PUBLIC sector spending is facing an incredibly tough three years in the next budget cycle.
Balancing budgets and service provision in the increasingly challenging financial climate requires an innovative approach if front-line services are not to suffer potentially crippling cutbacks.
One such approach is Southwest One, a joint venture company involving Avon and Somerset Police, Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council and IBM.
Southwest One will deliver back-office services including finance, ICT, procurement, property facilities management, human resources, design and print and others.
It aims to transform the workings of the partner organisations, to modernise, reduce the costs of and improve support services, to invest in world-class technologies to improve productivity and generate economic investment that might not otherwise be available to the public sector.
This will result in a better value-for-money service for local Council Tax-payers and result in improved access to services for residents.
This week the force’s Chief Constable Colin Port, Chair of Avon and Somerset Police Authority Dr Moira Hamlin and IBM Global Business Services Executive Simon Humberstone were invited to address a Home Affairs Select Committee on police service strength.
The enquiry was looking at claims from some chief constables that they would have to cut front-line services in order to meet the Home Office budget.
The Select Committee heard that the Southwest One partnership presented a unique opportunity to modernise services, achieve savings and protect front-line services.
Mr Port told the committee: “Southwest One will result in estimated savings of £35 million over the next ten years.
Mr Port gave the Select Committee a practical example of how the Southwest One partnership was benefiting the local community.
He said: “We have about 1,000 problematic offenders in the city of Bristol, and set up an integrated offender management unit which is managing 400 of them but will ultimately manage 1000.
“This involves working within our existing resources, with our partners in health, probation and the prison service.
“The long-term strategy is to give these people their lives back so that they are no longer problematic criminals, they are actually meaningful members of society.
“The only way I can do it is by freeing up resources from other areas of policing.
“What Southwest One has allowed me to do is to fund that.”
Simon Humberstone, Executive IBM Global Business Services, told the committee: “We have had a number of conversations with other police forces within the South West.
“There has been interest from across the whole of the UK and even outside the UK. There are a number of people looking at this as a potential model for public sector provision globally.”
Dr Hamlin told the committee that budgetary challenges were an important driver behind the decision to be part of Southwest One.
She said: “The way the funding formulate is calculated, on needs means that ever since it has been implemented, there has been a damping mechanism.
“For us that means we are severely disadvantaged. We lose £12m each year through damping, and are the second worse-affected force in the country.
“We are looking at a gap of up to £5m this year.
“It is only through Southwest One and other initiatives that we can hope to bridge that gap.”
It’s estimated that at the end of the current funding cycle next year the police authority will have lost more than £55million altogether due to damping, which is a system which means money is taken from some police authorities to ensure all areas receive a minimum funding grant increase.
Policing Minister David Hanson MP told the committee: “There is a debate around whether we prioritise direct funding for policing and how we undertake greater efficiencies in what we do with the manpower of police services but also with procurement and delivery, of which Southwest One is a good example.”
November 2009
For further information please contact:
Rebecca Hehir, Media and Public Relations Officer, Avon and Somerset Police Authority, on 01275 816386.
Darren Bane, Deputy Head of Corporate Communications, Avon and Somerset Constabulary, on 01275 816350.
