The sun brought out the floral flocks and the
folk of Hull to talk public sector reform and social value in our services. We were welcomed by the spin-out
world’s pin-up boy, and our host, Andrew Burnell, CEO of City Health Care Partnership (CHCP) and board member of the Transition Institute. Andrew told us about
the reality of being a community interest company, the need to be profitable as
CHCP is, and, as he said, “What really makes you interesting isn’t being
profitable but what you do with that profit.” He focused on why he uses the
phrase ‘employee owned’ to describe CHCP. He explained that because each
staff member owns shares and can invest in the company, he felt this enabled them
to have a very clear sense of the value of their commitment that in turn
ensures hard work makes the company better at delivering healthcare as well as
becoming more profitable.
Andrew welcoming Hull's first Transition Institute camp |
As Kevin McDonnell, Assistant Director at
PricewaterhouseCoopers' Corporate Finance practice, said about his experience in enabling new forms of public sector services, “These are huge change programmes, which challenge staff and the parent
authority who both have to act differently."
During Kevin’s presentation, we got into a
really fascinating and heated conversation between delegates about the capital
bond that became part of the procurement process of Central Surrey Health,
which was instrumental in its inability to even compete against Virgin Group’s
Assura. My hope is we have seen an end to that sort of nonsense and more confidence from parent
authorities to put a service out to tender without building
such a hurdle into the process.
Antonio’s presentation on the radical
changes to library services in Lewisham was inspiring. He had a wry smile when
he took delegates through their journey, which, as he said, was made more
interesting by the council stopping and reviewing the spin-out process at
multiple junctions. Once the plan had finally been adopted, the figures were
impressive with the unit cost of library services dropping to the lowest level
in London and the council set to still save £60 million over the coming
years. So despite the journey being
“treacherous” as Antonio described it, it was “fantastic and worthwhile too”,
as working in partnership with the authority, staff, local businesses and
community, they created a better more innovative service with a strong
philosophy.
This was what our delegates had come to hear.
Very cool. I always enjoy the interviews. Thanks for having this blog
ReplyDeleteVery awesome. I always appreciate the discussions. Thanks for having this blog
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