The recent fate of UK leaders in New Zealand highlights the difficulty of parachuting in managers from one country to another.

Every country has different rules for its public services – which is why UK civil servants aren’t always a hit overseas.

“An unexpected journey” is the subtitle of the first Hobbit film, New Zealand’s latest contribution to world cinema. It’s also been the fate of Lesley Longstone, the senior British civil servant who was recruited to head up New Zealand’s Ministry of Education, and who is now returning home just over a year into a five-year contract.

Longstone’s abrupt departure follows that of Janet Grossman, who returned to the UK last year after only nine months as the head of Work and Income New Zealand, a frontline benefits and work support agency.

It is often assumed that public managers can move seamlessly from one country to another, especially if they possess a shared cultural heritage and similar political systems. But these two recent departures rather give the lie to that idea – in particular Longstone’s experience, which was marked by a series of disasters.

An attempt to increase class sizes, in order to redirect money into teacher training, resulted in a humiliating backdown after parents and teachers revolted. A move to merge schools in post-earthquake Christchurch was just as badly handled, with parts of it struck down by the courts. To cap it all off, a new private sector system for paying teachers, called Novopay, has been a near-total failure – so much so that it is known in some quarters as Novopain.

Not all of this is Longstone’s fault, of course. New Zealand’s education minister, Hekia Parata, new to the job, is widely regarded as being out of her depth, and was described by the main teachers’ union as “aloof and autocratic”. It is no surprise that the two women had the “strained” relationship that was cited as the main reason for Longstone’s departure.

In the words of Brenda Pilott, the head of New Zealand’s Public Service Association union, Longstone became “the fall guy for an inept minister”.

But several factors counted against the British import. First, despite having held senior positions in Britain, Longstone apparently had no actual experience of running a department or the all-important matter of managing a direct relationship with a minister. In particular, she may not have appreciated how difficult it would be to work for Parata.

Moreover, she had no personal knowledge of the way the New Zealand public sector works – which is, in some key ways, quite different from its British equivalent. Civil servants at all levels in New Zealand have a much closer relationship with their minister than is the case in most countries. Its chief executives, in particular, are more obviously accountable for their performance, through private sector-style contracts and set objectives.

In Longstone’s case, that accountability translated, rightly or wrongly, into having to front up to the media to defend key decisions, after Parata failed to show – something that UK permanent secretaries, for example, would rarely, if ever, have to do.

The reasons for Grossman’s departure are less clear, and may have been partly personal. But it cannot have helped that her minister, Paula Bennett, suddenly appointed a board of outside “experts” to oversee Work and Income’s operations. Internal power struggles between Work and Income and its parent body, the Ministry of Social Development, are also rumoured to have played a part.

For neither Longstone nor Grossman would any of these internal issues have been clear from afar. These issues might, however, have been picked up by people who knew the terrain better – including those who have made the cross-country transition more cautiously.

After all, many of New Zealand’s public sector leaders are originally from the UK. But the successful ones have usually gone out there for the long term and worked their way up through the hierarchy, rather than being parachuted in.

As Pilott put it, the New Zealand government “needs to think long and hard about making overseas appointments, and consider the unique complexities, demands and pressures of the New Zealand context”. Nonetheless, the trend continues: Kevin Lavery, the chief executive of Britain’s Cornwall county council, has just been appointed to run the city council in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington.

Lavery, whose time at Cornwall has been controversial, may of course prove to be a good appointment, especially if he has done his homework. But if not, recent history suggests that he may end up, in the words of the Hobbit’s original subtitle, going “there and back again”.

First published in The Guardian

A belief that there shouldn’t be profit in public service has led one former council chief executive to pledge a £100,000 redundancy payout back to the public, but it’s also a break with the past, he says.

Jim McKenna is not, he insists, a saint. He is, in his own words, an “ordinary” guy who likes playing cricket, watching Leeds United and having a drink in the pub afterwards. But he is vowing to do something out of the ordinary.

As the former chief executive of Penwith district council, at the far end of Cornwall, McKenna received a £100,000 redundancy payout when the council was abolished last year. He accepted the money – but has now promised to give it back to local town and parish councils, £5,000 a year over the next 20 years, no conditions attached.

His motives are partly philosophical: “We live in a very poor area, we live in difficult times,” he says, “so I’ve thought about it long and hard and it’s what I want to do. I don’t think it’s appropriate for people who live in high levels of public service to profit from that.”

Redundancy also came during a “horrendous” year for McKenna personally, as he struggled with family and financial problems that resulted in the payout itself being swallowed up. His pledge to give back the money afforded him a clean break with the past, but means he now needs to earn enough to honour his promise. He plans a life in which consultancy work several days a week will earn him enough to pay it back and allow him to work one or two days a week for local charities

Though Cornwall may be popularly thought of as a pretty spot for a holiday, a long stretch of sandy beaches and Rick Stein restaurants, it has its share of social problems. Penwith is one of the 40 most deprived areas in the country, according to 2007 figures, while across the county an influx of second-home buyers is pricing many locals out of the housing market.

One of the charities benefitting from McKenna’s help is the Kerrier and the Fal Credit Union, a mutual savings institution that uses local investments to make small loans to the needy. Based in Redruth, it helps keep people out of the hands of the numerous loan sharks that operate in the area.

“There’s a lot of people who can’t get bank accounts,” says Maria Coleman, the credit union’s secretary. “They come to us – and it’s cheaper for them as well. We don’t put on massive charges like the banks do.”

Further down the peninsula, in Penzance, is Penwith Radio, an internet station that started life as a service for lonely elderly people and now broadcasts a wide range of programmes five days a week.

“It’s a great way of tackling loneliness and isolation,” says Chris Goninan, one of the station’s directors. “This will solve a lot of problems – but it doesn’t take massive amounts of money. It needs will and drive to make it happen.”

To add to that will and drive, McKenna brings a contacts book and an intimate knowledge of local public bodies that will be hugely useful as the station aims for an FM broadcasting licence.

All this is part of his plan to give something back to a community he has come to love after arriving here 11 years ago as a born and bred Northerner (hence his regular 1,000 mile roundtrips to watch Leeds play).

No-one has ever minded his background, he says, because he doesn’t put on “airs and graces”.

Everywhere we visit, he is at ease joking around with co-workers and volunteers – who aren’t afraid to return the favour. We stop by a building site near Redruth, where one of McKenna’s ventures is helping develop mid-priced houses – around the £160,000 mark – many of which he hopes will go to local first-time buyers.

As we inspect the almost completed houses, one worker calls out, jokingly, “Can I have my £5,000?”

These quips aside, McKenna admits opinions are divided on his vow to return the redundancy money: “Some people thought it was a fantastic idea. Some people thought I should have my sanity checked.”

He doesn’t believe in “profiting from public service”, even if his former salary – which local newspaper reports put at £95,000 – set him well above the average.

“Everyone in the district has made a contribution to the redundancy [money], so I should give it back [to them],” he says simply. “I don’t need a lot of money to live. As long as I have enough money to look after my family… and I can afford to watch Leeds, I’m happy.”

When it comes to the wider question of public sector pay and conditions, his views are mixed. High salaries are justified “for the right people if they have the ability to transform services.”

But he admits that in an area such as Cornwall, “I fully understand why people would look at someone earning £95,000 and think, how on earth is that justified?”

Council chief executives moving from one job to another, often picking up handsome payments along the way, can be a problem, he admits.

“I can see why people get vexed if someone walks from one job to another within a matter of weeks. I wouldn’t necessarily regard that as the best use of public money. That may be something the government will look at.”

Either way, he doesn’t regret “for a second” promising to give back the money. “It was one of the best things I’ve ever done… It was a really difficult year, and [the decision] felt good. I very much want to look forward.”

 First published in The Guardian

New research shows councils could save billions on procurement. The hard part is turning those potential savings into reality.

Local councils could save themselves £2.2bn a year by driving a better deal on the goods and services they buy from private companies, according to new research.

The data, compiled by procurement company Spikes Cavell for Guardian Public, shows that if all England’s councils matched their top-performing peers, they could cut 6.6% from their £33bn annual spending with the private sector.

If fully realised, that would be more than the £1.165bn in local council cuts demanded by the Treasury in May, though some of the savings are for one-off capital projects.

Procurement expert Jonathan Jones, of the West Midlands Innovation and Efficiency Programme, said the figures were “feasible”.

The data also shows where councils spend the most money (see graph 1). By far the two biggest categories are construction, which accounts for £7.4bn a year or 22.3% of total spending, and social care, which accounts for £7.2bn or 21.7% of spending.

Spikes Cavell works with two-thirds of the UK’s 463 councils. Its figures are extrapolated from those councils but based on actual invoices and, the company says, are accurate to within 1%-2%.

Some £150m could be saved just by consolidating invoices (see graph 2). That means getting mobile phone companies, say, to send only one monthly bill rather than 20 each month, slashing processing costs.

Some £430m could be saved where different arms of a council have myriad contracts with different suppliers, and consolidating contracts would create a better deal.

Another £310m could be saved by getting better terms from companies that have started doing so much work for councils that they should be delivering economies of scale. In areas where councils deal with just one supplier, £100m could be saved by renegotiating deals or tendering them more widely.

At the most complex end, £530m is up for grabs – but only if councils completely rethink the way they buy goods and services in areas such as adult social care and construction.

Luke Spikes, the company’s founder, says these are the most challenging areas: “You don’t buy adult domiciliary care from a catalogue.” Instead, councils should, he says, follow a three-step process: draw up a new, comprehensive plan for the services they need; buy those services using a pre-selected framework; then create the tools – generally online – that will allow staff to quickly work out which supplier is offering the best deal.

Spikes says his company was able to help Peterborough primary care trust cut £1.8m from its £9m spending on caring for people in their homes – a 20% saving – simply by putting all the providers’ price and quality details into an online ordering system.

However, councils say achieving such savings is not easy. “There’s still huge scope [for savings],” admits David Pointon, Portsmouth city council’s head of procurement. “But it is not just procurement alone. You are not going to make those savings simply by bullying down prices. You are going to do it by fundamentally reviewing … the goods and services we are buying.”

Jones, meanwhile, warns that knowing where savings lie is not the same as realising them. “Sometimes where councils fall down is, they have the spending analysis done, they have good data … but they don’t do much with it.”

First published in The Guardian

A pioneering project in north London shows the value of getting public agencies to work together. But having one person ‘go into bat’ for vulnerable families is just as important.

Angela, a cute one-year-old with tight pigtails, plays placidly amongst the scattered toys in the Packington Estate’s children’s centre in north London. A year ago she was “crying all the time”, her mother, Evelyne, says.

Evelyne, isolated from her family and struggling with her English, had no support: “In the beginning, I didn’t know anybody.”

Help came in the form of the families project run by Hyde, the estate’s housing association. Now in its second year, it brings together 17 public agencies that deal with families, including local schools, health visitors and Islington council.

Vulnerable families on the estate, which is among the most deprived 5% in the country, sit down with representatives from some or all of the agencies to talk about everything they need from public services. A ‘lead professional’ from one of the agencies then works closely with the family, acting as a bridge to other bodies.

For Evelyne, the project has opened up services she didn’t even know existed: a children’s support worker to help her with Angela, a trip to the citizens advice bureau to look at fighting an unfair dismissal from work, and help chasing up a lost tax credit application.

Being able to call up her lead professional, who can “introduce” her to other agencies, has been life changing.

Cassandra Favager, Hyde’s regeneration manager, says the project is helping 40 families who aren’t being looked after by social services but may have up to a dozen major problems. Closer working by public agencies, a key aim, hasn’t been easily achieved.

It was “a real struggle convincing housing officers [the project] was worth their time”, she says; even now the culture change has happened “better with some than others”.

The project’s first year threw up some difficulties. Teachers often wouldn’t show up for daytime meetings, something the project may tackle by meeting more at schools. Some families found the group meetings “overwhelming”, and will need to be better briefed beforehand and have their lead professional on board earlier.

But overall the project transformed families’ lives, Favager says, and “opened doors between services that knew each other existed but only went to each other in times of crisis”.

The children’s centre now houses mental health services, while parenting and stop smoking surgeries take place elsewhere on the estate. Workers learn new skills: for example, housing officers are trained to identify potential domestic violence.

And the cost? Not much, Favager says: one full-time coordinator (funded by central government) and a part-time project manager.

Nor is it a drain on time. Lead professionals may have to make a few phone calls around other agencies, but the time saved by being able to refer individuals on makes participation “a no-brainer”, she says.

An independent evaluation of the project’s first year found it had achieved its aims, helping families receive more grants and resolve problems with their children more quickly. Favager admits she can’t yet prove it saves money, but insists the project has “demonstrated its worth” and shouldn’t fear public sector cuts.

Evelyne, meanwhile, has no doubts. In an era when the government expects individuals to do more, she is clear that, in fact, greater one-to-one support is vital. “If I need help, I just call Mary [her lead professional],” she says. “The project is good for me. It can’t stop.”

First published in The Guardian

While citizen involvement has become an election buzzword, local groups are left railing against the reality.

A warm, sunny Sunday in April brings the season’s first sunbathers on to the shingled beaches of Hastings, in East Sussex. A perfect day, too, for promenading on the pier – or it would be if it hadn’t been closed for four years as a health hazard to the public.

Hastings pier, owned since 2000 by Panama-based property company Ravenclaw, is a potent symbol of community decline. Behind its barred gates, the shops lie empty and the attractions are boarded up. It needs at least £2m in structural repairs after successive owners have let its pillars and trusses decay.

Citizen involvement is a main plank in the political parties’ election campaigns, with the Conservatives promising a community right-to-buy as part of its plans for a big society. This would give groups the first right of refusal on assets – such as parks and libraries – sold off by public agencies. Labour, meanwhile, can point to the Advancing Assets for Communities programme, a series of pilot schemes designed to transfer local assets to community groups.

But the fight by the Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust (HPWRT) to take control of their local amenity is a salutory lesson in how difficult community ownership can be in practice.

Angela Davis, an HPWRT trustee, says it has been “three years of battle” to get the Conservative-run borough council to back the idea of handing over the pier to the community group, using a compulsory purchase order. The group believes that a rejuvenated pier – with a traders’ market, bars and shops – would help Hastings to reverse falling visitor numbers and regenerate the town.

It has taken seven months for the group to get a £75,000 grant, from the government’s Community Builders programme, for a feasibility study of its proposals.

“You do need business acumen within a community group,” says Davis, pointing out that her fellow trustees include the manager of a local shopping centre and a hotel owner. If all goes well, she plans to ask Community Builders for the £2m needed to restore the front section of the pier, and the Heritage Lottery Fund for at least another £2m to tackle the rest.

The other big obstacle is time – or lack of it. Davis, a former business and IT consultant, has the financial security to work unpaid for over 50 hours a week, but points out that, for most people, “life is difficult enough earning a living, raising a family, and so on” without trying to take over the local library or community centre.

A recent report by the Asset Transfer Unit (ATU), the government-funded arm of the Development Trusts Association, reveals that only 11 of the 75 pilots launched in April 2007 to transfer local assets to community groups have been successful, with a further 15 nearly completed.

The little-used Sneyd Green community hall in Stoke-on-Trent is one success story. Taken over and transformed by the local community association, it is now fully booked for events months in advance. Another success is in South Gloucestershire, where a local group is now running Winterbourne Medieval Barn and using it to host community events and education programmes.

However, the ATU’s report identifies problems on both sides. Many councils are risk averse, and are unwilling to invest the time, energy and money needed. Some have “confrontational” relationships with community groups, or are seeking to offload only assets damaged beyond repair. On the other side, many community groups “require significant time and in-depth support”, especially where they have little or no experience of running assets.

The report says it is too early to say if those problems are greater in deprived communities, where most pilots take place, but it admits that the subject “may well merit further investigation”.

In particular, groups need “unfettered investment capital” – something that may be harder to find in poorer areas. The bottom line, the report says, is that asset transfers can take, on average, five years from first contact.

Back in Hastings, Davis remains optimistic that, if all goes well, her group could have control of the pier by the end of the year. But, given the obstacles they have faced, she says that to expect hundreds of other local groups to follow their lead is “very much an ideal”.

First published in The Guardian

Could money be saved by turning empty office blocks, and even old Woolworths shops, into schools?

Bristol Cathedral choir school’s principal, Neil Blundell, is striding along the corridor of the school’s newest building, the Parsonage, when he spots a pupil leaning against the wall, shirt-tails peeping out from beneath his sweater. “Would you like to tuck that shirt in?” he asks firmly, adding: “And don’t lean on that wall – it’s only been up for eight weeks.”

The wall is indeed only eight weeks old – because the Parsonage was until this year a completely open-plan building. It was, in fact, an office block. When the choir school moved from the independent sector to become an academy last year, it had to find room for an anticipated 300 more pupils. Because it sits on a cramped site littered with listed buildings – including the cathedral itself – a huge new edifice was out of the question, Blundell says.

Fortunately, there was an office block lying empty in one corner of the site. The block had been built for letting, as an investment, but no tenant had been found. In under four months – and for just £1.3m, against £25m for a new school – it was converted into a home for the computing, maths and foreign language departments.

From the outside, its pale cream knobbly concrete walls and grey slate roofs are reminders of its immediate past. Inside, the impression of still being in an office – children in uniform aside – is reinforced. Classrooms that could be meeting rooms open off white corridors; the ceilings are rather low; and there is little natural light.

The building has its problems. As an open-plan office, it was designed for workers evenly spread across each floor; the result is that the classrooms often overheat when pupils pack in for lessons. Because the building is next to a major road, the external windows don’t open, and the relatively low ceilings leave no room to install further ventilation. As he pauses to look into a classroom, Blundell is told by one teacher that her room suffers from “really, really horrible” humidity.

However, he insists, taking over an open-plan building gave the school tremendous flexibility, and ventilation problems can be sorted out, just as the school dealt with the lack of light in classrooms – which have few windows – by painting everything in pale colours.

Blundell claims to have had only positive comments from parents. As for the pupils, they seem happy enough. “It’s very smart, more modern,” says Sam, a pupil in year 10, who seems far more interested in the new computers than the decor. “It doesn’t feel like an office block now,” he adds.

Although a new building “is always going to be better”, Blundell says, “for this school, it was the right thing to do. I’m delighted with it. I don’t think we could have got a better solution.”

It’s an idea that could become widespread. The Conservatives have already made it clear that, should they win power next year, schools will have to do more with less, swapping new buildings for converting old offices, church halls and municipal buildings.

Experts think it can be done: refurbishment and remodelling “already play a major part” in school building programmes, says Ty Goddard, the head of the British Council for School Environments. In future, “imagination and wise thinking” will be needed to make the most of what’s there already, he adds.

In the US, schools are created from offices, supermarkets and, in a distinctively American touch, shopping malls. The Tories also point to Sweden, where the much-hyped free schools movement relies on companies starting up schools without any capital grants. Looking for cheap options, they will convert old military barracks, factories and even, in one case, a former observatory.

Steve Bolingbroke heads the UK operations of the company Kunskapsskolan, which runs over 30 Swedish schools in converted buildings. A year ago, he identified several sites in the south east of the UK as ripe for conversion – among them, somewhat staggeringly, London’s BT Tower, previously known as the Post Office Tower.

Kunskapsskolan’s interest was rebuffed, so it won’t happen. But, Bolingbroke insists: “A school on top of the Post Office Tower would be a great place for kids to understand the geography of London. How great [that would be] – having a lesson about the geography of London while actually looking at it.”

Others have equally ambitious schemes. Professor Stephen Heppell, of Bournemouth University, is working with Rotherham council on plans to turn the town’s disused shops into schools. This would help to regenerate run-down high streets, and could be incredibly cheap, Heppell argues. He claims businesses will lease empty buildings for nothing as long as they are maintained – because that allows them to count the shops as assets on their balance sheet, and then borrow against those assets.

Under Heppell’s plan, which the council has agreed to explore, an old Woolworths store would, for example, “make a very fine Da Vinci studio – you know, science and art [together]”.

“If there’s a change of government, and [school building] gets squeezed, this is a really interesting route for creating learning environments that are exciting – and that are value for money,” he says.

Not everyone is convinced that the conversion model works. John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, has visited Swedish schools. “How companies make a profit is by taking over ex-public buildings, or indeed private buildings, and furnishing them to the minimum standard,” he says. “It didn’t look particularly good. It didn’t seem appropriate.”

Peter Clegg, of schools architects Feilden Clegg Bradley, says he isn’t against the idea in principle, but he doubts it will work. Britain’s archaic planning system makes changing the use of any building slow and complicated, he argues. For that reason, the Conservatives are already plotting changes to planning regulations “to make it easier to set up schools”, a spokesman says.

But there may not be enough good-quality buildings – with high ceilings and excellent day-lighting and ventilation – available for conversion, Clegg says. “If we’re looking at taking over crap buildings and turning them into schools, it isn’t going to look very good.”

Another problem with converting office blocks lies in providing playgrounds and sports fields. “Children need space outside,” says Bangs. “You need playgrounds, you need areas you can convert to sustainable activities, like farms.”

But in Sweden, Bolingbroke says, Kunskapsskolan hires out local council sports halls or uses other schools’ facilities. Meanwhile, architects say schools could build playgrounds on the rooftops of converted offices. Although the combination of teenage children, sports equipment and a multi-storey drop may seem faintly alarming, in practice it already exists.

St Mary Magdalene academy, in north London, has a playground on its roof; as will St George’s school, in Westminster, when it is finished next year. Its playground will be surrounded by a three-metre-high parapet wall and covered by a net to stop balls bouncing over. “You create quite a secure environment,” says John Wood of construction firm Bouygues, which is working on the project.

Some parents may hate the idea of converted buildings, he admits. “Parents like to be reassured with gleaming new schools and state-of-the-art facilities.” But, he adds: “All it takes is a few architects to create wonderful converted buildings. Then parents won’t mind whether the kids are in an old office, factory or warehouse.”

First published in The Guardian

John Carleton is the head of Local Partnerships, the newest body trying to help councils drive a better bargain with private companies. He brings a wealth of experience from public service, banking, consultancy … and international rugby

Perhaps one of the lowest points in John Carleton’s international rugby career, in which he garnered 32 caps for England and seven tries, came on the unsuccessful 1983 Lions’ tour to New Zealand. Three months of rain had culminated in yet another defeat in the “horizontal snow” of Dunedin.

“I remember it distinctly,” Carleton says, “because the World Cup cricket was on in the UK. I was lying in bed in New Zealand in a tracksuit, cold, and watching England and Pakistan from Old Trafford on the TV and it was 80-odd degrees and people had their shirts off.”

He looks, fortunately, much happier now, newly installed as the first chief executive of Local Partnerships. The agency, formed out of the ashes of its predecessor, the 4ps, is now run as a joint venture between the Local Government Association and Partnerships UK, itself a public-private hybrid.

The agency’s job, Carleton says, is to be at the “interface” between councils and their private and voluntary sector partners, trying to make those relationships run more smoothly. But, as he acknowledges, it is no easy task.

Carleton, 53, has the kind of solid, compact build you’d expect from a former international winger, and an accent that bears the traces of his native Lancashire. His career has spanned both public and private sectors, first as a banker specialising in real estate, then at the Housing Corporation, where he says he was “humbled” by the dedication of his fellow workers showed in their attempts to improve some of the worst housing in the UK.

At that time, the relationship between the sectors was tainted by “huge amounts of suspicion on both sides”, he says.”I used to work for a guy who described partnership as the suppression of mutual loathing to access somebody else’s cash … I think a lot of people could see that sort of approach.”

Now, he says, both sides have come “an awful, awful long way”, though he accepts the relationship is far from perfect.

He acknowledges, too, that some public-private partnerships and outsourcing deals have been failures. That, he says, comes down to councils not knowing what they want at the outset.

“I bet nearly every time you find a partnership agreement that isn’t working, has flaws, has problems, those flaws can be rooted back to when the partnership was originally set up, and will be rooted back to potentially really poor choices, uninformed choices at [that] point.”

The mission for Local Partnerships, as he sees it, is to help councils make those choices better. Taking politicians’ promises of localism at face value, he insists that whichever party wins power in the general election next year, councils will be in control of more spending and policy.

“It’s not our role to second-guess how local authorities will deliver services to their people”

But as part of that, they will have to make “informed decisions” about what services they provide directly and which ones they outsource.

This doesn’t mean that the agency will be promoting privatisation, Carleton insists. Rather, it will be using its wealth of experience in hundreds of public-private schemes to help councils, especially small ones that struggle with complex, private sector-based projects, to strike better deals.

“It’s not our role to second-guess how local authorities will deliver services to their people,” he says. “It’s our job to help them find the best way of delivery, whether that be direct [public services], or whether that be working with partners.

“Our job … will be to help them find those partners, to help them structure the partnership arrangement right, to help them with the governance around that – and maybe even identify how they can fund that.”

One criticism levelled at the predecessor to Local Partnerships, the 4ps, was its lack of profile amongst senior council directors.

Carleton won’t comment on that, but says: “If that’s been the perception in the past, it certainly won’t be the reality in the future.”

He hopes to get out of his London office “at least” one day a week and go round the country talking to local councils. As he does, he will be “particularly interested” to hear from councils who feel their relationship with the 4ps “has not been that great. My offer, my promise, my commitment is, talk to me and let’s see how we can repair that.”

Another part of his mission is to get councils working together better. He admits it’s “not easy”, but insists good examples do exist, and that he will be pushing that message vigorously. He will also be pointing out that demands for services – notably in housing – Increasingly overspill local authority boundaries.

And he may be able to offer councils the incentive of start-up funding. In situations where a potentially cost-cutting project is being stymied by lack of upfront cash to invest, Local Partnerships could, he thinks, step in with some of its own money.

One problem he faces, however, is the need to charge councils for the agency’s services. Around a quarter of the Local Partnerships budget comes direct from government, but funding squeezes means the agency will increasingly look to the council fees that already currently make up the rest of its budget.

Will councils cough up more, given the enormous strain on budgets?

Carleton insists they will – as long as the agency can prove that its experience of working with private companies can help them drive a good bargain, and thus save money.

“If we can demonstrate to local public bodies that … we can help them deliver more for less – then, yes, they will pay for that.”

He takes the same line when asked whether the Conservatives, having made clear their dislike for quangos, might scrap Local Partnerships if they won power.

“Whichever government is in power, the services that they [councils] are empowered to deliver will increase,” he says. “So consequently if we are making them more efficient, more effective … I feel fairly comfortable that Local Partnerships has got a future, no matter who’s in government.”

First published in The Guardian

The costs of planning and setting up new schools have soared by 50% under the government’s rebuilding programme, with one council paying consultants £24m before a single building had even been constructed.

The massive rises in the cost of new privately financed schools – obtained under the Freedom of Information Act – have contributed to the bill for the government’s flagship school rebuilding programme spiralling from £45bn to £55bn.

A pledge made five years ago by ministers, to be fulfilled by 2020, promised the “biggest school-building programme for generations”. The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme would see the rebuilding or refurbishing of almost every secondary school in England.

However, new research reveals that authorities in the later stages of the scheme have seen costs rise by an average of 50% just to set up a school building deal. The costs include spending on outside consultants to develop building plans and draw up contracts before any deal is signed with a construction firm.

The 31 councils surveyed had originally expected to spend £122m on setting up their schemes, covering the period from advertising it in the European Union’s official journal to reaching financial close with a private consortium. However, they now anticipate spending £161m, or 32% more. Half of all councils admitted that they had already seen costs rise, with councils more than 18 months into the programme expecting to spend £36m more than the £78m they first budgeted, an increase of 46%.

Haringey council in north London spent £23.8m – the cost of a new school and nearly four times the government’s recommended amount – on consultants before any schools had been built. A spokeswoman for the council said the figure was so high because it was accounting for its costs “upfront”, while other authorities “hid” them by spreading them out over a longer period.

Critics have long claimed that BSF is too complex and imposes unnecessary delays and costs on councils. The programme began in 2004 with the aim of rebuilding half of all secondary schools, remodeling just over a third and refurbishing the rest. But just 42 of the planned 200 schools were rebuilt in the first four years of the scheme, putting it three years behind schedule.

The research by the PPP Bulletin reveals the extent of councils’ problems and raises fresh concerns over BSF. Ty Goddard, head of the British Council for School Environments, said the figures were “an important contribution to the debate about how we can sharpen up the process of investing in our schools.

“In fragile economic times, it is vital that we match this present government’s commitment to schools capital with an honesty and frankness about how the money is invested and some of the big challenges on the ground,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Partnerships for Schools, the agency in charge of BSF, said it was “looking at the issue of capacity within local government” and continued to share best practice and lessons learned.

Written with Amelia Hill and first published in The Observer