In public service, does size matter?

Steve Saunders from PwC sets delegates straight: growth is all about competitiveness   

At the University of Northampton, public sector spin-out platform, the Transition Institute, announced today that the university was to become a strategic partner for the Institute. Also, Professor Simon Denny, the man charged with enabling Northampton to become the UK’s first social enterprise university, is to join the Institute's board. 

Speaking on behalf of the Institute, its Chair, Allison Ogden-Newton, said, “We are delighted to welcome the creative input of Northampton, which is fast establishing itself as at the forefront of social enterprise development. Its energy and expertise will be a fantastic addition and helps us take the debate on the future of public services up a gear.”

Simon told the audience, "If the level of debate and contribution at today’s event was anything to go by, the university's decision to become a partner of the Institute is one it is unlikely to ever regret.”

This announcement came at the latest Transition Institute Camp on scaling up, where those who want to spin out services or want to bid for new service contracts can learn from the market leaders and industry experts, and share their experience and questions adding to developing research.

Steve Saunders, Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), sparked a lively debate about preparing to thrive in an increasingly competitive market. He charged participants to think about why they think the service they provide is different, what they want to be remembered for and to really scrutinise where the market for that is.

Paul Jansen, consultant at Stepping Out, the specialist service for spin-outs, described this sector as a market that is in its infancy. He compared spin-outs to the motor industry in the 1930s where there was excitement for the novelty for a revolutionary form of transport, but where efficiency and speed had not yet been achieved. Paul made the point that we need to recognise the innovation sparked through independent service providers and told his audience about social enterprise, the National Migraine Centre which is a world leader in headache services that has developed therapies and treatments previously unheard of in the NHS. In that sense the services available at the centre are not spun out, but have achieved unique complementary status so common in social enterprise where innovation can be easier to develop than in the mainstream.

Owen Wilcox from TTP Law

Owen Wilcox, a partner at TTP Law, filled delegates in on the legal dos and don’ts of going it alone and illustrated his points with apocryphal tales of social enterprises that have failed, such as Secure Healthcare, which closed after only three years because it did not anticipate the potential impact of its contractual obligations and started with an inappropriate corporate structure. Owen took delegates through the treacherous waters of TUPE and asset transfer and pointed them to early adopters looking at the secrets to their success.

Working with Sabina Khan, advisor to the Institute, delegates discussed and analysed the Institute's latest research Scaling up your business: expansion models for spin-outs, written by Dan Gregory. The enthusiasm of delegates derived some insightful observations that came from their considerable experience in the field.

Delegate Richard Catherall of Katarsis Ventures contributed to the debate by making the point that outsourcing authorities often go for scale thereby missing vital potential. “Local authorities like large things sometimes simply because they are big, which doesn’t acknowledge that an opportunity of spin-outs are to spin services apart. The focus is often around the spin-out and in actual fact it’s an opportunity for the parent body to change. It’s not just about the egg, it's about the chicken … which came first incidentally."

All of the comments made at the event were captured and will be reflected in the final version of the research available on line at the Transition Institute.

Transcending the obstacles for spin-outs

“The journey of a spin-out service is an interesting one and by no means one without obstacles.” So said Antonio Rizzo, Head of Library Services at Lewisham Council, spin-out veteran and speaker at the Transition Institute’s camp in Hull today.

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

The focus of the event was to develop the thinking and debate around the Transition Institute’s latest piece of research, Transitioning out of the public sector: How to overcome your legal dilemmas, which will be further developed in collaboration with TPP Law whose Managing Director, Mark Johnson came in person to offer folk the chance to present their specific legal problems, which was a great opportunity for delegates. Mark has loads of experience and really believes in the ethos of organisations based on social value, which came out in his presentation.

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.

Looking back with pride at 2011

Magic Breakfast working to feed London"s hungry kids wins the Big Society Award in 2011 

Looking back on an extraordinary year I can hardly believe that our small organisation could have achieved so much and made such a difference! That is, of course, down to our members, networks, clients, supporters, co-chairs Mark Sesnan and Sophi Tranchell and board, all of whom enabled the fantastic SEL team to really pick up the pace for social enterprise in 2011.

The year started for us by hosting the world’s largest 2012 Olympic social enterprise conference at the London Film Museum where hundreds of delegates met to discuss and plan a successful games that will establish a worthwhile and long-lasting legacy for the wider community.

SEL also held a conference, put together by our own local government expert Mei Hui, especially for London’s local authorities with the support of London Councils. This was the 5^th LAConnects conference and the most successful yet. Bringing together representatives of all 32 boroughs and the City, we took a good hard look at their social enterprise strategies and ways in which boroughs could do more with social enterprise. This was an important conversation to have, especially in such difficult economic times because social enterprises are working with some of society's most vulnerable citizens who are always the hardest hit by economic decline.

A big breakthrough came in 2011 with another seminal partnership, this time with NESTA, the leading innovation agency, with which we worked to established the ground-breaking Transition Institute. The organisation, led by Director and policy supremo Dominic Potter and supported by the dedicated Jillian Oxenham, gained its full institute status from the government - no mean feat, because it provides a unique and vital platform for the discussion and promotion of public sector reform that maximises social value.

I am privileged to Chair the Institute, which has as its board members luminaries like Sir Stephen Bubb, Lord Micheal Bichard, Ed Mayo, Philip Colligan, Sue Bruce, Helen Bailey, Andrew Burnell, Sophia Looney, Mark Sesnan and Ben Lucas.

The Institute has attracted real media attention and as a result been contacted by an ever-growing number of public sector workers looking for information and support in the pursuit of their plans for a new approach to service delivery.

Launching its first publication in 2011, Social Value Ethos the Instutute offers strategic support to the Public Services (Social Value) Bill which, thanks to Chris White MP and Minister Nick Hurd’s tenacious campaigning, has made it to the House of Lords. We hope it gets through and is passed in 2012.

Our international work continued to be a significant part of the 2011 story with SEL consultants working in Croatia, South Korea and Copenhagen led by our chief boffin, Director of Policy and Research, Sabina Khan who has also started a series of tele-events for the Chinese government with partners, the British Council.

SEL’s work with local authorities continued to blossom and, over the year, we trained over 400 local authority officers in how they might approach becoming independent service deliverers. Building on their challenges and experiences and those of the 10 local authorities we worked through our consultancy team, we published Spin Out and Deliver from the Guardian as part of our Social Enterprise Day celebrations, which has since been downloaded from the SEL site many thousands of times.

We also continued to work with the Department of Health researching the challenges faced by health sector spin-out services through our research hub and consultancy. 

Our links with the corporate world also defined 2011 in that we delivered eight oversubscribed events for social entrepreneurs sponsored by our partners KPMG and PwC. These events have become astonishingly popular and offer real evidence of the way in which the larger City-based firms have valuable expertise to offer social enterprises that our members, in turn, are delighted to benefit from. 

Thanks to our Membership Team, Emma Hodson and Clare Sharpen, the SEL family has risen in number steadily all year and means that despite the battles we have fought and, I have to say, not always won for social enterprise, we are clearly doing something right. Offering programmes like ERDF Winning Contracts headed up by our own powerhouse Sue Potter, we know has really helped members. This programme saw us train over 580 social enterprises in improving their performance in securing and delivering quality public sector contracts. Independent assessment showed that our training resulted in over £4 million of new business being won by clients who specified the training they had from SEL was key to their subsequent success. 

I was a judge for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the Guardian Public Sector, the Third Sector and Social Enterprise Photography awards all in 2011. These competitions might not change the world but they give us an unparalleled opportunity to make sure that social enterprises like Livity in Brixton and the Acton African Well Woman Centre get the recognition they deserve.

Our membership goes from strength to strength and is about to top 3,000, which is fantastic and makes us the largest social enterprise community in Europe. It seems that as things get tougher, social enterprises are looking for more information and support and SEL is the obvious go-to choice. 

Having the design and techno wizard, Surbhi Bahl sorting out our front end has, I hope you agree, made a real difference to the impact and clarity of our message. Surbhi has made sure that the success of members like Magic Breakfast, which joined SEL members GLL and Central Surrey Health when they bagged a Big Society Award in 2011, was shared by the whole network and SEL’s now significant global audience. 

Astonishingly 2011 saw SEL get our members covered in at least 43 pieces of national media and countless more sector-specific and local media sources. We also continued to do well in the world of social media with a combined (SEL, Transition Institute and aogdennewton) Twitter following of over 6,000 and consistently high Google ratings. If you search social enterprise from anywhere in the world, SEL will not be far from the top of any search engines suggested links.

But what is my highlight of 2011? It has to be the successful conclusion of our London Future 500 programme in which we got 500 young people jobs in social enterprise, 69% of whom are no longer on benefits.

Social enterprise is all about making a difference, and that certainly is making a very big difference indeed.

I wish you all the very best for the holidays and a prosperous 2012, whatever it brings SEL will be there working tirelessly and creatively for you,

All the very best

Allison

Wimbeldon, whittering and what next for us?

I am really enjoying the twitter feed on the piece I got into the Guardian Public yesterday on social impact assesment. It is gratifying when people describe your work as spot on especially if they are leading lights in the social enterprise world. I will continue to bang on about social impact assesment as I truly believe it is the only way to ensure the most vulnerable in our society are not left behind as everything changes. I believe we are in a transition phase and managing the risks and maximising the opportunities will all come down to measuring and valuing social impact.

Last night having popped home early to take my daughter and her rabbit to the vet, my husband suggested making the most of my rare early appearance at home to pop out to Wimbledon and see if we could get in. We took the boys who love their tennis, our Joe is the top seed in his year at school, and literally swaned in.  At 7pm there is still 2 and a half hours of play and for £14 cash you can literally just walk in.  We didn't even have to queue!  Its the gate near Car park 10 for those who want to give that a go. We saw Clement and the boys got to see Jovovich on Centre Court as some kind soul gave Sam two centre court tickets.  Sam does have a wonderfully smiley face and lovely things do seem to happen to him. Long may that last.

This morning we had our joint event with PWC and the LDA on Governance and Risk. We had a full room of leading social entrepreneurs and the discussion was fascinating.  I particularly enjoyed the horror shown by the PWC risk experts to the notion of starting to deliver contracts before they are signed.  Such a different culture to ours where such things are common place.  If social enterprise is to deliver more contracts not only will we have to behave differently but the public sector will need to treat us differently.  No more expecting us to start contracts at risk and no more protracted negotiations followed by unrealistic deadlines. Keep an eye out for the next event, there have been three so far in the series and they have gone down a storm. I was almost told off by one CEO as she left for not telling people how good the program is as having not attended the first 2, she felt she had missed out. So I am telling you, these sessions are top notch and you well worth your time. For more info contact the SEL offices (020 702201920).

During the event I had an interesting chat with Steve Wyler from the DTA about how we can get the most out of Big Society which we agreed has presented us with an unparalleled opportunity.  I will reflect some of that conversation tonight when I respond to Nick Hurd's speech at the Acevo reception for new MP's.

I will also need to comment on the budget, as indeed will we all. I do hope amidst the doom and gloom there remains enough investment for us to, in the immortal words of  the sports commentator David Coleman at the '76 Olympics, open (our) legs and show (our) class.