Joint Appointments

17 December 2009 by Beverley Steel

The Operational Efficiency Programme, the Pre-Budget Report, the Smarter Government action plan, as well as the expectation surrounding the Total Place initiatives and the NHS integrated care pilots all suggest that “joined-up” government and public services are going to be a major part of the public sector’s response to the financial crisis. This paper looks at the challenges involved in the governance of joined-up government and public services. An increasing share of local leadership of the public sector will be undertaken collaboratively and this Board Paper suggests ways in which organisations can overcome organisational, processual and attitudinal barriers to secure long-term efficiency and outcomes gains through joint appointments, pooled budgets and collaborative service delivery.

The various parts of the public sector have advanced at strikingly different speeds towards implementation of these policies: shared back‐office solutions are reasonably well‐understood and widelyused in local government; Whitehall Departments are widely held to be in dire need of more effective and more strategic procurement and estates management and PCTs are desperately scrabbling to develop commissioning skills in a race to secure better value for money as well as service quality.

Some statutory organisations, in areas where the politics are right, and relationships between the constituent parts of the public sector are harmonious, are coming together in a dance to the new music of collaborative strategic planning and thematic budgeting.

Joint appointments are on the rise, and in many cases these are emerging organically out of collaboration on shared services (as is the case in Waltham Forest, where the NHS and Council are recruiting a joint Director of Finance); it is also increasingly commonplace for Local Authorities and PCTs to jointly appoint a Director of Public Health – a trend that is certain to be accelerated and driven by ring‐fenced, population health budgets. Joint appointments in public health can afford opportunities to bring population health improvement right into the heart of Councils' strategic planning in core areas like housing, environmental services and education, if the  organisational attitude is right, and the individual post‐holder is savvy and visionary enough to bring about real change.

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