Date: 05.10.2010 19:30 - 20:30
Location: IET Birmingham: Austin Court, Telford Room, 80 Cambridge Street, Birmingham, B1 2NP
Societal changes mean our public services face ever more complex and constantly evolving challenges.Combine this with a shrinking public purse and the future calls for a radically different approach.
Our event brought together key speakers to explore how policy can be framed to achieve sizeable savings by drawing on the ingenuity of users and front-line workers.
The panellists explored the challenges of the localist agenda, including the barriers to truly achieving decentralised people-powered public sevices and fleshed out what the rhetoric behind localism means in practice.
Click on the thumbnails below to chose a speaker
The Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, Sir Howard Bernstein, highlighted the importance of place in the devlopment of policy.
Understanding the economic character of a region and ensuring that services have the freedom to deliver the needs of the region rather than simply follow a national agenda was, he said, key.
He welcomed the government's overall approach but also said that he awaited future policy announcements and in particular the CSR to see how commmitted policy was to this approach.
The Chief Executive of Unltd, Cliff Prior, highlighted the raw talent and ingenuity throughout the UK for tackling social problems was still untapped.
He argued that policy needs to both acknowledge the power of freeing up people to act for their own communities, and that often it is far better to create an active citizen than a passive recipient of a state-funded programme.
The simple act of engaging with a problem was a significant step towards finding a solution.
Ben Lucas, the Director of 2020 Public Services Trust, explained that the localist approach was the direct opposite of what we have now.
He said that to deliver genuine and lasting improvement a new deal had to be struck between insitutions, government and people.
Citing NESTA's Mass Localism report, Greg Clarke said that one of the most important aspects of this debate was understanding the importance of the personal.
The very concept of public service means that a culture has sprung up which inhibits citizens and means power is misaligned.
He was careful to clarify that this was not an argument against universal bnefits or services free at the point of delivery but that it was vital that policy makers understood and trusted the genuine power of communities to do this better than a state-controlled bureaucracy.
He argued in line with NESTA's Mass Localism that it was vital to 'presume capacity' not inadequacy.
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