Keeping the needs of the public at the heart of public sector budget cuts

Traditional approaches to cutting costs in public services won’t work.  We need to move to more rational, evidence-based approaches that keep the needs of public at their heart. 

Easier said than done?  It’s do-able given grit and determination…

The Challenge…

Although expectations remain high about quality of public services, we all know that the economy, social and demographic changes and immense pressures on the public purse means that things need to change. The dilemma for public sector is how to protect services particularly for those most in need in the face of shrinking budgets.  

The scale of the challenges facing us means that we will need to re-examine what everyone is entitled to, what we’re required by law to provide and those services that are “nice to have”.  The implications for customer service are significant as this involves the re-drawing of the relationship between citizen and state and building public support for new approaches.

Traditionally local government has taken a ‘salami slicing’ approach to budget pressures where everything gets cut by the same proportion irrespective of how valuable the service is to the public.

Cutting discretionary services in favour of concentrating resources on statutory services is an obvious thing to do, but may have a number of unintended consequences.  Often discretionary and preventative services are highly valued by customers and professionals alike, and spending money to “nip things in the bud” or prevent them from deteriorating further will save much more expensive interventions later (like admission to residential care or hospital).  However, the evaluation of these preventative services is patchy and the business case has not always been made consistently.

These traditional approaches do not take into account the needs and wants of the public and is ineffective given the scale of the challenges that face us.  A more rational structured approach to prioritisation and decision-making is required over what gets funded and where resources are targeted that has the views of the public at its heart.

A different approach…

I decided to do my Institute of Customer Service continuing professional development (CPD) for 2009-10 in this area. I researched what other organisations were doing in this area, both in the UK and internationally. I also engaged with fellow customer service professionals and reviewed academic research in the areas of sense making, decision-making and complexity.

With the agreement of the Chief Executive of Devon County Council (a very large authority with an annual budget of £1.4bn), I incorporated my CPD into some action research focused on developing a new approach to decision-making in the face of economic downturn and pressure on the public purse in a way that keeps the needs of citizens centre stage. 

After early pilots of the approach revealed some novel conclusions and suggestions for cutting costs substantially that participants felt wouldn’t have come to light if we hadn’t utilised this approach, the corporate leadership team then asked my team and I to lead a review of all Devon County Council’s services so that we had well considered proposals by September 2010 for making deep cuts to the 2011/12 budget.

So what?

Devon County Council has now built the approach into annual processes so that relative priorities and customer views on value of services are reviewed every year, irrespective of whether the budget position is favourable or not.

In common with the introduction of any new process, there has been resistance. The use of well-regarded opinion formers helped in terms of credibility and gaining support, and the use of a critical friend from another service area helped in terms of ensuring “adult conversations’.  Nevertheless, feedback continues to be that innovative cost cutting proposals have been put forward that participants felt wouldn’t have come to light if we hadn’t utilised the approach.

The bi-annual Place Survey that looks at public satisfaction with public services in the area in which they live is next due in 2011 and will be used as one of the main ways in which the outcomes from the approach to prioritisation will be evaluated.  Public satisfaction with the County Council will also be monitored throughout this period through consultation and analysis of coverage about the organisation in the local press and media.

There’s been quite a bit of interest from other public agencies in the approach, and the work was featured in a conference at the Royal College of Nursing.

Putting the needs of the public at the centre of making budget cuts is easier said than done… But it is do-able given grit and determination

Thanks to Caroline Tan, Director of Inspiring People, and Don Hales, MD of the World of Customer Service who both kindly agreed to act as mentor and coach for my CPD.  They steered me to successfully passing the assessment and demonstrating Institute of Customer Service professional standards at gold level.   And particular thanks go to Phil Norrey, Chief Executive of Devon County Council. Phil and his colleagues believed in the approach.