What now for deprivations of liberty?
What will the effect of the postponement of the Liberty Protections Safeguards be on local authorities? Local Government Lawyer asked 50 adult social care lawyers for their views on the potential consequences.
SPOTLIGHT |
There has been a “sea change” in local authority attitudes towards merging front line services, it has been claimed.
A survey by law firm Browne Jacobson of 150 senior local authority managers in England revealed that nine out of ten councils are looking to share front line and back office functions within the next two years.
Key findings from the report include:
A similar survey conducted by Browne Jacobson three years ago revealed that less than half of public sector managers saw the potential to merge front line services. Just 5% said they saw opportunities of working with the private sector.
The law firm’s head of shared services, Dominic Swift, said: “The government’s austerity bombshell is clearly forcing authorities to look at innovative and radical ways in which to deliver their services. We can also see a noticeable sea change in attitudes towards merging front line services.
“Councils are starting to think outside the box and previous no-go areas such as the private sector and large scale outsourcing are also back on the agenda. With local authorities up and down the country already feeling the financial pinch the next step is to turn the shared services rhetoric into action.”
The Browne Jacobson report can be downloaded here.
A paper on shared services by a working group of the Procurement Lawyers Association recently warned of a number of misconceptions about how procurement rules apply to these arrangements.
The paper addressed the eight most common misconceptions. It said, for example, that the correct position was that UK government policy did not overrule European law and cannot be used to justify circumvention of EU procurement rules.
Philip Hoult