Councillors at Northamptonshire back "biggest transformation in 125 years"

Councillors at Northamptonshire County Council last week backed plans for the authority to move away from directly delivering services and towards commissioning services from four specialist social enterprises.

Northamptonshire said that, as part of its move to a ‘Next Generation Model’, work had begun on establishing a Wellbeing Community Interest Company to deliver health and wellbeing services.

Three other separate organisations will follow:

  • A Children Services Mutual: “to deliver safeguarding and other services for young people”;
  • An Accountable Care Organisation: “to deliver services to protect vulnerable adults”;
  • A Place Shaping Company: “to deliver services to improve Northamptonshire as a place”.

The council also adopted its budget for the 2015/16 financial year.

Cllr Jim Harker, Northamptonshire’s Leader, said: “The traditional model of local government not only no longer works financially but also doesn’t meet the needs of citizens any more. We are serving people with a totally new set of expectations about how they receive goods and services with an expectation of greater individual choice and more responsiveness. Our Next Generation Model will not only help rise to these expectations but do so in a way which is affordable.

“It is certainly no exaggeration to say that this is the biggest transformation of services in Northamptonshire since the creation of this council 125 years ago.”

Cabinet member for finance Cllr Bill Parker said: “As well as these larger organisations the message is clear that other services would also be able to form new enterprises either as private businesses, social enterprises, charities or as part of the voluntary sector. They would all be free to win other contracts to generate additional income to help reduce their costs to the council.

“We have already seen how this can be done in our back office through our LGSS model. By winning new contracts and earning extra income LGSS has systematically reduced the costs of these services to the county council. The Next Generation Model will look to expand this spirit across our front line.”