July 23 2013

“It is not easy being a manager in the midst of continuous change that may ultimately lead to handing over control, Wiltshire Council corporate director Carlton Brand tells David Allaby


Leadership in public services today is increasingly about being prepared to take a leap of faith, and the way Carlton Brand talks about Wiltshire Council there can be little doubt of this authority's belief in transforming the look of local government, making savings and redirecting funding to frontline services.

Since the move to unitary status four years ago the council has 600 fewer staff and 92 fewer buildings. A serious systems approach to service and management redesign challenged everyone's role. It led to more than 200 managers taking voluntary redundancy and, 18 months ago, the removal of the council chief executive's job.

“An awful lot of activity and cost had no impact on the customer," he says. "With a 28 per cent reduction in revenue you start to see the huge opportunity to take out costs that are not benefiting the people, to take out what doesn't add value."

But it is revealing that Brand also says Wiltshire does not obsess about budget cuts: "If you want to find the answer to big problems, worrying about the money will not help you find the right solution."

The model of three corporate directors and no chief executive would, it was believed, deliver maximum savings while enabling the council to embed a less service-based perspective.

"At this level any leadership model can work or fail," he says, "and there is evidence for successes and failures with any model in the private, public and voluntary sectors. Leadership success is a function of the quality of relationships that exists between the key players, their knowledge, expertise, understanding and integrity as a single team with a common purpose and goals. With these ingredients, Wiltshire's model works very well."

Brand, with a doctorate in engineering, brought his management expertise to local government nine years ago after 20 years in the car industry working in the US, Japan and Europe. He describes Wiltshire's ambitious reform as "a massive journey, and after six or seven years I don't see the journey as anywhere near halfway.

"The more we see on the way, the more the raft of possibilities opens up. We have people asking when all this change is going to stop, but it's about continuous change, and it is difficult to be a manager in this type of environment. It is the big challenge for the public sector as we are on this journey for the next 10 or more years."

Fundamental to that journey is shifting control from the centre. Leadership that has grasped the benefits of shared responsibility at the top in county hall can only look to disperse similar principles and build social capital outside.

"Do we really let communities run things themselves?" he questions. "Local politicians may currently control a £1bn council, but in the future that large single body may be replaced by a series of offerings run by a completely different mix of people.

"We are starting to work with the RSA on possible governance models – a big factor in the future of local government. Clinging on to control is less tenable in the long term, and the council's executive and senior members have moved on this."

Wiltshire is developing community campuses providing integrated services. "The 18 communities across our county have a proliferation of buildings, centres and purposes," says Brand. "We are pulling all that together into a single site per community with a new building and services being run by a single team."

Seven of the new campuses are under way. "It's an ambitious joining up of services and behaviour change, underpinned by technology and budget pressures," he says. "They are the building blocks of transformation, leisure, libraries – we are one of the few authorities opening libraries at the moment – spaces for vulnerable people, nursing and GP services, and essentially anything that the community wants to be included will come together.

"Community areas have been up and running for four years, but when the new campuses are built we have no preconception of how they will operate. We could run them all ourselves – we probably couldn't afford that in the long run – or we could say to the community you do everything to make these services work to your needs, or there's something in the middle. We are tapping into the RSA's innovative policy side to work with communities."

Council staff who were spread across 95 offices are now based in just three. There are 1,200 people working from county hall, from just 600 desks. It forces people into the community and a fundamentally different way of working – we are going to the people, says Brand.

Wiltshire continues to break through traditional boundaries. It has recently moved its police and social teams in together. "It's simpler, more reactive and there are savings on buildings and communications, but you don't start from that perspective," he says. "It's a big challenge to local government thinking. The pressures are considerable and it's easy to do the wrong thing. But you need that leap of faith."



Thanks and regards,

Carlton