By Phil Copestake, OPM principal.
The Deputy Prime Minister’s speech yesterday highlighted a paradox at the heart of the employee ownership business model. You can’t have a mutual without actual shared ownership, and yet owning shares does not in and of itself guarantee the benefits of being a mutual. As Mr Clegg said: sharing ownership means sharing power. But to really maximise the potential of mutual models the staff who own the business need guaranteed influence too. Continue reading
By Linda Jackson, OPM associate fellow.
I recently attended a great event held by the Transition Institute to launch their publication on public service spin outs called, Towards a Social Value Ethos. The lively and challenging debate focused on the different things that need to happen in order to spin out public services into a different form of ownership. Whilst the paths, processes and duration of each transition are likely to vary from organisation to organisation, there are some commonalities that need to be in place for the journey to effectively take place. Continue reading
By Phil Copestake, OPM’s head of communications.
Last week saw OPM’s Spinning Out Mutuals fringe event at the National Children and Adult Services (NCAS) conference. The session was really successful, with a packed room at the cavernous ExCel centre, excellent speakers (well, apart from yours truly) and a lively debate. For those who couldn’t make it, I thought I’d post a few of the best practical tips mentioned for overcoming the genuine challenges facing those wishing to ‘spin out’ public sector mutuals. The important contribution that events like this make to raising awareness of mutuals was underlined by Jesse Norman MP:
The short inquiry report from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Employee Ownership, which I chair, emphasised how important it is that the Government’s mutuals programme is better understood and viewed as a means to drive real improvements in our communities. Organisations like OPM play an important role in building awareness about mutuals and helping to create the capacity for change. Only by understanding the real life experiences of people who have already started down this route – such as the speakers and participants at this NCAS event – can we capitalise on the tantalizing possibility of public sector mutuals.
In this guest post, Dr Guy Turnbull, director of Care & Share Associates Ltd (CASA), talks about how new models of ownership may help the health and social care sector overcome its challenges.
With the residential care system rocked by allegations of abuse and the collapse of one of the country’s leading private providers of residential care, the situation has never more needed a radical rethink of how health and social care might be delivered safely and securely. Continue reading
By Phil Copestake, OPM’s head of communications.
As my colleague Hilary noted in her post last week, questions are being asked about whether the Coalition’s grand ambitions for developing staff-owned mutuals in the public sector can be fulfilled. The national picture may be mixed, but when it comes to individual local areas it all boils down to whether you can make the case (and whether there’s a case to be made, of course).
In advance of OPM’s Spinning Out Mutuals fringe event at the National Children and Adult Services conference – which is free to attend – I thought I’d road-test what seem to be some of the key ingredients for checking whether a mutual is right for you, your service and your community. (I’m also going to speaking about public service mutuals at an EU-sponsored conference in Brussels, next Tuesday, so if you’re able to offer your thoughts on this post in the comments box, or via Twitter @philblogs, then you’ll be doing me a considerable service!)
By Hilary Thompson, OPM chief executive.
Over the spring and summer there was less media interest in public service mutuals and perhaps less actual new interest on the ground. But as England enjoys an Indian summer, we’re expecting interest to increase again.
At national level, there have been many questions about whether we yet have the right climate for public service mutuals in this country (as illustrated by Co-operatives UK’s report on international comparisons). Continue reading
By Phil Copestake, OPM head of communications and strategy.
The Government has a truly ambitious target of one million public sector workers moving to employee-owned mutuals by 2015 – a sixth of the workforce.
There’s a danger of this kind of target leading to a pace and scale of change that could be damaging for new mutuals, which experience shows have most chance of flourishing if they’re allowed to evolve at a more natural rate. Whatever happens, it will be vital for the right support package to be in place. Continue reading
By Phil Copestake, OPM head of research.
The Government’s Open Public Services White Paper published on Monday identifies the issues and questions it wants to answer over the course of the coming months, and the principles that will underpin its reform agenda. But when it comes to the role of local authorities and the place of employee owned mutuals, we all know the devil will be in the detail. As Nick Timmins writes in the FT today: ‘The white paper on its own changes nothing. Its success will be decided on how cleverly, vigorously and practicably its principles are applied.’
Like everyone else, at OPM we’ve been waiting for the Open Public Services White Paper with baited breath for many, many months. I say ‘everyone else’, but of course the rather muted coverage of the Coalition’s launch of its ‘comprehensive policy framework’ was to be expected. This is the Government setting a broad agenda and high level principles, rather than making specific policy commitments: it’s too wide-ranging for those. And policy frameworks are not exactly sexy, however comprehensive.
So with that said, what to make of it? In the day or so it’s been in our hands, OPM’s interest has focused on what the White Paper indicates for the future of local government, and what it has to say about mutuals. Continue reading
On Tuesday 29th March OPM will be hosting a seminar to explore the vitally important issue of how public services can simultaneously achieve significant spending reductions whilst supporting civil society organisations to become providers.
Speakers include Tom Shirley, policy lead for mutuals in Francis Maude’s team at the Cabinet Office, Sophia Looney, Director of Policy, Equalities & Performance, London Borough of Lambeth, and James Allen, senior policy officer at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).
At the time of writing there were still a few places remaining, and you can find out more details by clicking here. In order to get the debate started, we’ve pulled together the short briefing paper below, which highlights some of the policy background and a few of the key questions we’ll be looking to cover.
Briefing Paper – OPM seminar 29 March
We’re really pleased to announce the next in our Public Interest Seminar series. On Tuesday 29 March we’ll be looking at the crucial issue of how public services can both save money whilst also building positive relationships with civil society organisations, including charities, social enterprises and mutuals.
The Coalition has clearly signalled that it wants to see civil society organisations taking a bigger role in public service provision and achieving the goals of a Big Society. But how can this be made feasible in the context of the most severe spending cuts in decades?
As local authorities and other commissioning bodies look to reshape services at extremely rapid pace, how can strong relationships with civil society organisations be built and maintained? What actions, practices and behaviours are needed – both on the part of commissioners and civil society providers themselves – to square the circle? What kind of relationship between commissioners and civil society organisations is (a) desirable and (b) realistic? How would the system need to work?
Confirmed speakers include:
The seminar will be held in the evening – 6:00 pm for a 6:30 pm start, finished by 7:45 pm – at our offices at 252B Gray’s Inn Road, London, WC1X 8XG, a ten minute walk from King’s Cross. The seminar is free, but places are limited so please do let us know as soon as possible if you would like to attend, by emailing seminars@opm.co.uk.
