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In the dying days of the last government there was a flickering of interest in the public sector delivering more for less. Ministers started asking to know how much public money in total was spent in each place. They discovered it was often more than they realised, with great overlap between the spending of different Agencies, departments and Councils.

Some Ministers just wanted the higher figures to be able to make claims over how much they were offering. Others saw that there was scope to cut out the overlap and deliver more for less.

I have just received a glossy brochure from the Local Government Group celebrating “Total Place”. Within its 36 sheets it includes the following statement from the “Chair of the Total Place High level Officials group”:

“The time has come to dramatically reduce the number of …targets, indicators,inspection arrangements and ring fenced budgets….
We have too many vulnerable people, households and communities receiving services from countless agencies which fail to meet their needs at great cost to the public purse….
We spend £220billion on purchasing goods and materials across the public sector but we sitll have no convincing purchasing strategy for common goods….”

This commonsense approach is not reflected throughout the brochure. In a Section entitled “regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerhsips” we are told:

“In local government, we have been familiar for some time with the need to develop a holistic, customer focussed services (sic) through partnership. In some ways Total Place is not new, but the renewed momentum behind the breadth of our focus on transforming services for residents and codesigning with Whitehall certainly gives me cause for optimism”.

The brochure ends with a Next Step that sounds very different from the tone of the “Chair’s” opening statement:

” We propose a new improvement framework with streamlined departmental and inspection stuctures alongside stringent local self-regulation. This would include peer reviews at least every three years”

So is Total Place trick or treat? Would it cut costs and concentrate the money on the people and problems that matter, or will it spawn its own all new language and bureaucracy?