for councils who are looking to become more commercial are as follows. Number one, there needs to be a really clear understanding of what commercial means, within the sector and within each organisation. Number two is that you need to engage your workforce. Your workforce needs to understand what journey they're on and why they're on it. The third one is to be clear what it is you want from any new staff that you're bringing in, there might be a need for you to bring in risk takers, more entrepreneurial thinkers, are you ready to bring those people in? Number four is are you clear what that journey feels like for your existing staff, this is a big change for them. And the fifth one is to seize the opportunity.
head, do you think that there are some new challenges that all peer challenges should look at in the future?
Sarah Messenger, Head of Workforce, LGA
(Time: 06:30 – 03:28)
Most councils are really, really grappling with the challenge of developing commercial behaviours and commercial realities for themselves. But for a number of them they are at quite an early stage, so what they're looking for is the opportunity to learn from others and are also looking for support from the LGA in developing innovative practice in terms of commercial opportunities. At the same time there are a number of councils as well who are already implementing some really innovative and creative stuff in the commercial space and we're very, very keep to capture that and share it across the sector, so that colleagues can learn from each other and that we can really expand the whole suite of innovation that's going on around commercial activity within local government. So I'd encourage people to share their good practice with us via the email address on your screen, but also interact with our website, there's some fantastic stuff on there that will expose people to some good practice that's already going on and some of the experiences that people have had.