RPA - The story so far

The Review of Public Administration – moving forward
A NICVA Briefing Paper

On 22 Nov 2005 it was announced that there would be:

• 7 councils
• A new power of community planning
• One Regional Health and Social Services Authority to manage performance
• 7 primary care-led commissioning groups
• 5 health trusts from instead of the existing 18, providing the actual services
• 1 Education Authority to replace the Education and Library Boards and the advisory functions of NICIE, CCMS and CnaG.

On March 2006 a further announcement on Quangos was made, reducing them from 81 to 53.

Councils

The new local council areas will be a combination of existing councils with a Boundary Commissioner deciding exactly where the final lines will be drawn. They will be:

• Belfast
• Coleraine, Moyle, Ballymoney, Ballymena, Larne
• Carrick, Newtownabbey, Antrim, Lisburn
• N Down, Newtownards, Castlereagh, Down
• Craigavon, Armagh, Banbridge, Newry & Mourne
• Derry, Limavady, Strabane, Magherafellt
• Fermanagh, Omagh, Cookstowm, Dungannon

Additional functions being given to councils include:

• Planning
• Local economic development
• Urban and rural regeneration
• Rural development
• Future EU programmes
• Community planning
• Arts and culture
• Community development
• Community relations

What’s happening now?

The timeframe for implementation of the Review is actually very short when you consider what needs to be done. Everything must be in place by 2009 but many of the changes in health and education will happen before then. Health is moving especially quickly. In the short term Minister David Cairns, who replaced Lord Rooker, is chairing a political panel to look at the way forward. Alongside that DOE is leading a Taskforce group to map out changes in local government. This has nine subgroups looking at discreet areas such as community planning, governance, central/local government relations, shared services and human resources.

NICVA met with DOE and agreed that the sector will be represented in this part of the process. We asked for and were given seats on five of the subgroups. Details of the representatives and the work of the subgroups can be found by following this link.

This first stage of the process is running up to the summer. Various pieces of legislation will then be drafted to allow changes to happen. A Boundary Commissioner has already been appointed to begin the process of firming up the seven new council areas. The plan is to hold elections late in 2008 so that shadow structures can be in place before 2009.

In health, plans are afoot to have shadow health trusts up and running by September this year, to be fully functioning by April 2007. Chairs and senior staff are currently being appointed and boundaries fixed.

Context

The policy context set by government for the Review of Public Administration (RPA) is that of A Shared Future and of the recently launched NI Sustainable Development Strategy. It is NICVA’s strong view that all the institutions must embody the principles in these policies and must deliver the outcomes set out in them.

The financial context is that work originally done by the RPA did forecast savings from the new structures and there is no additional money going into the change process within Departments. However, in other places where similar exercises have been carried out, the new structures have ended up costing more. It remains to be seen what the cost outcome will be in Northern Ireland.

The political context is that the new councils may form a layer of local democracy below a functioning locally elected Assembly, or they may be the only locally elected tier of governance in Northern Ireland, sitting below Direct Rule Ministers in the Northern Ireland Office. If the latter is the case, some people have expressed concerns that a ‘Balkanisation’ of Northern Ireland into unionist and nationalist political fiefdoms may take place within the seven council areas. This scenario makes the model of power sharing and governance within the new councils all the more vital as it would be operating without a model of power sharing above it at the Northern Ireland-wide level.

The future of the eleven government Departments may also be uncertain once the review processes are complete, as some of them may be untenable when functions are transferred out to other places. While this was not part of the NI Executive’s original plans, Lord Rooker made clear that it is now a possibility.

Community planning

Community planning could be the single most important aspect of the whole Review process for voluntary and community organisations, as it offers for the first time the opportunity to sit around a table with all the service providers and budget holders in an area and work out exactly what services are needed in a holistic, joined-up way. Essentially it means better co-ordination and use of existing resources. This sounds great in theory and if it really works in practice, it could have a major impact in communities. The sector has already won its seat at the table and is mentioned frequently throughout the RPA decisions.

The process itself presents huge challenges for the sector in organising itself and in articulating local needs. Lord Rooker in making the announcements challenged the voluntary and community sector to capture its diverse voice. However, there are many unanswered questions before the details of all this change are worked out: Who will sit on the partnership? How will they be selected? How will they ensure they represent local needs? To whom will they be accountable and how will they feed back? The sector needs to prepare itself to meet this challenge and get organised to participate alongside statutory partners and local politicians.

Legislation to enable community planning needs to be drafted over the summer and a community planning subgroup of the Taskforce has been working on this – considering existing models in England, Wales and Scotland. Information on the English and Welsh legislation can be found on the website mentioned above. A key point which is emerging is that the right people at the right level need to be round the table. Representatives need to be decision makers who are able to commit resources across the full range of public services.

Other issues that have arisen from examination of the Scottish model in particular are:

• The process works best when there is a strong legislative basis which obliges statutory bodies to participate
• In many areas there is community planning at two levels – council wide and smaller urban and rural localities which feed up into the main plan
• A robust process needs to be fostered to ensure meaningful community engagement and genuine partnership working
• There is a need for an agreed framework from outset
• Community planning partnerships should be founded on equity, inclusion and equality of participation by the sector

The issues of resources and capacity will also be crucial for the sector. The organisation and capacity building required will cost money and the building of relationships and expertise will take time and effort.

Key challenges

The voluntary and community sector will find itself facing challenges with new structures and new relationships ahead. Local councils will play a bigger role in the life of many organisations than is currently the case. With responsibility for community development, community relations, urban and rural development plus regeneration, they will take over many of the budgets that apply to the sector.

This means that new relationships will be needed with councils, where in the past experience has been very mixed.

It is very likely that councils will have responsibility for funding a large part of the sector’s infrastructure and network bodies and even at this stage is it possible to guess that they are unlikely to want to pay for what they regard as duplication. This makes the Review of Support Services which DSD will be carrying out this year even more crucial. The sector needs to agree what support services are needed, who should provide them and how.

At a wider level, but for many of the same reasons, organisations within the sector need to start exploring collaboration within new RPA boundaries as these will form the most likely future funding units. In an atmosphere in which Positive Steps has already encouraged collaboration, these changes could bring about more rationalisation, unless the sector jumps first and organises itself into robust, effective structures. And as the lead up to Positive Steps demonstrated, some funders and decision makers are only too keen to have an excuse to put things on hold until everything is sorted, meaning endless delay and possibly repeated short-term funding.

The reality of these changes means that some of our existing funders will disappear. Issues of continuity need to be discussed with funders now. Organisations involved in programmes such as Neighbourhood Renewal should bear in mind that theses will be transferred to councils too. How these handovers will be dealt with is still being worked out by Departments.

Councils with new powers may want to deliver services (such as infrastructure and community development) themselves. In areas where the sector has a history of being an effective service deliverer, we need to push for continuity and locating services where they are best placed. The sector must not get lost as the focus in many statutory organisations turns inward in a period of major change. This also means we must not lose the values of the Compact and Partners for Change as relationships with new bodies are developed.

Despite the uncertainty and confusion which such massive change may bring, the Review of Public Administration does offer a genuine opportunity for citizen-focused governance and service delivery. You can keep up to date with the developments on-line at Community NI.