people based public services

Public ownership does not have to mean top-down management from Whitehall or Town Halls. Local communities must be given the right to participate in decisions that affect their lives through partnerships with government. We believe that co-operative and mutual models offer the best model for the reform of public service delivery. These provide the efficiency gains of the private sector whilst providing real democratic accountability, giving users, employees and other stakeholders with a real say in how their organisations are run.

Making Healthcare Mutual
Through the greater involvement of staff, users and local communities in the NHS, it has been demonstrated that we can not only strengthen citizenship, but also build services based on the frontline expertise of staff as well as the needs to the people that they serve. Moving to a mutual model has transformed the way in which services are delivered, making them more responsive to local people and focused on the needs of patients.

Transforming Social Care
Through coming together collectively, direct payment and individual budget recipients can improve the quantity and quality of the services that they receive, and ensure a decent working environment for the carers which they rely on. We should ensure that all service-users and carers will have access to a direct payments mutual in their local community.

Children, Schools and Families
Co-operative trust schools provide a framework in which everybody with a stake in the school’s success – parents, teachers and support staff, local community organisations and even pupils – have the opportunity to be involved in running it. These principles can also be applied across children’s services.

By giving communities a sense of ownership over Sure Start services, we can do more to help centres deliver to all those in need of their services, particularly ‘hard to reach groups.’ Co-operative structures also can play a role in encouraging working across different providers, and have the potential to act as local delivery agents for the Children’s Plan.

Broadcasting
The BBC is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world and a pillar of Britain’s cultural life. Yet with huge sums of money spent annually on services, the public deserves to have more of a say in the package of programs and services that are delivered. For the BBC to become truly accountable, all television license holders should be given real say over how the BBC Trust is run.

Public Sector Procurement
In both national and local government, more needs to be done to support smarter and more strategic commissioning and procurement of both goods and services. The current and future financial pressures on the public sector and the desire for efficiency savings make getting the most from public resources essential. Mutual and social enterprises tend to provide procurers with services that are more focused on the end user and provide added value in terms of meeting wider social and environmental goals.

Open Source Software
Open source technology is software development methodology created by a community of people dedicated to working together in a co-operative manner. By levelling the playing field and allowing open source to be as competitive as possible we can ensure that taxpayers get maximum value for money from Government IT, something that is more important than ever during the worldwide financial climate. The Government should ensure that, where possible, open source software is used as part of an effective procurement strategy.