Achieving outcomes through innovation February 2016Key learning points

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nts 1 Welcome

6 Investing for prosperity: skills, infrastructure and innovationGuy Ware, Strategic Director, London Councils

7 3BM School Support Services MutualHelen Randall, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

8 Innovation through regeneration Sue Smith, Joint Chief Executive, Cherwell District and South Northamptonshire Councils

9 Tri-Curo Adult Care Trading CompanyHelen Randall, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

10 Investment in the UK public sectorGreg Falzon, Royal Bank of Canada, Capital Markets

12 Infrastructure – New approaches to financing public sector infrastructureJames Hawkins, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

14 Innovation in deliveryJulie Kennealy, Executive Director, Breckland Council & South Holland District Council

15 Public Social PartnershipLucy Doran, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

16 Innovation in public servicesSteve Thorn, Senior Vice President Public Sector, CGI

17 MoneyWorks™ - London Borough of NewhamPaul McDermott, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

18 Innovation for public authorities working within the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectorDr Michael Little, Co-Director, Dartington Social Research Unit

19 Belfast City CouncilAmardeep Gill, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

20 Building Resilience through innovation Sir Robin Wales, The Mayor of Newham, London Borough of Newham

21 Delegate survey results22 Public Sector Commercial key contacts

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We were delighted to see so many representatives from across the public, private and third sectors at our conference earlier this month. Our theme was ‘Achieving Outcomes Through Innovation’, and the breadth of knowledge and experience present at the conference in leading innovation to deliver successful outcomes proved both informative and inspiring. Over the course of the day we heard about many initiatives that are already delivering positive outcomes in innovative ways, but we also intended to provide a forum where conversations between sectors and different levels of government could take place, sharing knowledge and experience in order to stimulate further innovations in public service delivery.

A number of key themes emerged during the day. This document highlights these and sets out the main points of each presentation. We hope it provides a useful reference tool for those who were present at the conference, and for those who were unable to be there. We would like to thank everyone who attended, with particular thanks to our speakers who gave such interesting insights into their experiences of achieving outcomes through innovation.

Overview of the day

We all recognise that the public sector is facing huge budget pressures. We wanted to show you examples of the great resilience of local authorities who are balancing demanding budget cuts whilst maintaining, and in many cases improving, service delivery.

A theme that emerged in most presentations was the expectation that budget pressures will not be alleviated any time soon. First to speak was Guy Ware, Interim Director of Finance, Performance and Procurement at London Councils. His presentation addressed this idea head on, suggesting that while very real financial challenges are being faced by all local authorities, the devolution of business rates has the “potential to be a very major breakthrough in the way local government works.” It comes from central government’s recognition that local government is far better at managing cuts in revenue, but it also comes with additional responsibilities and increased risk. Mr Ware claimed that the

Welcome

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government has effectively said: “we will give you a new set of responsibilities to soak up that additional funding and because you are local government we know you are very good at cutting things, because we watched you while smiling in our underground lair. There is a deal being done here which says ‘have all of this responsibility, have this money, you make the cuts.’ That is what has been termed the devolution revolution.”

Mr Ware also made international comparisons and explained that in countries such as Finland, local government raises 23% of the total national tax take, runs health and primary care and has the power to set income tax. In this country, local government raises only 5% on national tax take but has correspondingly fewer responsibilities. He made the point that local government in other countries is more fiscally secure because while it has additional responsibilities such as health, it also has more ways of raising income and is not completely reliant on a narrow range of funding sources.

Next to speak was Sue Smith, Joint Chief Executive of Cherwell District and South Northamptonshire Councils. Ms Smith began by stating that we all know that funding is decreasing, but questioned “what are we going to do about it? Sit and twiddle our thumbs or actually be proactive, pragmatic and make something happen?” The subject of her talk was innovation through regeneration, demonstrating how the use of innovative self-build housing projects was quite literally building new communities and driving economic change, delivering not only much needed homes for residents but also providing apprenticeships for NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) young people and developing a sense of ownership and pride in the communities being built. Self-build homes are 15-25% cheaper to build than traditional methods and so are providing that important first step onto the housing ladder. Ms Smith commented: “we have been able to get people off the housing register who had no hope of

“ Self-build homes are 15-25% cheaper to build than traditional methods and so are providing that important first step onto the housing ladder ”

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getting anything. They have been able to take themselves off it and the change in people when that happens is so powerful. That is worth doing on its own.” The council is borrowing to be able to fund the largest self-build development of 1900 homes but expects healthy returns through interest, developer profit, the new homes bonus and new business rates.

Greg Falzon, Managing Director of Infrastructure Finance at the Royal Bank of Canada talked about what private sector partners look for when bidding for public sector infrastructure projects. A particularly strong theme from Mr Falzon’s presentation was approaches to risk, and what public sector bodies can do to approach risk in innovative ways to make the risk profile of large projects more attractive to private sector partners. Mr Falzon was clear though: “no one model is best. It is about considering the circumstances of the project and what you can do to encourage investment. You cannot shrink wrap one model and deploy it in different circumstances but what you can do is combine elements of different models to use those to come up with a proposition that is going to deliver what you are looking for so that it also presents a good opportunity for the private sector.”

Mr Falzon discussed innovative mechanisms for dealing with risk in large projects, whereby financial risks that traditionally lie with the private sector partner are transferred to the public sector partner or the eventual customer. He commented: “the point of having these more innovative approaches to risk is that if you do not consider them and ask for a fixed price, the bidder will do one of two things: either put in a higher bid so you are in effect paying for that contingency anyway, or you end up with someone who has taken too many risks and the project has a higher risk of collapse.”

Another strong theme from the day was that innovation does not necessarily mean creating something completely new – some of the most successful innovative projects involve making changes to well established delivery models. Julie Kennealy, Executive Director of Commercialisation at Breckland Council and South Holland District Council talked about how making changes to the way a Local Asset Backed Vehicle (LABV) was structured helped Breckland Council to exercise enhanced levels of control over its assets. This enabled

“ innovation does not necessarily mean creating something completely new – some of the most successful innovative projects involve making changes ”

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Breckland to live up to its motto of having a “commercial head and a community heart”, making decisions on a project-by-project basis to ensure that council land was best used for the purposes that served the local residents. Ms Kennealy explained that making changes to a well-known structure required “quite a few courageous conversations,” but that it is worth it to have a model that fits local requirements and which has a contract that is predicated on the success of the projects, not their failure. Considering the procurement process, Ms Kennealy commented: “if you are determined enough and have an advisory team that are courageous enough, you can shape the procurement process lawfully to get the outcome that you want. You do not have to be a victim of the procurement process.”

Steven Thorn, Senior Vice President of the Public Sector Business Unit at CGI, guided us through how changing attitudes to IT and data sharing are key to successful service delivery innovations. Mr Thorn detailed how the biggest opportunity for innovation is the sharing of information and the development of digital services between the various branches of government, rather than between government and the citizen: “we have got stuck in a place that only really talks about digital services between the citizen and the public sector. Actually, the bigger

opportunity is digital services between arms of government and local government.” He gave an international dimension to his presentation by recounting how Estonia has benefited from joining up government and school IT systems to not only deliver services for less cost, but also to improve the end user experience.

Our penultimate speaker was Dr Michael Little, Co-Director of the Dartington Social Research Unit, a charity which applies high quality research to policy and practice in order to improve outcomes for children and young people. Dr Little emphasised that it is possible to be an investor in innovation, not just a leader or recipient. He also stated that the principal of subsidiarity is key: power resting as low as it can possibly go. He believes in ‘double devolution’, where money is devolved first into smaller geographic areas, but then again into civil society, as it is civil society that is dealing with the effects of those people not involved with the appropriate support services. Dr Little also highlighted that there are areas of public sector policy that have undergone remarkably few changes in the last 100 years, citing foster care as a primary example, which is largely run in the same way today as it was in 1908, indicating how there is “fundamental scope for change.” One of the most innovative projects Dr Little referred to involved the use of a Public Social Partnership, which utilises a modified form of social impact bond to bring together the skills, funding and expertise required to deliver a project in 24 local authorities aimed at reducing the number of children coming in to care by 10%.

Our final presentation was from Sir Robin Wales, Mayor of Newham. Sir Robin gave his vision for the role of local government: “if the purpose of a local authority is to care for and to safeguard kids and older people and to open libraries then I am not interested. I want to transform people’s lives. We have spent a lot of time and come to the conclusion that what

“ There are areas of public sector policy that have undergone remarkably few changes in the last 100 years ”

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we need to do is build people’s personal resilience.” Sir Robin then gave an account of the innovative projects Newham have undertaken to develop this resilience, both as an organisation and in the lives of local residents. Such projects include an employment scheme, a council run money advisory service, a private landlord licensing scheme and the ‘Every Child’ programme. Sir Robin maintained that: “we will not make any cuts in services in Newham. We may make cuts in budget, but not services...we are taking all of the services we can out to the market to see what small businesses can offer in terms of running them...there is not a single service we have looked at where we are not now getting a better service for less money. Not a single one.”

Where next?

Concluding the day’s events, James Hawkins, Partner and head of the Public Sector Commercial Team at Trowers & Hamlins, commented on the optimism in the room. From listening to the various presentations and the Q&A sessions he concluded: “I think one of the key points is that there need to be more conversations across different parts of the public sector and with the private and third sectors because it is only really through these conversations that we learn what works and how we can apply that knowledge to develop new solutions for different circumstances to deliver the outcomes we need.”

James Hawkins � Partner and Head of Public Sector Commercial

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Investing for prosperity: skills, infrastructure and innovationGuy Ware, Strategic Director, London Councils

Key points

• There is a widespread idea that ‘there is no money left’, but that is not strictly true. While it is the case that very deep ‘real terms’ cuts have been made, the devolution of business rates should, if it works as promised, bring more money into local authorities than previously expected by 2020.

• Going bust is not an option for local government: the law simply does not allow it. We are not allowed to set budgets which run at a deficit, unlike the NHS. We have already done the traditional things you do when faced with such economic circumstances: cut costs, cut jobs, diversified and commercialised services. It is important not to just conduct a fire sale of assets, particularly in London, where these actually increase in value enormously.

• Central government know that local government are better with money and so devolution is partly about the government giving more money and responsibility to local government so it can say “you cut it - you are on your own!”

• Local government in England has a very narrow source of funding streams compared to local government structures used abroad. Business rates are very hard to increase, and so at a time when costs and demand are increasing, being reliant on one quite unpredictable funding stream is quite dangerous. New York, for example, has 14+ different taxes it levies giving it a wider funding base and decreasing its levels of financial risk.

3BM School Support Services MutualHelen Randall, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

Trowers & Hamlins advised the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea in relation to the establishment of a new employee-led mutual called 3BM to provide facilities management and information technology support and related services to schools, academies and to the three local authorities.

Trowers & Hamlins also advised on the competitive dialogue process to procure the private sector investment and business development partner, Prospect Services, itself an employee-led mutual and an education services provider.

This was a Cabinet Office pathfinder project and faced a challenge, common to a number of public sector bodies, to deliver the same level and quality of services within an annually diminishing budget.

Services will be protected by increased revenue growth from schools, academies, free schools and other local authorities.

There is no Council shareholding and the Employee Benefit Trust is the majority shareholder with Prospects Services holding a minority share and contributing business know-how, marketing skills, investment and a strong track record in the education sector.

The project involved careful navigation of a number of complex legal issues including: public procurement, TUPE and employment law, obtaining a new direction from the Secretary of State in relation to eligibility for the Local Government Pension Scheme and contractual issues.

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Innovation through regeneration Sue Smith, Joint Chief Executive, Cherwell District and South Northamptonshire Councils

Key points

• Cherwell District Council has had great success using ‘self-build’ as a way of regenerating areas and communities in an innovative way.

• The first self-build project was on a small scale in Miller Road, transforming a run-down garage block and local eyesore into maisonettes. The council bought the garage block and targeted local young people to get involved with the project, teaching them the skills required to participate in the building process. The project had unexpected successful outcomes: rather than the young people moving in to the houses themselves, the council found that the purpose and direction given to their lives by the project resulted in them becoming respected members of the community and better integrated with their families.

• After the success of the original project, the ‘Build!’ scheme began. This regenerated brownfield sites and long-term empty properties. The project proceeded on the basis of having the hard-core of the building work completed by professionals, but the finishing work was done by people who needed affordable housing. This ‘sweat equity’ led to a reduction in the rents paid on the properties.

• Now working on the largest self-build project in the UK at Graven Hill, a former MOD site in Bicester. It is a 10 year project that will create a new community, with a new school and leisure facilities. The council has purchased the site and created a development company to hold the land. The site will mostly consist of serviced plots for self-build and finish. A design code has been put in place to ensure that there is a cohesive feel to the development.

Innovation through regeneration Sue Smith, Joint Chief Executive, Cherwell District and South Northamptonshire Councils

Tri-Curo Adult Care Trading CompanyHelen Randall, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

Trowers & Hamlins acted for Dorset County Council, Borough of Poole Council and Bournemouth Borough Council on the establishment of Tri-Curo, a trading company wholly owned in equal shares by the three local authorities.

The three authorities had been working since 2003 with health partners as part of the “Better Together” partnership to improve health and social care services for adults across Dorset. All three Councils had a great reputation for delivering high quality adult social care.

This initiative was innovative because it involved combining adult care services across three Councils with a budget of £38 million and employing over 1,200 staff. This was because the Councils are facing unprecedented financial and demographic challenges as well as rising demand for existing services.

The new trading company will allow the Councils to be more flexible, adaptable and efficient and to generate income to reinvest into services in the face of shrinking budgets. The trading company will be able to deliver services to people who receive a direct payment, plus informal carers and those who fund care privately.

The services Tri-Curo will provide include: residential services, reablement services, day services, shared services, care catering services and community employment so that people with disabilities can develop work skills and experience.

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Key points

• When private sector businesses look at bidding for public sector contracts, the key things they consider are:

— The risk profile

— The reputational profile

— The quality of the investment proposition

— Potential of future business

— Amount of returns

— Frictional costs of the procurement process

• The risk profile is key. Most large projects have a very typical risk profile but private sector businesses are looking for innovative ways to transfer risk to other parties, including the public sector partner and even the eventual customer, for example through the provision of government backed insurance if things go wrong.

• By putting a risk sharing mechanism in place there is an incentive to reduce costs, meaning the private sector will make more money to the extent that they will deliver it for less. This results in an arrangement where the public sector partner is not paying a huge premium and is incentivising good behaviour.

Investment in the UK public sectorGreg Falzon, Royal Bank of Canada, Capital Markets

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Infrastructure – New approaches to financing public sector infrastructureJames Hawkins, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

The driver for change

The combination of the previous government cutting PFI projects and the banking crisis required local authorities and their private sector partners to develop new approaches to funding infrastructure investment in order to deliver much needed projects.

Milton Keynes’ Council Waste PPP - Construction Finance

Milton Keynes took advantage of available short-term construction finance (covering the build period) making a payment equal to the outstanding debt once the new facilities are successfully commissioned. The local authority is likely (but not obliged) to fund the payment from prudential borrowing.

The structure retains most of the benefits of traditional PPP/PFI risk allocation; the authority pays nothing until full service commencement and has the added security of full bank technical and commercial due diligence prior to financial close. Following service commencement, banks have no further interest in the project allowing for greater flexibility in terms of the length of the concession period, lifecycle costing and ability to make variations to the operational contract, as well as significant cost savings from cheaper Public Works Loan Board borrowing. On expiry of the concession, the project assets revert to the authority in the usual way, allowing it to retender the concession or operate the facilities directly.

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Isle of Wight Integrated Waste Collection and Treatment PPP - Construction Milestone Payments

Isle of Wight Council’s waste project is funded entirely by the Council through milestone payments (using its general power of competence and prudential borrowing). Safeguards are built into the project documentation to ensure that the authority only pays for work carried out and has access to a security package to guard against any defects arising during commissioning which may prevent the facilities from achieving full service commencement.

The benefits include significantly reduced costs to the authority over the lifetime of the project and increased flexibility, particularly in the ability of the parties to agree variations once full service commencement has taken place. The authority will need to fund its prudential borrowing but there is nothing to prevent the parties from exploring alternative funding approaches once the facilities are up and running.

Future developments

Waste infrastructure PPPs are particularly challenging, involving multiple contractors delivering complex plant and equipment as well as various sources of third party income (commercial waste, heat and electricity off-take and government financial incentives). The majority of public sector infrastructure projects will be (comparatively) much more straightforward. These alternative funding mechanisms could be applied to a

wide range of other projects such as offices, housing, roads, care homes and care hotels. The alternative funding models inevitably result in the public sector retaining more risk, but with appropriate due diligence and management of that risk, local authorities can deliver infrastructure projects and achieve significant financial savings.

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Key points

• Breckland Council wanted to use a Local Asset Backed Vehicle (LABV) to develop a range of housing, employment and leisure projects. It conducted an options review, retained professional advisors and started a competitive dialogue procurement process to find a private sector partner. Then we changed our minds about exactly what we wanted. We realised that a traditional LABV did not suit our purposes.

• Local residents and Members were concerned that we were putting all of our assets into one ‘basket’ for the 15 year duration of the LABV. What is innovative is not just that we changed the traditional model, but also the pace of the changes we made. We knew we wanted a private sector partner but we did not want to split the assets 50/50 from the beginning, so we designed a LABV structure (Breckland Bridge) whereby we started with a 90% share and the success of the projects would determine if the private sector partner’s share would grow.

• We set up multiple different projects so that we could retain more control over our assets. This was important to us because we did not want a community need to arise but have all of our assets tied up in a LABV.

• Just because the big LABVs that hit the headlines look a certain way does not mean that they have to be the same for everyone. Courageous conversations can change this. Breckland Bridge will contribute 17% towards the council’s funding gap over its lifetime.

Innovation in deliveryJulie Kennealy, Executive Director, Breckland Council & South Holland District Council

Innovation in deliveryJulie Kennealy, Executive Director, Breckland Council & South Holland District Council

Public Social PartnershipLucy Doran, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

Trowers & Hamlins advised Dartington and SFFC on the first Public Social Partnership in the UK including procurement advice on contracting with local authorities, drafting the template partnership agreement and agreeing the terms with multiple local authorities. Safe Families for Children (SFFC) is a charity established by Sir Peter Vardy which brings together volunteers across the UK to help families that are struggling to cope, offering a safe haven for children while parents tackle a host of challenges.

The Public Social Partnership was initiated by £2m from the Department for Education’s Children’s Social Care Innovation Fund. The Agreement covers a three year period during which SFFC will work with local authorities to reduce the number of children in care and achieve significant savings for local authorities in care costs. Dartington Social Research Unit’s role is to monitor, measure and evaluate the programme’s success. Trowers & Hamlins are working with Dartington on a number of ground breaking initiatives with local authorities which strive to deliver social objectives and savings.

• Initiated by £2m funding from Department for Education’s Children and Social Care Innovation Fund

• Designed to reduce the number of children in care across a number of local authorities and save considerable costs

• Parties include the local authority, Safe Families for Children and Dartington Social Research Unit

• Agreement for 3 year period

• Performance criteria set which are monitored, measured and evaluated by an independent party

• Evolution of the Payment by Results contract to tackle social objectives and deliver measurable results

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Innovation in public servicesSteve Thorn, Senior Vice President Public Sector, CGI

Key points

• The first wave of cuts were in some ways easier to deal with because it involved halting spending and simplifying processes. However, in this second wave of austerity measures all of those things have been done: now we must reengineer processes and look to eliminate costs, particularly in non-protected areas of spend.

• This is not about saying ‘IT can help cut costs’ but about looking at the end-to-end journey of service users and how data can be shared between branches of government and systems joined to eliminate duplication and cost.

• We are going to need simpler, more effective local led collaboration, not huge projects that require large hubs and spokes to be built.

• Some of the same traditional IT problems are still proving a barrier to greater IT innovation, such as security and lack of interoperable systems. However, what is most startling from research CGI conducted last year was just how low the appetite was to share information and data, in this case within the Civil Service. Greater sharing of information across the public sector is where the real opportunity for innovation and savings lie, not necessarily in improving IT interaction between the public sector and the citizen directly.

MoneyWorks™ - London Borough of NewhamPaul McDermott, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

MoneyWorks is a comprehensive initiative designed to tackle financial exclusion and provide residents with access to affordable finance, goods and services. A significant number of people are denied access to loans and other financial products from main stream financial providers. They have little option other than to rely on expensive short term credit. MoneyWorks is also responsible for providing loans under Newham’s local welfare scheme.

Trowers & Hamlins worked with Newham to structure its initiative so that it complied with its powers, consumer law and state aid requirements. This enables MoneyWorks, through its local credit Union, to offer a range of affordable financial products including payday style and ‘white goods’ loans.

Trowers & Hamlins also trade marked the MoneyWorks brand to enable the Council to promote affordable goods and services in its area, with private providers entering into branding agreements with the Council.

The MoneyWorks innovation is its “whole person” approach to tackling financial exclusion and DWP ending most crisis type loans. It is also designed to encourage the development of financial skills from those borrowing and to provide access to a wider range of retailers – a poor credit score will result in mainstream stores denying credit.

By adapting market tools such as branding and a consumer friendly internet portal, the Council implemented a structure which enabled it to deliver its comprehensive vision.

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Key points

• Recently collaborated with the Lottery and devolved £240m of funding to five local authorities to be applied to projects that will improve outcomes for children from 0-5 years old.

• Funding models Dartington work with range from purely public sector funding to brokering the support of philanthropists and third sector organisations.

• We have found in the last 15 years that those children and families with the highest level of need are not in contact with the highest level of support services. Often people with access to highest levels of support do not have the highest level of need. We have to get past the idea that early intervention will reduce later demand - it will not. That idea is dead.

• We need to reformulate our thinking about the different kinds of offers that we have, and particularly how we can resettle government money on civil society, which is often left to manage the people with complex needs who are not in touch with the right services.

• We also need to understand how the decision-making of a wide variety of public sector workers can impact people’s lives. An example is the number of children going in to care. The number of children in care is not driven by the number of children who actually need to be in care, but rather by the decisions made by public sector workers on any one day.

• We are trialling the project ‘Safe Families’ in 24 local authorities across the country which aims to reduce the number of children going into care by 10%. This is being done through a Public Social Partnership using a modified form of social impact bonds. The local authorities get the programme for free in the first 12 months and if the 10% target is delivered, they commit to funding the project for two further years.

Innovation for public authorities working within the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectorDr Michael Little, Co-Director, Dartington Social Research Unit

Belfast City CouncilAmardeep Gill, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins

Trowers & Hamlins worked with Belfast City Council on a mutli-faceted project to transform the area through investment in, and commercialisation of, its leisure and recreational facilities.

We advised on a tri-partite leisure services contract which includes a £105 million investment in the council’s leisure infrastructure. This comprises the establishment of new leisure facilities and regeneration of existing leisure facilities for the benefit of the local community.

One of the objectives of this aspect of the project is to improve the health and wellbeing of the local community whilst addressing the social cohesion issues arising from the Troubles.

We also established a wholly owned company called Belfast Waterfront and Ulster Hall Limited. The company was established to provide conference facilities management and related services to both national and international audiences. This was in parallel to a £40 million project to transform Belfast’s iconic Waterfront Hall into a world class conference facility.

This aspect of the project reflects the Council’s and the new company’s joint vision to improve and enhance the reputation of the City in the conference events industry.

The work we undertook involved careful navigation of multi-faceted legal issues including legislative review and interpretation to ensure the Council acted within its powers, public procurement issues and contractual negotiation. We also worked with advisers to establish a company with a robust business case.

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Building Resilience through innovation Sir Robin Wales, The Mayor of Newham, London Borough of Newham

Key points

• The main purpose of local authorities is to transform people’s lives. Building their personal resilience is fundamental to this.

• The most important thing that helps build people’s resilience is getting them in to work. In Newham, the ‘Workplace - Employment Support’ programme is having great success and has got 30,000 people into work since 2007. What is different is that we start with employers, asking them what jobs are available and what skills are required, so that we can prepare and present people to employer’s ready for work. We learned that if you send a CV out, 2% of people will be employed. If you present them directly to the employer, 85% will be employed.

• Introduced the first licensing scheme for private sector landlords in the country. This has improved accommodation standards in the borough, and has resulted in 707 prosecutions, 614 arrests and 292 multi-agency operations.

• Also set up our own housing association to combat the problem of housing supply. Where I used to have unemployed homeless people come to my surgery, I have now got people holding down jobs who have become homeless because they cannot afford to pay their rent. Our aim is to build more affordable homes, charging market rent in some in order to subsidise low rents in others. The profits we will make from developing these sites is such that the authority will be financially secure.

• We are taking all the services we can out to the market to see how small businesses can transform how they are delivered. Of those that have already gone out to the market there is not a single service that is not now delivering a better service for less money.

• Our ‘Every Child’ programme is helping children to build confidence and resilience by giving them a range of experiences, whether it be in music or sport or something else so that they can find a hobby to excel at and build their networks.

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Building Resilience through innovation Sir Robin Wales, The Mayor of Newham, London Borough of Newham

The public sector appetite for and ability to deliver innovation is growing.

There is more sophisticated understanding of risk and risk management and its ability to deliver savings and/or increase profit.

Some parts of the public sector have no capacity left for innovation.

Government doesn’t incentivise innovation.

The parts of the public sector which have survived progressive cuts will do what it can to innovate and learn from elsewhere.

There will be a short term dash for cash resulting in assets being sold in “fire sales” which won’t deliver financial self-sufficiency.

Innovation is the key to managing public demand

Parts of the public sector which don’t innovate to become financially self-sufficient will find their functions transferred or abolished.

Delegate survey results

We invited delegates to share their views on issues relating to innovation in advance of the conference. Here are the results:

Strongly Agree

Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree

“54% believe public sector appetite for and ability to deliver innovation is

growing”

“52% said there is more sophisticated understanding of risk and risk

management”

“There was strong resistance to the idea that the public sector has no capacity left

for innovation”

“77% agree innovation is the key to managing public demand”

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James Hawkins � Partner and Head of Departmentt +44 (0)20 7423 8330e jhawkins@trowers.com

Helen Randall � Partnert +44 (0)20 7423 8436e hrandall@trowers.com

Paul McDermott � Partnert +44 (0)20 7423 8043e pmcdermott@trowers.com

Public Sector Commercial key contacts

Amardeep Gill � Partnert +44 (0)121 214 8838e agill@trowers.com

—— trowers.comTrowers & Hamlins LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with registered number OC337852 whose registered office is at 3 Bunhill Row, London EC1Y 8YZ. Trowers & Hamlins LLP is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The word "partner" is used to refer to a member of Trowers & Hamlins LLP or an employee or consultant with equivalent standing and qualifications or an individual with equivalent status in one of Trowers & Hamlins LLP's affiliated undertakings. A list of the members of Trowers & Hamlins LLP together with those non-members who are designated as partners is open to inspection at the registered office.

Trowers & Hamlins LLP has taken all reasonable precautions to ensure that information contained in this document is accurate but stresses that the content is not intended to be legally comprehensive. Trowers & Hamlins LLP recommends that no action be taken on matters covered in this document without taking full legal advice. © Trowers & Hamlins 2016All images - © Trowers & Hamlins LLP

Lucy Doran � Partnert +44 (0)20 7423 8265e ldoran@trowers.com