People, process, and progress: Making LGR work for your council

Simon N Christian   0:03 
And planning into practical implementation and delivery. So this isn't just about kind of theory. We'll be sort of sharing approaches and real lessons learnt from recent LGR programmes so you can avoid some of the more common pitfalls that others have experienced and sort of accelerate your plan. 
Hopefully more successfully. As I mentioned, we brought together sort of a really fantastic panel of experts this morning. So let's start with some brief introductions and then we'll go through the agenda and some of the content. So let's kick things off with Claire, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself. 

 
Claire Taylor - Executive Director: Corporate Services   0:40 
Thanks, Simon. Morning everybody. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm a fairly new executive director here at Essex County Council. I think the the title today is from business case to reality. We are very much in the transition phase. 
Of of that process, we're currently consulting on our business cases. Look forward to the questions later. Thanks, Simon. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:06 
Thanks, Claire. Pam. 

 
Duke, Pam   1:09 
Yeah. Morning, everybody. I'm Pam Duke. Well, I was the director of resources and 151 officer at West London Furness Council. And prior to that, I had the pleasure of being the Director of Finance at Cumbria County Council. As we were going through the Cumbria LGR process. So happy to sort of share our lived experience. 
And yeah, I sort of finished my full time role in March this year, took a couple of months off, which was amazing, but an hour back in sort of consultancy and training mode. So it's yeah, great to be here this morning. Thank you. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:42 
That thanks, Pam. Matthew. 

 
Matthew Fright   1:46 
Hi there my name is Matthew Fright. I'm a senior research at the Institute for Government. We're a nonpartisan think tank based in Westminster. We've got, I'm part of our devolution team. We've done a lot of work recently on local government organisation including with Grant Thornton, exploring some of the challenges areas faced for both delivering local government organisation and devolution. At the same time. 

 
Simon N Christian   2:07 
Thanks Matthew Paul. 

 
   2:10 
Good morning everyone. I'm Paul dosett. I'm. 
Who focuses on government insurance? Scom Thords and August. 36% of current local authorities and of the last 9 unitaries which I'll come on to later. We were the authors for eight of them, so we have some good insight from that. 

 
Simon N Christian   2:31 
Thanks, Paul. And finally, I'll just introduce myself. I'm Simon Christian. I'm a director in Grant Thornton's public sector consulting team. I look after what is the transformation and change component of that team working with lots of different authorities on all sorts of challenges. And one of those being how do we do LGR really, really well. 
So today we're going to sort of step through sort of four, four sort of components of the agenda. So we're going to do a little bit of scene setting where Matthew's going to take us through the story so far and where we're at. Then I'm going to hand over to Paul and Pam, who are going to. 
Bring to life. So I suppose some of those examples from those age authorities that Paul's been closely involved in the audit on and and Pam's sort of more recent experience, those authorities that have been through that change, then we're going to step into, I suppose, a bit of theory and practise in terms of how. 
All councils will evolve over the next 2436 months and some of the key activities that different teams should think about as they go through that process and how you can pre empt I suppose some of the challenges that have come to life over some more recent activities in LGR. 
And then at the end, we're going to ask sort of player to share some reflections around just broader change and transformation activities as well and how it's really important of course to bring people with us on this journey. This isn't just a technocratic or bureaucratic exercise that local governments doing to redraw lines on a map. 
There's a there's a massive workforce to bring with us and obviously sort of resident and citizen population as well to sort of tell the story to. So we'll finish on that note and then open up for some some Q&A. So that's going to be our our agenda. But as I said to kick things off, I'm going to hand over to Matthew now who's going to take us through. 
Some of his reflections on the story so far. 

 
Matthew Fright   4:26 
Well, thank you for inviting me to set the scene for today's session. In these opening remarks, I'll outline the government's intentions for the government organisation, explore the direction of travel and highlight some of the potential detours we might expect along the way. Now the government entered office on a manifesto committed to widen and deepen devolution to address. 
The centralization which it had identified as a constraint on growth and fuelling a reduction in trust in politics. To that end, it published an English devolution white paper last December in which it outlined its vision for local governance across England. 
The government then used its broader devolution agenda as a justification for redrawing local government in two tier areas by arguing that strong unitary authorities are the building blocks for well functioning devolution. The government has therefore set a path for, I quote, a vision for simpler, more sustainable local government structures alongside a. 
Transfer of power out of Westminster through devolution. So let's unpack this a little power areas are actually supposed to deliver on these government ambitions. In the first instance, as you're no doubt aware, the invitation was restricted to all two tier areas and 19 small neighbouring unitary authorities to bring forward proposals. These are shown on screen and that's an. 
Extract of the report I mentioned earlier, which was produced in partnership with Grant Thornton. 
2nd, it's worth noting that the government's case to change has shifted slightly over time. Originally, it was advanced on the basis of efficiencies that the claim was through cutting waste, reducing the number of politicians, and reducing the fragmentation of public services. There may be some bankable savings that could materialise. 
And there's a widely referenced report with high figures that we used to justify this the potential for service transformation. There's also a case on the basis of easing workforce pressures and potential clear lines of accountability. But I think it's also worth us noting there's been a slight shift in rhetoric following the ministerial reshuffle. 
And if we look at the rationale from the Surrey decision recently, there's also been an emphasis on better growth through faster decisions in areas such as house building, better public service outcomes and through greater policy join up and other themes along the way have also been emphasised, for instance, at the dispatch box yesterday, the Chancellor's budget speak. She spoke about this. 
Savings are going to come from local government reorganisation and the reinvestment that's going to come into public services now as areas bring forward their proposals. There have been very clear prescriptions in terms of the six overarching criteria and 21 sub criteria that they're being used to assess against and we'll. 
On the next slide, I briefly want to talk a little bit more about how this journey will look like ahead. 
So the LGR process has several prescribed stages, from formal invitation submission of proposals, then following consultation, a decision by ministers and Statute of Change orders. We enter a shadow unitary election period and eventually vesting day which. 
Many say that's when the real work begins. A lot of discussion we've seen reflected in discussions to date in the media have been shaped by where we're at in the current status of the journey of councils along the timetable, and there are councils advancing at three different speeds. 
The furthest ahead is Surrey and they have now received a decision over the footprint following three bids that are brought forward. Two were taken out to consultation and the government announced on the 20th October the counter be split into the government's emphasised that although this establishes no precedent, if we look into it and we can see that. 
The government looked at the two options and then went for the slightly larger scale of justifying it on the basis of economies of scale. The government is currently consulting the devolution priority programme areas and has received 17 proposals across 6 regions and it hasn't yet evaluated those against its key criteria. 
And then non devolution priority programme areas are due to submit their LGR proposals tomorrow, with all areas having almost fully advanced through the proposal stage. There are a few things we can kind of draw out from it. The first there's been extensive political machinations over the geographic footprint that will emerge following. 
The discussions, secondly, in general, County Councils have argued for larger scale footprints and coalitions of district councils have generally pushed for smaller scale footprints and I think there are some questions about ensuring that there's actually collaboration between both sets of partners moving forward to ensure there's good joint working and strong relationship. 
Whatever proposal comes, whatever proposal is accepted by Ministers and 3rd, I think another factor to flag is that there's been a large amount of political turnover and there's been new political leadership following the local elections. And typically we've seen believes about half of reform councils have led to changes to the interim proposals that are. 
Reprieves advanced under the early administrations. 
So as we advance through the next stages, I think taking a step back, what we see is that the debates will be very much shaped by those. The next stage we get to. So for instance, the questions about how social care should be administered, should it be in a trust? Should it be broken up into the new footprints? I think those are the types of discussions we'll be soon entering. 
As more areas have their proposals decided, I think that what we should not lose sight of is that vesting day is not the end of the process and there's a significant long term which comes afterwards. So as much early action should be taking place now to ensure that we're ready for the merger of teams embedding of new systems and the transformation. 
To deliver those theoretical long term savings. So on my final slide, I just wanted to draw attention to some of the strategic challenges facing local leaders as we enter this period. I think chief amongst those bandwidth. 
The LGR process is extremely complex, even in the best of circumstances, and the sector entrance. This process from a relatively weak position after over a decade of financial constraint and resourcing challenges, leaders are going to need to manage a highly demanding agenda. How you deal with your business as usual services, the creation of new unit. 
Authorities, major transformation programmes and the establishment of new mayoralties it's going to stretch capacity not only in China and district halls, but also in Whitehall. There's risks creating messy interactions between plans, people and institutions. But beyond these immediate challenges, as a long tail of work, as recent Institute for Government Research shows it can. 
Take up to a decade to merge a business units harmonised service provision and transform service delivery. Yet this extended process also presents an opportunity to define governance in these areas for the next 50 years or so, so to collude. My scene setting remarks if areas are going to make success of this moment, they must navigate these. 
Managers, while keeping their eyes on the horizon and embracing the opportunities ahead success, will depend on the commitment of Council staff, political leadership and the wider local government sector, including partners such as Grant Thornton to realise the potential of this moment. 

 
Simon N Christian   11:40 
Thanks, Matthew. I love the idea of messy interactions as well, so that's that's really great and and really helpful sort of scene setting of the story so far before we look ahead at sort of what next, it's really important to kind of pause and reflect, I suppose on what history is kind of told us sort of transformation. 
Of this scale don't happen in isolation. They sort of build on the experiences of the wider sector, both good and bad, from programmes that have gone before. We've analysed actually a lot of the data from some of those authorities that have gone through unitization and looking specifically at net revenue expense. 
Expenditure. The headline is quite straightforward actually sort of post transition. Unit costs are broadly stable, so significant savings don't land immediately irrespective of what the business cases are kind of telling us. 
Now, naturally, there are going to be sort of expect sort of exceptions to that. You know, some of these authorities that you'll see on the screen went to this process alongside sort of the COVID area era sort of dynamics. Some of these authorities like Cumberland, you know, has too little post reorg data to actually draw. 
Or for firm conclusions. But in terms of moving forwards, thinking about sort of where the focus of your activity should be, it needs to be on much more than just savings. It needs to be about embedding the integration, the transformation of what will actually drive real value. 
Over a longer period of time and not actually just focusing on the unit cost. So in that kind of vein, I'm going to hand over to Paul to start off with and then Pam to provide some reflections on some of these lessons learned. 

 
   13:29 
Thank you, Simon, and good morning, everyone. Next slide please. 
So we decided to look at local government reorganisation as it had been implemented in the last decade or so and and we sort of looked at all those bodies that had gone through reorganisation since 2019. 
So. 
Authorities in in COVID and just afterwards and and we published a report in September 24, learning from the new unitary Council. 
And I think the context is important here because. 
A lot of these decisions by the previous government were political decisions. They were decisions made with short know, relatively short notice. So there's a whole range of issues about timing, capacity, engagement. 
That that sort of overshadowed some of those. 
Some of those authorities, but nevertheless, we do feel that there are some key thematics that that we can draw out. 
Obviously, I'll talk about this from from the audience perspective, but obviously Pam will shortly talk about it from a practitioner perspective. And I think one of the most one of the words we've heard most often was say for legal services on day one or one of the phrases we have most of them. 
We didn't really hear so much. 
About. 
But what you might have the back office or the assurance or the the IT or the systems and the processes. 
And I think some of those things were were challenges and and I think at times some of these authorities didn't either chose not to or didn't have the available capacity to invest in, in the specialist skills around PMOS, finance, HR and IT. 
And the interesting thing is that in theory they since a lot of these were at different points in time, the sector's general resource was available to support them. The problem for these, this round of utilisation is there's a loss of. 
There's lots of LGR happening, and obviously there's probably only a finite amount of resource to support that, so there are that is a specific challenge in terms of capacity. So we need to think about that really and comp, how do you manage? 
This transition alongside the business unusual alongside the safe of eagle. 
Next slide please. 
And Simon touched on it earlier, but but the reality is anyone who's planning a budget based on significant savings year one or year 2 is probably deluded themselves a bit and and of course bringing lots of legacy councils together. 
There's a whole range of issues. 
That often take a huge amount of time. Agreement, reserve, split, reserve some balance sheets. What capital financing looks like. 
Minimum revenue provisions. Yeah. How does that look for the new authority when the individual bodies would have had their own different policies and and bringing that together is often a problem. And of course, those legacy systems or the one had on the one hand, those legacy systems may have worked reasonably well. 
For predecessor bodies, but we saw many examples where three to four systems sort of doing the same thing found their way into the into the new organisation. 
Time cost and and generally inefficiency and so there needs to be a clear plan on how you deal with reserves, accounting matters and legacy financial systems. Next slide please. 
And governance is a really key issue for us. 
Some of the authorities didn't really have a the proper framework for governance set up from day one. There were historic governance issues in some of the legacy bodies and that made the whole process of having a sound governance framework a proper risk management structure quite difficult. 
At a number of bodies and then and then legacy legacy accounts is is a is another. 
Really challenging issue and Pam will be well aware of this from the Cumbria landscape that there there was some significant challenges in agricult. 
Prepared and audited that that don't give you that sound financial start point that you really want on day one because to some degree if you don't have audited accounts, your source of it's not guesswork. But there's there's a lack of assurance over those opening figures. 
Cybersecurity counter fraud? 
And all that these, these are all things that have different strengths in existing organisations and you need to be able to plan for what they look like in the new body so that there's a sort of strong foundation for that on day one. 
Next slide please. 
And transformation was one of the the things that we'll come on to a lot of that later. 
But so cultural operational change, the people's side systems, cyber security reliance trying to sort that out. The 1st 12 months to get a framework for that is incredibly important and. 
That's one of the things we didn't see happening in a lot of cases, data quality arrangements that were taken forward were. 
Poor and procurement practises. Obviously, each body had their historic procurement practise and we we didn't necessarily see a monetization of that. 
Going into the new bodies so that that is another area of focus and and a really key thing for us is about corporate knowledge. Now a lot of a lot of obviously a lot of the county area reorganisations. 
Will be will contain a lot of organisations, contain staff, in particular functions, finance, HRIT who might look at reorganisation as a chance to move on as a chance to retire in some cases. 
And I think there needs to be a a very clear assessment of what value could individuals add to make sure the utilisation is up and running, because if the whole finance department of all the districts was. 
Before vested day is going to be a significant problem and that has been a challenge in a lot of these legacy bodies. In virtually every case. 
Accounts will not produce on time and accounts were not available for audit. 
And audit working papers for a long time in many of these bodies. So it's been really, really challenging. And some of those delays have been over a year from from the deadline. So a really big problem that needs to to be looked through. 
We set all of these out in in our report, which is so obviously available on our website. We can set round with these slides in due course. Next slide. 
And again, it's probably something that that Claire will touch on later, but. 
How you get how you get by it, how you get by it from people without going councils holding it by from staff partners, it's really important and that's about communication and decision making, making sure the government structures and the organisation foster trust and collaboration. 
So there's there's many, many things to do but invest in engagement strategies to create a vision for new authorities is absolutely vital. 
I think that is on Japan. 
Play trailer of the song. 

 
Duke, Pam   21:30 
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Paul and yeah, nice to see you all this morning and it's really great to be able to share sort of our experience in Cumbria. I mean we we were I think it was August 21 when the announcement came through about watch which business case had been approved and and it's fair to say that the county had gone for a single unitary the. 
Was made that it was. It was going to be two unitaries and we just had to then regroup and put our heads together and deliver on that proposal. So I think this is the trickiest time for everybody actually, because the business cases are going in. There's very different business cases for different areas and that that brings quite a bit of tension. 
And quite a little bit of pressure really. And a lot of uncertainty across all the teams. So you know this is the hardest time and I think what you'll find is when that solution comes, whether you agree with it or not, your professional head kicks in and you just have to deliver it. And so it starts to bring in that sharp focus we had 20 months to do. 
To deliver LGR in Cumbria, which was moving from a county splitting account into two, bringing in three districts into each of those two new unitaries, and we also managed to move the fire service over to the police Commissioner. So it was complex. It's a I'll be really honest. It's an ultra marathon at best and I don't even run for a bus so. 
It's. 
You know, you've got to pace yourself. You've got to know where your pit stops are. You've got to really look after each other. I mean, we we set some very high level objectives for our programme. One was to pay people on vesting day. That's suppliers and our staff. Two was to be able to collect income because we needed the Council tax money coming in and fees and charges. 
We need to have a Ledger that we could at least pull some management information out of and produce a set of accounts at the end of it, and we did. We wanted to support transformation, but we were really honest about the level of transformation that was deliverable before day one. And then we added a fifth one in quite quickly about just making sure we looked after each other. 
And got ourselves through it in one piece, which was became quite critical actually as you go through those last 18 months. So I think it's it's a real privilege to be involved in it. You don't often get the chance to be part of setting up a new new unitary Council and you may not end up in those statutory roles. You you may decide not to or you may not get that opportunity. 
But I just think it's professionally. It's really great to be involved with and, but I think the important message as well is those that don't want to step into that LGR programme are critical and equally as important, because the day business does not reduce so. 
So I think sort of the overall reflections or initial reflections is, you know be realistic. This is the time when you've got to be really honest about, you know, what is it that's working well in your organisations, what isn't? We all put a slight veneer, don't we on on how well our finances are or have financial governance or decision making. 
And and the reality is that you know, your head has to turn to give him those new unitaries, the best chance to survive. The best chance to be financially sustainable. The best chance to give improved services to residents. So. So you almost you have to, you know, flick to what everything we do and you've got members that still want to end well. 
So you're satisfying that requirement as well, so you're satisfying the ending well, process internally, but you're also making sure that those new unitary councils have the best opportunity to deliver. It is hugely complex and you'll start off with an ambitious programme and gradually whittle it. 
Down and we didn't want to be safe and legal in Cumbria to start with. We did have massive ambition around transformation and it was still there and but I think it just became a reality check about capacity to deliver that alongside safe and legal and ultimately safe and legal always bubbles up as being the priority. 
Because you know, you've got to get to vesting day and almost the best bit about vesting day is that nobody notices. Apart from maybe you know your emblems on the side of side of your bin waggons changes. So. So yeah, it's it's really important that that safe and legal lands. 
I think there's a bit there about making sure which hat you're wearing. You will get pulled into different conversations and different roles as part of the LGR programme, and if you're still in a substantive role then you know I I used to start every meeting by saying in this in this meeting I'm the LGR lead for finance or I'm the still director. 
Finance for the County Council, or because people will, you know, they'll look for bias in some of the decision making that you're making. So you're going to be really clear about your roles. I think we've talked about the honesty. I think that skills and capacity is is going to be there's so many authorities going through LGR at the same time, I do think. 
We're going to have to really pull on each other and support each other and the sector support that's available. I mean LGA are in that space, sit for in the space. We GT were our auditors, we we worked really closely with, with GT throughout the process and you know, you really need to lean in on each other and and I would say you need mutual aid amongst your own. 
Authority. 
As well, so you do need to really lead in, as Paul said, we had some really tricky issues in Cumbria that we've known about for a while and we already had a bit of mutual aid and you'll find your finance community, your MO community, whichever professional organisation is or group it and they probably work quite well together and if you. 
Keep the politics out of this. Then you know you. You're really well shaped to be able to sort of deliver on on, on this LGR programme. I think the other bit though is own your own programme, you know, be curious, it's that there is a lot of commonality across these programmes, but you can't just lift and drop what we did in Cumbria into another area. I mean, we were going through it. 
It was Somerset. We were going through with, North Yorkshire, Gary, Jason and I would catch up and we had very different issues that we were we were trying to deal with, but it was a it was a safe space as well to support each other. But but you're doing your own programme, own it, you know, and whatever support you're getting in, don't let them take over the ownership of it. 
I think this transition from business case to to actual delivery the the penny drops that the business cases are a moment in time and you know the spurious accuracy is a phrase I heard the other day in those business cases. And So what you'll do through the next 18 months. 
Is testing challenge all of those assumptions, and whoever the 151 is, if those new unitaries, when they're appointed before vesting day, they will ultimately sign off to say that those those assumptions are robust and that the estimates of that budget are robust. So you know it is quite a transition, don't assume. 
Business. 
These cases will be implemented as they stand. A lot happens in a couple of years in local government. The whole landscape can change quite significantly. We're about to skip the settlement. You know, it's the whole world can move quite a bit in two years. So your role really is to take those estimates, those those assumptions as business cases and and make them real. 
For that 2829 financial year and and own those assumptions, so that professional knowledge in that professional expertise is absolutely critical because you will be pushed, pulled in every direction. Behaviours aren't always as perfect as you'd like them to be. And so but if you keep leaning into that professional side of yours. 
All sort of your responsibilities that really helps get you through because you know there's a hell of a lot of counting standards and financial government standards and and you can use your audit committees to really support you in some of that challenge and check about, you know, are we still compliant and we still delivering value for money through all. 
With this, and is the confidence in the programme in terms of the the ultimate risk of business continuity and service continuity, so moving on to the next slide, which I probably covered in this slide, because I tend to do that when I'm talking. Apologies Simon, I will, I will pull it together. It is a marathon, not Sprint. We've talked about that. 
And I remember ringing sit for actually and saying can I have your best technical person we're going to need them for this. And the day later I rang the back, I said actually we need your best programme manager. You know, we've got the technical expertise across all the teams in Cumbria. What we didn't have was that programme management expertise that could really hold it and hold us to account. So I think. 
That's that's the bit for me is this time period we've got now before, before we actually get the announcements of which options are sorry exception and start to get that PMO set up trying to get that programme set up, get your chief execs, get your CFOs start to get terms of reference for what your group's going to be. 
Which things identified? You can do a lot early on, so bring those CFOs together, get that professional alignment. They always say build friends in peacetime absolutely do that and you've still got the day job. So you might need to, you know, bring in backfill. You might need to look at opportunities to, but there's some quick wins. 
Really and looking at sort of data and trying to get data cleansing through offload your trust funds to any community care foundations that will take them. And yeah, just get rid of any cost centres. You don't need clear out your sort of statement of accounts and your ledges and get them down to the basics. Close any. 
Bank accounts that are just hanging around that you don't really need any more and really have a good look at your reserves and have a good look at what you're using them for and you need clarity because you've got to be able to share and explain to everybody else in that in that in your locality what what's sitting in your budget, what's sitting in your accounts and what. 
Those assumptions are pension fund. Look at some early decisions on that. We took quite an early decision on on making sure that we're going to keep it as a Cumbria pension fund. The decision about which authority became the administrative authority took a bit longer, but the actual decision to maintain it and I know that I think Surrey looking at. 
Make it out as a as a separate sort of committee so you know, make some early decisions in terms of some of those big items. It's really important. So just on to the watch outs and I think in terms of some of your next slide please. 
So in terms of the of the watch out says say it's it's not a panacea, so you know you will. You've got an awful lot of challenge to get through the next couple of years financially sustainable and set balance budgets. There's a lot of conversation about send at the moment. 
So you know, you've got to be conscious there will be some decision making in the next two years that will ultimately impact on those new unitaries. And they probably aren't going to be reflected in those business cases. So you know, you've got to really keep on top of what the decisions are. And I think the one thing we did well in Cumbria was we're really honest about the budget gap. 
Likely to be there from day one, and the fact that those new unitary authorities weren't going to start with a balanced budget, they were probably going to start with a budget gap that they had to fix that will be sitting in the medium term financial plans that'll be published in the next couple of months. And the accounts and audits we did manage to get all of our W London Furnace, Cumberland had a. 
Had had more specific problems, but we did manage to get all of our seven sets of accounts done in that first year at West London Furnace. So we got an opening balance sheet that was audited and that was a conscious decision. We we ended up then with 2324 being slightly delayed, but there was a conscious decision to get that opening balance sheet audited. 
And we were proud about of doing that. I'll let Claire talk about culture and columns because, you know, that's just so critical in all of this and legal agreements everywhere. So you'll get to know your MO. You'll spend a lot of time in darkened rooms with MO through this and just be realistic about capacity. 
So my final slide overall summary, you know staff are your ultimate asset and you know they're the greatest asset. They're who you need. You will need to have some off the record conversation. 
About those that you want to keep, even if you want to go and keep them till after vesting day for six months, 12 months you know be be creative around how you you keep that skill set and that knowledge in in your new unitaries systems is a whole separate ball game. But just be clear about what you can and can't do. You know where are you from? 
The procurement perspective, how many need to be sort of you know have upgrades before you can even start to merge them etcetera statute. There's just a plethora section 16, you'll get to know all of the different sections of various local government acts, but you do, you do need to define detail in those. 
Is critical because then you end up with a legal agreement on the 31st of March that will set how the assets, liabilities, reserves are separated between the new unitary councils. And so you really need to be able to take all of your disaggregation work, all of your aggregation work. 
And be able to put it into a legal document. And that's don't you know, that's that's quite the task and ultimately it's about the resident. I think what we my old overall lesson learned is that it is worth it that we've got some real benefits coming out the other side. It's a real chance to reflect on trying to do something different. 
You know, you can actually really start to introduce a new operating model, really start to introduce, you know more working with communities or the preventative agenda. It's it's a real opportunity to be much more ambitious about how you maybe want to deliver services to the to local residents differently, but keep them the focus. 
And we all used to fall out, which happened, really, but did happen. You know, we kept on going back to ultimately, it's the resident that matters. We're all there to do that job that's already turn up every day is to make sure that our residents get those services. So if it gets tricky, keep coming back to the fact that it's public money and we deliver public services to residents. And that's ultimately. 
The the goal is to make those better through all of this process, so thank you. Hopefully that was OK. 

 
Simon N Christian   35:44 
That was really good. Thank you, Pam. So in the next section, we're just going to dive into, I suppose a few, a few of those points that you that you brought out and I think some really key interesting observations. So your organisations are going to go through a number of different iterations over the next 2-3. 
Four years and obviously within all of the business cases, you will be talking about and articulating, I suppose, to the journey just up to vesting day and then post vesting day. So we're going to focus in over the next sort of 1015 minutes around some of those, no regrets decisions that Pam was just. 
Talking about and some of those things where it can be because of the focus and the pressures in BAU and everything else that you've just got to do operationally in terms of keeping the wheels moving back in your service areas, that it's quite easy to, you know, put the pen down post business case and wait until the decision comes. But we all kind of know that. 
When you look back at any significant transformation that you are are faced with, if anybody said to you at the beginning of that you could have an extra two or three months just to do some early preparation. Some of those no regrets things that you could just get in place so that you are better prepared when the decision does come to really sort of hit the ground. 
So the next slide we just talk about some of those key phases and everyone sort of talks about them differently, but I suppose at the moment we're firmly in that prepare phase. So part of that has been about understanding and rehearsing the arguments for why there is a case for change in the specific areas and what that looks. 
About but the other side to that prepare phase is about the no regrets decisions that you can do and we can split those up in a number of different ways. You'll see then once the decision comes, you move into that transitional period where you're agreeing the implementation plans, you're setting up the interim leadership and models, you're preparing for elections, you're pulling together all of those. 
Those blueprints and you're deciding what the change looks like in those different areas as we as some of the colleagues on the call have mentioned, we then very purposely talk about that post vesting day as a period of stabilisation and improvement. It's not radical transformation, it's not everything is different on day one. 
It's about ensuring continuity rather than wholesale change, and then after that slowly over a period of time, 2-3 years post vesting day, different components of that transformation can be released across the organisation. 
The key message, ultimately is this is a multi year journey front loading. Everything isn't realistic and really understanding how change impacts different parts of the organisation and OP model is going to be really crucial. So in addition to timeframes on the next slide we sort of. 
Just break this down in in in a little bit further, so lots of different places have ways of talking about their operating model and and and different components. But these different elements and the 8 elements that we have on the screen here are what really drives the value in an organisation and it's made-up of a whole range. 
Different things. So whether that's sort of organisational structure, core processes, people and culture, property and assets isn't just about timelines and plan. It's about how all of these elements come together to create a well functioning, coherent organisation. 
And designing these components in a way that supports efficiency, accountability, resilience is really, really key in terms of moving forwards practically with LGR proposals moving forward. So we're just going to really quickly step through some of these different areas to give some examples. And as Paul said, we'll share these. 
Slides afterwards because there's lots of detail on the following slides, so we're not going to go into each and everyone, but just to give some practical steps. So in terms of organisational structure as the sort of the first one, this theme's all about how we design and kind of embed the structure of the organisation for sort of operating effectively. 
When we move across the four phases, we move from sort of defining design principles sort of customer simplicity, resident centricity, all of those types of things to interim accountabilities. How the top tier Directorate models going to sort of function, budget, ownership and how to decision making is going to happen. 
And then we sort of get into a phase where actually we're learning and shaping those. I think ultimately the key takeaway on the operating model and the operating structure is it's about creating clarity and resilience and an understanding that you're not going to move from, you know, iOS one to iOS two overnight and it's actually going to be. 
In incremental jumps in different areas, the next thing. 
Was it? 
It's actually that the organisation core activities run smoothly and effectively during and after transition. Again, I think upfront what are those things that you can be doing now? Well that's things about creating. Sorry those sorry one delivery models, those are about creating. 
Things like the as is catalogue of service areas. So what are all of those service pathways at the moment? What are the volumes? What are the costs? What the outcomes, what the systems and controls and contracts that relate to those different delivery models of all of the constituent authorities that are going to be brought together? And do you have those service catalogues? 
Logs kind of in warm placed then. Once you've got all of those services in different areas, you're able to think about how actually the change might impact them. So some of them you might want to integrate and merge in advance of vesting day so that you have one unified function for delivery on that areas. 
Other service areas you might actually want to change into running a group function and looking at those specific areas, so that's going to be really important as you sort of go through into those sort of core areas. The next slide please. 
So in terms of this, the process side, so again we talk about mapping those regulatory obligations, thinking about current material processes within the organisation. So how do people book things, pay for things, assess things as it currently stands and what are you going to continue to maintain and keep as you move into that vesting period and what are you actually? 
To change when it goes forward later, once you've sort of mapped all of those processes and compared them against legacy bodies, you can start to identify, I suppose, how you want to change and improve those things, whether that be procure to pay, recruit to hire, incident handling casework flows across from, you know, homelessness services. 
Overseas. 
Which might currently sit in districts into people, functions that county authorities or other unitary authorities have been traditionally responsible for. How are those interactions going to change and evolve over that period to make sure that a you meet all of your obligations and you're providing the services? 
That your residents require, but also you're identifying all of those opportunities and benefits for improving how we actually wrap around a customer. All those things that we kind of know that are just true in terms of how so public services should be designed. 
So again, all of those key areas where we're thinking about sort of standard operating procedures and and those things where we're actually saying you know, we should have more of a robust view of what we do on a day-to-day basis. But we don't yet will be invaluable when you actually get into some of those later periods, as Paul said, if people move on and and you lose that sort of knowledge within the. 
The organisation on the next slide, please. 
In terms of digital and data and technology, it's obviously critical for enabling integration and efficiency for modern services. Again, it's that complete view of your applications and infrastructure, digital infrastructure creating an enterprise sort of architecture. 
So that each of those individual organisations has got a really clearview of what it's bringing in. What it where it's got ongoing obligations, how it's information and custom management sort of flows through as we move into that transition, it's about understanding what's that day one minimum service. So again what are those core objectives? 
Like Pam mentioned in relation to finance, so we want to be able to collect money, we want to be able to pay people some of those things. What are the day one minimum standards that you're going to require from a digital data and technology perspective? And then how does that evolve and build over time? How does that relate to some of the big building blocks in relation to things like Erps and that? 
Integration. How you're going to manage that and retain the specific skills in those different areas there and the last section I'm going to cover is just around people and culture, which is about sort of building the workforce and organisational culture needed to sort of drive the change. So again it really. 
Obvious stuff, but it's about that workforce baseline. The amount of organisations we go into and let's just say their establishment isn't in the tidiest of fashions. So what can you do in the period up to March just to make sure that your establishment is clean? You understand how the organisation is structured and layered, how you're contracting? 
With people, the different levels of obligations you've got in different places where you've got two PS where you've got secondments all of those different legacy arrangements that you're going to bring into this new organisation that's then going to have to create and negotiate and discuss with trade unions a new contractual. 
Arrangement and deal with its employees and get to that shared point. And as we've seen from some of the more recent utilisations that can take an incredibly long period of time as well. Just to get to that point. So anything that you can do now to make sure that that baseline is there, that wealth of data. 
Is really key, obviously. Then another immediate sort of priority after the decision is that retention plan, we know that there are tensions in different service areas, whether that be in some of the core enabling functions like finance, like legal, like people, you know it is incredibly competitive at the moment. 
Or the top talents. So what's your plan for retaining some of those really essential skills in those areas and bringing them through into the future workforce, something that sort of Pam talked about as well in relation to how do you free them up, what you don't want to necessarily do is, as you're resourcing up to deliver this, just bring in a load of. 
External people for a short period of time to manage them, design the transition and then go away. Actually some of your resourcing plan could be thought and driven by how do you bring in resource to backfill the day-to-day BAU activity. So you can release your kind of best and brightest to work alongside the right advisors in terms. 
Of actually delivering it and that way, obviously you're building capacity, you're building knowledge, but you're also making sure that you're you're not just paying other advisors to take that knowledge on elsewhere. So there's some really interesting sort of strategies there and some lessons learns that that people can do over those different periods. 
But Paul, over to you to cover off the last couple. 
You might be muted, Paul. 

 
   47:15 
Sorry, first one for me is finance and commercial. I mean clearly this is the bedrock of of the new process. 
And there are a whole range of activities that that need to happen for making sure contract registers are up to date. 
You clear about your key risk, key liabilities, balance sheet disaggregation, and where the what the unaudited accounts say for you of the of the legacy bodies, making sure the budget envelopes are set. 
The Treasury and banking arrangements were in place. 
They want controls are are in place and this is a key thing. I think the first consolidation budget monitor is published in one format, 1 corporate format. So it really reflects the organisation. 
And then commercial governance is maturing. We better supply our performance management. 
You know social value measurement. How do you play that into new arrangements and what your longer term funding strategies and investment to say programmes look like? 
To to take forward transformation and I think compliance transparency. 
And the ability to fund future change is really important. Understanding that position is really important as as part of that financial commercial background. Next slide please. 
We then move on to property and assets and clearly this is a hugely important area as fixed asset registers. I mean we find a lot of challenges with asset registers in local government. They're not always up to date and this is going to be an even harder task. 
Because you've got to bring all those different fix asset registers and and other asset information all together. 
So. 
You've got to get into the sort of process of detailed plans to transfer ownership of management assets between entities. 
You've got the whole complexity of if for S16A big challenge in local government this year, we've seen it to be very, very challenging and then you've got to bring that together for new entities and clearly different authorities will have different approaches and that's really important to look at. 
I've. 
Talked earlier about ledgers, consolidation of ledgers, how that works, really important issue. 
And of course, there's the long term strategy for property. Obviously, we've COVID took us into a different place in terms of asset management as it needs. 
Obviously there has been challenges across the sector in how investment properties have been managed and financed, and that's that's something a new organisation will need to think about. And of course, you know, developing more sophisticated. 
Analytical tools for management properties so that the new authority can make those really key property decisions for the next 1020 thirty years. 
And getting that right and all the challenges around carbon efficiency and green building standards etcetera needs to be managed. So these are really difficult areas to focus on. 
Next slide please. 
That's the final themed governance and decision making. 
The imports of mapping governance structures across the legacy bodies is vital just to make sure you don't miss anything. What are those arrangements? What's the oversight within the organisation? What's best practise that you can take into the new bodies? That's really important. 
And then defining what those new governance principles and frameworks are the organisation, so that needs to be done in advance. What's the whole decision making process? 
During an asset finance and HR transfers very important process. 
And and be a document. Those key decisions made that that can then transfer into the into the new organisations. I think the effect of this of governance is really important to review and understand. 
At the moment, you're obviously have already committees. You'll have eternal audit, you'll have counter fraud, you have risk management strategies. None of those will be alike necessarily across bodies. And the question is how do you how do you bring the best together to? 
Ensure you take the right practises into the new body and then what's your plan for embedding those? And what does performance management look like? How does that compare? Where do you draw on good practise and of course draw it on governance models. 
That work, not for the next year, but for the next 5-10 years and recognise the course that governance is not a static. 
Thing it needs to evolve. One of the monetary officers I work with. 
That governance is a bit like painting the 4th bridge. It's a never ending process, so you can never rest on your laurels in any given year. So I think the structures need to be sent out set up to reflect those risks. And I think just the final thing before I hand over to Simon, what we've done in these slides. 
Is set out both the things you need. We think you need to do go through LGR and also the things that you need to have assured because we all have our own view about whether we've done something or whether we've done it right. 
And therefore it's about delivering these processes and these approaches, but then then ensuring that you have some way of assuring that those processes are robust and can be delivered effectively into new organisation. 
I'll now hand back to Simon. 

 
Simon N Christian   52:54 
Well, thanks, Paul. So so far we've looked at some of the lessons learned from the past we've looked at and dived into quite some detail around the different functional themes within the operating model and some of those sort of no regrets decisions, but little of that kind of matters if we don't bring people with us. 
And think about some of the other elements of change. So Claire over to you. 

 
Claire Taylor - Executive Director: Corporate Services   53:18 
Thank you, Simon. I'm going to, as you'd expect, dwell just a moment on the challenge. So my first slide revisits the messy that we've been talking about and I'm going to start with just a a little story. I'm a relatively recent joiner to Essex County Council. 
I was in a the privileged position of working in a core city with an established mayoral combined authority, and I just felt that I was missing out on LGR. So I have recently joined Essex and in my introductory conversation with the leader, he asked me how many counsellors. 
I thought were at heat, I thought were in in Essex and it's over 700 councillors and I think we all know that councillors have a deep and profound connection to place and purpose because they're not paid to do what they do. And I thought about that and I thought about the just the amount of experience and passion and commitment. 
On on the pitch and I extended my thinking to think about the number of staff across the piece. So we've got, I don't know, one and a half million residents in Essex. I reckon there's well, well in excess of 10,000 members of staff that are affected by these proposals. I'm not naive enough to believe that everybody has a deeper, meaningful sense. 
Connection and love and commitment to their employer. But some of us do, and some of us have a the our drivers for this public public work is is is very much part of our pull. So my pull to Essex, why did I make that step more recently? Why did I join such in such an unstable environment? 
It's really simple. I grow up here and I did my work experience at Essex County Council and my mum worked here. It's a real privilege to be leading in place and coming back 25 years later. This job is more than just a job. It's a, it's a commitment. It's something I've been doing. 
And I say that because essentially we're all be dealing with loss and ambiguity and in some of these sessions that I've heard others speaking at, I think sometimes we don't always recognise that there's quite a lot of emotion in that. There's a sense of saying goodbye. And I think Pam talked about saying goodbye, well, and so it's also nurturing what? 
All of our organisations in the change space are doing, I think that's key and important to reflect on now I'm going to annoy Simon because he knows that I was always going to annoy Simon. We you hear this talking in major change programmes a lot. We need to put our best people on it. Our best and brightest. 
The A-Team on it and it's true, and it's right. We need good people, subject matter expertise and technical expertise, programme management expertise. But we do by saying that other those that aren't part of the journey. 
So I'm other ring and division is our enemy in this space, because that's what we're in the business of doing, disaggregation, aggregation. So I think we need to be really careful about how we engage people, because if you're part of the transition team and you're a key part of that team, that's brilliant and important work. 
If you're delivering a transformation strategy and programming send and that's ongoing, that's also brilliant work as well. So I think it's really important to think about the workforce as a whole in that context. I also wanted to just talk about control and in my next slide, I'll reflect on this a little bit more. 
I'm I'm making an assumption that many of us on the call might be might be leaders, senior leaders, managers in this space and often we're quite used to initiating restructures, deciding to join two organisations together. We're often the people that pull the lever and the change effects others. This is different. 
We are directly affected by this change as well, and we aren't necessarily in control of it. So I think we also need to be really reflective of ourselves as leaders in that space. I I wanted to reflect as well on the the nature of the challenge ahead of us. 
So often there's power dynamics, there's traditional hierarchies, there's the role of members. There's our constitutions, there's schemes of delegations we can rely on. Fairly traditional decision making and and and and hierarchies to to guide our work. 
In the space of collaboration in this moment of transition that Essex is in right now between the business case and the minded to decision that starts to breakdown, actually we're equals in the system with we've got we're bringing different experiences. So really recognising the role of systems leadership and how we. 
Influence and shape a system by our behaviours is really important, so we've talked a little bit about this. The problem that we're facing the change challenge that we're facing, the people that we're leading through are dealing it, but with complicated stuff. It's a hugely complicated technical programme which. 
Just seen across a target operating model, but it's also really complex. There's interdependencies that we don't yet understand and actually being able to operate in both of those spaces is really important, which means we are inevitably in the space of taking hundreds and thousands of people. 
You. 
Multiple lines of accountability, competing and changing roles, ambiguous roles and responsibilities, matrix working arrangements, and and that's hard for people because we thrive when we have clarity of purpose. So it's really beginning to recognise and understand the the nature of the change. 
Landscape that we're facing and my final point on this slide is we'll all be thinking inside out. So we'll be thinking about safe and legal. We're thinking about the institutions and the organisation we're creating, the institutions and organisations we're winding down and we're thinking about us and our workforce. 
Our data, our IT infrastructure, all of those things as part of taking people with us, we must also think about all of our partners and communities, Community, voluntary and faith sector representatives that have quite deep relationships with us in place. 
So they will also be nervous about the changes coming ahead and we want to understand what does this mean for my contract or my voluntary organisation working for, for the Council, working with the Council and and how might that change and that anxiety back to the systems point will ripple through and be popping up. 
In all sorts of different places. So let's face it, like the adaptive leadership challenge here is pretty big. So my next slide is attempts to frame some ways through and in the ways through piece. When I was thinking about this, I was inspired by some work. 
That's that. That started and has been nurtured in the NHS. So Professor Michael West's models of compassionate leadership and but I actually started with an ABC and this relates to nurses, midwives, core needs. But I really like it as a simple model, autonomy, belonging. 
Contribution. So first to thrive in the workplace, we we want to be in control of our work. We want to have a sense of belonging belonging in time and space and connection with the work that we do, the organisations, and we want to understand, specially as public service workers, what our connection. 

 
   1:00:47 
Equal. 

 
Claire Taylor - Executive Director: Corporate Services   1:00:52 
Purpose and places. So here in Essex, we're trying to have a think about how our communication strategies are able to think about belonging, contribution about about autonomy, about our control over our environment. 
So from a communications and I think we've all said communications is key. So I just wanted to get under a little bit what that means. So I think there's two ways of thinking about communications. So there's something we're all I think naturally really good at, which is we know that communication is really important for people to understand. 
And what does this mean for me? When's it going to happen? And for those of us that have been being involved in any type of transformational change programme, we know that actually they're the questions that that our colleagues most want answered and that is that's true for this as well. And certainly we're feeling that here right now. 
Yeah. 
But I think also when you take a step back and think about communications as well as as humans, we tell stories. So I started by telling you a little bit about my wife or Essex, a 14 year old doing work experience in the legal department. Yeah, working in a customer contact centre. These are part of my story. And when I share these. 
With people I'm trying to demonstrate my commitment to place and my long term aspiration for place as well. So people want to know how they can be part of the story and it's really important I think as part as part of the technocratic activities and the business cases that we create. We also help people tell the story. 
And some of for some people that might be to, to Pam's point earlier, and that they might not be part of the future, but knowing they can be part of creating and leaving a legacy is also really important. A wise leader once said to me, remember, a feather can be a hammer in your hands. 
And there's something in here about our role as leaders and how we need to own and occupy the space of helping to create a compelling vision about belonging, about connection, about core values and purpose. 
However anxious we may feel, however, much tension there might be as we go through these processes and and recognising that and not projecting and creating the ripple effects of that, and because people will be looking for us. 
Because if we can't have stability in our system, we can have authenticity and consistency. So our role as leaders is really important in that. And so the last reflection that I wanted to to kind of share around people and bringing bringing people with us. 
And I think it can be, it can sometimes feel quite soft to talk about compassionate leadership. It can feel like it's not a proper framework or it's it's it's all about being nice and not making difficult decisions. 
But actually I think this model is really helpful about understanding what our role is as taking people with us. So attending means being present with people. It means listening actively and it means really understanding the challenges people are facing in the workplace. 
And that understanding means not judging it means actually spending that that, that, that detailed time and space, thinking about what is it that's driving some of these behaviours, these insights, empathising. 
Of I mean it sounds obvious, but actually really kind of recognising that that there'll be emotion back to my first slide, emotion and challenge in the place recognising that and step stepping in maybe to help around that and help isn't a soft. 
Nice activity. It's thoughtful, intelligent activity that is taken to remediate when distress is fell. So I think taking people with us, these, these couple of models, about understanding what drives and motivates people and thinking about it from a behavioural perspective through. 
A model such as the compassionate leadership is just some of the ways in which here in Essex, we're beginning to think about our engagement strategy as we move into into implementation. Super happy to take any questions and thank you very much, Simon. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:05:18 
Thanks, Claire. I think that was really powerful and a lovely way to end. So we've given you a whole host of sort of views today, some sort of really detailed around some of the individual components and some really nice reflections, I suppose on Westland and how we might go. 
About sort of approaching the sort of the journey ahead, we've got some time now for colleagues to ask any questions that they've got from the conversations that we've had and we've got a slider up and running as well, which I'm going to sort of move over to. So if people want to scan the queue. 
To our codes and and log in and post any questions from that I can see any questions that come in but in great Blue Peter style I have 3 prepared questions that I asked for people to give me in advance and I've got a specific target for each one of these. 
So to to start off with Pam, I was going to come to you about given your experiences, what three things would you have done differently with hindsight? 

 
Duke, Pam   1:06:27 
I've got 27, but no. I think the three big things for me is, you know, and Claire, you are absolutely spot on. You know the leadership role is as critical as the safe and legal technical programme management role. 
And actually, sometimes that's a bit that you lose in the diary. That's the bits sometimes get squeezed out and you do need those sort of just touch points with all of the teams touch points with everybody involved. The the coffees, the hugs, the the late night calls that you need to get people back on track and you know. 
So I don't underestimate the amount of energy that that takes and you need your own support mechanisms to get you through that. So you know you're going to have to lean on a lot of people and and to get yourself through that. So I think that's my first sort of reflection is make sure you've got your own support mechanisms in place and make sure that they don't get squeezed out the diary. 
Because it is people and staff and and the residents and communities and partners that are the critical part of this. The second bit for me is is be brave in some of the decisions, because if you're too risk averse, particularly around systems, it just causes so many problems on the other side and and transition and stabilisation. 
Is torturous if you, you know, we were in the position that we couldn't teams call each other between the different legacy organisations for quite a while because we were on different different platforms and some very basics like that became real barriers to culture and feeling like we're one team and growing. 
One team, so although you know it's about risk appetite and I think you've got to be quite brave but documented be really clear about the risks you know, so be a bit brave in that decision making and I think Members, you know, they're a critical part of this and you've got to level the playing field. The irony is that you. 
The Shadow Council might not be any of you Members you've got now. They might be completely different and but you do have to work really closely with your Members. We had a it was Members implementation blog. We called it, but it was shortened to men in black, but we we used to on a Friday morning just run a continuous training programmes. 
And every service had the opportunity to explain what their services were. District, County, making sure we had, you know, two guest speakers coming in. It just is levelling the playing ground, the playing field. I always get my my messages mixed up. But levelling the playing, the playing field, really in terms of knowledge and understanding. 
Because otherwise the decision makers may not be the best informed and, but yeah, I think invest in that. That's really critical. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:09:06 
Yeah. No, that's that's really great and a really good segue actually on to the next one. So when some of those relationships and discussions enter that more fractious sort of space, how do you manage that given what's going on, maybe one for for you, Claire, given your comments and that need for consensus being really sort of important. 

 
Claire Taylor - Executive Director: Corporate Services   1:09:26 
Oh, Simon, I might upset you again. So I think I think there's some couple of things I'd reflect. I think you can't always get consensus, but you can sometimes recognise when you can accommodate different views. So I think I think there's there's a recognition that you're not always going to get consensus and and start by understanding. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:09:29 
Yeah. 

 
Claire Taylor - Executive Director: Corporate Services   1:09:46 
That there is going to be difference and there's going to be challenges in the relationship. So I think I think just holding that and recognising that's going to happen and then recognising when it is happening. So there are some techniques that we sometimes use. So sometimes I'm just going to step out of this. 
Cotton. 
Literally, but kind of get to a balcony perspective and and take a bystander role in a conversation. Observe what's going on, and then step back into the conversation. Think how can I interact with this conversation to shape or change or de escalate? Actually thinking about the role of external facilitation. 
As well, it's super important and a really amazing opportunity and A and a skilled external facilitator on whether they're a management consultant acting as an advisor to the programme or actually a skilled facilitator is an investment that's worth it. 
Time together, these are obvious things that I know you all know about, but time together it's harder to fall out if you're if you're in together. And then again I think using different lenses to understand what's causing the nature of the of the fracture, maybe looking at things. 
From a risk based perspective, a visionary or ambition perspective, kind of a behavioural perspective and really trying to get get around what's causing that. And and I think sometimes agreeing when you can't disagree and can't agree and then having to come back to it because recognising that there's we're. 
There's a huge amounts of time pressure, but there is always time to come back to a conversation as well. Thanks Simon. I'm going to stop disagreeing with you in a minute. 
Yeah. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:11:34 
Thanks, Claire. Matthew. So Institute for Government are really good at you know, getting into and observing and making recommendations about the process of government and its approach to some of these big sort of sweeping initiatives. I suppose what would be the three things that you would? 
It's recommend that colleagues in MHCLG or in sort of individual authorities consider in terms of sort of going through this major change. 

 
Matthew Fright   1:12:05 
Well, I think I'm probably going to piggyback a little bit on what Claire said and and answer your question earlier about relationships. I think on both of our recent reports in local government organisation, we've really emphasised the importance of relationships and the one recommendation we made and again kind of piggybacking on what you're saying about time together is you know. 
Setting up. 
Of those joint working groups to make sure that you have what Mark Drakeford referred to when it came to COVID, a regular, regular, reliable rhythm of meetings to ensure that you actually have the space to commitment to keep going on. Have those conversations going when you have those slightly more tricky discussions. I suppose that applies. 
Those both when you're thinking about partners at a local level, different councils and then also new mayoralties that are coming down the line, but also with MHCLG to try and make sure that you have that forum to airing those potential disagreements. I think the other. 
Theme that I would pick up about linking to points early about bringing people with you is about the risk of introspection. The level of transformation that is going to be coming down the line is very much internally focused, but for that one supplier who might be providing. 
I don't know an adult social care provider. Their major, their major funding source could be the local authority and the lack of communication about what the expectations are that they'll be providing in the future can be quite debilitating. And so you do need to bring everybody with you and that's both suppliers. 
That's also the members of the public and finding ways to bring them as part of the conversation. So it isn't just sprung on people. And I suppose you wanted three. So I think the final one is at linking to point to think that Pam, I said about people being a most important resource, thinking about the fact that actually you. 
We really need to make sure those enabling organisations have the proper resource to support you through, and that is your HR and one of our recent pieces of research. We spoke to a former chief executive of District Council that underwent reorganisation and she said this. These changes have HR all over them and if you don't pay due attention. 
To the challenges and, you know, there'll be an equal play claim that's submitted on day one and that would just further draw out that strategic capacity when you need to be thinking about how to embed and how to transform. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:14:31 
Thanks, Matthew. I thought I was going to escape equal pay for an hour and a half, but you've managed to to sneak it in, so that's fine. So before we come to different types of support that's available, maybe one for you here, Pam, around, to what extent did you accept the risk of stopping some business? 

 
Matthew Fright   1:14:37 
Yeah. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:14:50 
This is usual activity. In order to release capacity. 

 
Duke, Pam   1:14:54 
Yeah, it's a really good question. It's a really difficult one when you're trying to end well and you've got, you know, a passion about the the suffering councils coming to an end. But there's there's a reality you you have to be really honest about materiality. We started in that last year really doing exception budget monitoring in between the quarterly reports. 
Because, you know, we just didn't have the capacity to do the usual depth of of budget monitoring now. We didn't mean that we weren't doing the analysis in the background, we just the amount of work that went to the report, right and where it was shared, you know, we just really streamlined that and and and it was really by exception that we started to trigger those conversations into the corporate management team. 
Into cabinet. I think you need your corporate management team in that same space. There are some change programmes in adults, children's waste, wherever that you've got to deliver and so they have to become top priorities. So some of your other change programmes actually just have to come to a halt. They will probably change again in. 
Transformation. 
On the other side, so you know, be careful about value for money in that in terms of is it worth that investment now to to really change it again in in 12 months time, we were really careful around the capital programme just in terms of you know we we most authorities have slippage. We were quite early on really clear about which programmes we thought we were. 
Kind of take over to the other side and and deliver as part of the new unitaries, because you know, again, capacity and and skills, but they're often some of those projects that from a Members point of view they absolutely still want to deliver. So you never do you know as an officer you you're working constantly with your Members in that negotiation space. 
And some really easy ones is we just didn't respond to any consultations for about 18 months because we didn't have any capacity and we just trusted that because we were still part of SCT or we're still part of the various bodies that they would, they would respond on our behalf. So you know, let's just focus on what we can do. So your materiality kicks in. We also raise the level of any. 
Editors are debtors because we didn't want to swap the system going into the new authorities. And you know that that just becomes we did it over two years just to get people used to that. So there's some real practical small stuff that you can do, but ultimately it's a negotiation with your Members about what you, what you, what do they really want to end well on and what is their real priority. 
Because, you know we can't deliver as much so, but they've got a Council plan that they've been public with and. And so yeah, it's it's challenging, but you you can, you know, put that risk appetite in put materiality in that there are you 2 sort of ways to to formally do it. 
Yeah. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:17:30 
Thanks, Pam. So the next question is what support is available to somebody trying to navigate LGR, so I can I can open this up more broadly to to anybody really, but I'll I'll sort of kick off, I think there's maybe three ways to think about support. So first, is that kind of at an individual level, so working on that assumption that sort of Claire mentioned earlier on? 
Assuming that everyone here is playing a fairly significant role in this change, that's about to come forward or or you're in the process of going, it's really important that you take sort of 30 minutes yourself and work out who your board is, who's your sort of circle of trusted advisors that you go to, friends, colleagues. 
That may be with you within your organisation. They might have moved on, but you need that circle of people outside of the day-to-day interactions and your immediate team that you can pick up the phone to. If you've got a bit of a crunchy issue on a specific area and you need that panel of people to lean on to call on the way home to talk about some of those frustration. 
Blow off some steam, ask for some advice. If they've come across it, and those such things. So I think really important that everyone kind of gets that network around them from in a fairly informal level at the next level. There's the kind of the outside in kind of bit the sectoral sort of level of engagement. Now the LGA are really proactive in this. 
So there's lots of LGR networks being set at the moment on a thematic basis where they're running regular sort of themed events on specific areas where you can go along and talk to those authorities that you're sort of going on side by side now. Again, that's really helpful just from the people that you meet at coffee in London. 
That are doing this alongside you in a different part of the country. Again, it builds that network, but too it enables you to not reinvent the wheel everywhere. So getting out to those sector events is is really key. And then the third and final bit, I'm going to walk a bit of a tightrope on, but it is about getting the right advisors in now. That's probably not. 
One stop shop and actually you need to be really careful there. But I suppose the analogy I would put is you know the look that Kevin McLeod gives people when he turns up to Grand Designs and they say, you know what he says, what support are you going to do this with and what budget do you have to do it? And they kind of say we're not, we're going to do it ourselves and we don't really have a budget. 
Yeah. And he gives them that sort of look and then he comes back ten years later and he's lost hair and he's, you know, he's, you know, he's a decade older and they're still not a roof. I suppose that's the sort of the analogy. So advisors are really important in the right place. You need to manage it really effectively. And you need to. 
Not get into the space where they're asking the questions and providing the answers, but you need to know how you need to use them, where you need that capacity and expertise to drive and support those people that you're putting in to do the work. And that's really really key that you map that out. So that would be the sort of three that I'd say there, but if anyone's got any additional reflections on that, happy. 
To take other answers. 

 
Duke, Pam   1:20:25 
So. 
Simon, I just, I just think there's a real commitment across the sector actually around sort of LGA sit for MHCLG, you know, local partnerships. There's a, there's a lot of joint working going on to make sure that there isn't that it's not competitive, it's supportive and there's a, the, the LGA, you're looking at the LGR hope too many acronyms, but trying to pull it all in one. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:20:33 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 

 
Duke, Pam   1:20:46 
In place because trying to find it and, but I think you know, hopefully there's a lot of plethora of information out there and to answer the second question a little bit, there's the LG. I've just issued some guidance on on financial governance throughout the LGR process because yeah, absolutely you, you need to keep hold of that all the way through in your audit committees have a role in that. 
So yeah, I think support is is there and available and use use your own colleagues and use other colleagues in different authorities that are going through it because ultimately it'll be the officers on the other side that have to land this. 
And so they need that knowledge. They need that information. They need that intelligence. So just be really honest and open. That's the best gift you can give the new sort of organisation is your honesty and your openness about what your existing position is. 
Yeah. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:21:36 
Yeah. Thanks, Pam. Paul, do you want to take the last question around assurance and risk and what approach should people do to making sure that they get this right? 

 
   1:21:51 
Thanks Simon. And and because you sort of indulge in a Segway into Kevin McCloud, I'm gonna do a slight one as well. So I recently watched the film Nuremberg and right at the end, there's a quote from a famous philosopher or. 
Which says basically the only indication of what men will do in the future is what they've done in the past. And So what I would say is that everything you've heard on this call today, whether it's Claire's talk about people. 
Or other things that some myself and Pam have done have done. I've talked about. 
They're the things that happened in the past, perhaps some of the things that didn't go quite right. Some of the things that did go right. So it's about focusing on those things and making sure that you use those almost as a sort of mental checklist of what you need to do and going forward. So I think that's the first thing. 
The second thing, of course, is once you've, you've learnt those lessons from the past, you've implemented them into your plans. Then what assurance do you get? How do you get assurance there are different ways to get assurance? There are different assurance providers. 
We've talked about sector support, there'll be internal processes for having a sort of fresh pair of eyes on what you do. And of course there'll be external assurance and picking the right advisors to help you. So it's absolutely vital, I think, to make sure you go into vested day. 
When you have assurance about all the processes and plans that you've got so that that that will be my fault. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:23:26 
Thanks, Paul. So a nice closing question here. When will we get the slides which will be, you know as soon as practically possible. So we are going to publish the the slides in their entirety. The recording of this Paul and I will do some follow up notes with. 
Hopefully some input from from colleagues on the on the call, and given that there's no further questions, I will close it there for people to get a coffee before their next 11:00 meeting. So thank you very much for joining us all today. Thank you very much for colleagues. 
And our sort of expert panel for joining us as well. Hopefully you've all found it really useful, practical and insightful. And we'll see you soon. 

 
Claire Taylor - Executive Director: Corporate Services   1:24:11 
Thanks everyone. Bye bye. 

 
Simon N Christian   1:24:13 
Thank you. 

 
Duke, Pam   1:24:13 
Thanks everyone. Yeah. 

 
Matthew Fright   1:24:14 
Thanks, bye.