Local government is like Lego – Alex Thomson writes for LGC
Author: Alex Thomson |
Writing for the Local Government Chronicle (LGC), Localis chief executive Alex Thomson considers the increasing similarities between local government and Lego. Read the article below or in full on the LGC website.
Entertaining children at home when you don’t want to resort to the TV isn’t always easy but one option that never fails is Lego.
It’s simple but with endless possibilities, offering a parent some peace and quiet but in the knowledge that you are fostering your child’s creative expression. While no-one would ever claim local government to be simple, it does seem increasingly analogous to Lego.
For a long time local authorities rarely engaged beyond their geographical, organisational or political boundaries unless they really had to. They weren’t isolationist but weren’t terribly extrovert either; the Lego stayed largely in the box. Then came the beginning of the age of shared services; in the beginning mostly the same colour and size of brick.
But this was just the start of the intra-sector collaborations for financial or commercial benefit, be they via joint ventures, multi-layered shared services or simply the benefits of joint purchasing power that cooperation brings. The establishment of the UK Municipal Bonds Agency is potentially the most powerful example of the latter. Red brick or blue, political differences were being cast aside to find economies of scale.
Now pieces from the local government set are connecting to pieces from the wider public sector in all manner of shapes and sizes, pooling services, funding and workforces to deliver better and more integrated services. Some of these combinations look rather unwieldy – in Lego terms, think half pirate ship, half Millennium Falcon – but what matters is whether they work.
Nowhere is this more important than with devolution deals. The first few of these were constructed in a pretty careful manner. Lately, however, there has been rather less agreement in various areas about what is being built and, in particular, which pieces should be used. One thing that everyone knows about Lego is that the bricks that don’t get used sooner or later become a sharp pain in the foot. Is there a danger that the same will be true for those local authorities left behind in the current whirlwind of devolution negotiations?
Of course the analogy isn’t entirely perfect. All Lego pieces are specifically designed to join together seamlessly but making the relevant connections for local government is rather harder. In IT, for example, how can different parts of the public sector develop a universal fit between systems? How will local leaders establish the necessary trust to develop new collaborative arrangements when there is such pressure to create at pace? Perhaps most importantly, will this new world of interconnected public services have the permanence we need? After all, unlike Lego, these constructions aren’t going back into the box when everyone’s had their fun.