Torbay LG Branch - Reshaping Portal

A newly published pamphlet, produced by the TUC also tackles the potential pitfalls of increased 'Marketisation' in Local Government, and suggests an alternative to the current 'Commissioner of Services' model. The press release reads:

"Successive attempts to introduce market mechanisms into public services by Labour and Conservative governments - £44 billion worth of public services are now delivered each year outside the public sector - have not delivered better value and have often made worse the problems they were claimed to solve, says the TUC in a new pamphlet published today (Wednesday).

The second TUC Touchstone pamphlet - part of a series designed to inject a trade union perspective into serious debate about public policy issues ­- says that rather than go back to previous top-down ways of running public services that could ignore the needs of users, reform and modernisation should be based on an alternative 'public value' model.

Rethinking public service reform - the public value alternative says that this approach requires managers, users and providers to work together to shape the future of public services. The pamphlet recognises that the value for society created by public services cannot be measured using the same simple profit and loss accountancy used in the private sector, and needs to be based on a more sophisticated approach based on the wider needs of society, the satisfaction of service users and the views of local communities, without neglecting value for money."

The full report can be read at http://www.tuc.org.uk/touchstone/publicservicereform/publicservicereform.pdf