Thursday, September 24, 2009

Total Place or Total War?

I must admit that I was only recently vaguely aware of Total Place. I had thought it was just a “consultancy speak” term for yet another “Public sector efficiency” fad.

There are also a number of similar confusing buzz words and phrases about - such as “shared services” and “Easy jet” Councils bouncing around.

Recent London UNISON meetings and briefings have rapidly brought me up to speed.

The Total Place initiative is to look at the total public sector spend in an area (such as a borough or county) and to look at ways to make efficiencies and savings by combining services. By total public spend I do mean “Total”. Council services, NHS services, central Government services, Police, Further education, utilities and even the voluntary sector. One example of this is a proposal to put practically all the “back office” public service functions into one Council building. So we could have generic HR, payroll, finance, policy and procurement etc for all the borough or county Job centres, hospitals, Police stations, GP practices, housing, schools, universities and colleges all in one location.

There is even a green argument that centralising all these functions will allow energy inefficient offices to be closed and new modern efficient ones to replace them. It could also be argued that this could bring about a rebirth in “municipalism” by localising control of public services back to democratically elected local authorities. This possible configuration will dramatic impact on everyone.

I think that the trade union argument has to be carefully balanced. None of us are by definition against providing better quality or green public services nor saving money which could be ploughed back.

But Total Place should not be used as a cover for privatisation and an excuse to attack the terms and conditions of public servants. If that happens then instead of partnership and co-operation – there could be destructive conflict and mistrust between unions and employers. I brought this possibility up at last night’s GC meeting of my local Labour Party during the Q&A with our MP Lyn Brown - who I am sure took the point on board.

Total Place could result in Total War but only the crazies of the union’s ultra left and the Tory reactionary right will want to bring this on and feast upon it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Speaking of UNISON's ultra left cultists, interesting to catch up with a quote (last year) from would-be Greater London Mayoress Lindsay German saying SWP were down to just 600 or so active members. Think I'll be drinking to that this evening!

Martin

John Gray said...

Hi Anon

and this was before yesterdays split http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=4682