Greater Manchester welcomes Community Budget pilot
Greater Manchester has welcomed news that it has been selected by the Government as one of only four Whole Place Community Budget pilots in the country.
The pilot represents an opportunity for Greater Manchester and the Government to work together to reform public services - ensuring the best value for money for public spending. The Greater Manchester pilot will focus on tackling dependency on public services and supporting economic growth.
Senior officials from Greater Manchester and Whitehall will now work together in 2012 to explore in detail how these ideas will be implemented, with the intention that lessons will be learned that can be applied nationally.
The vision is to create a system where public bodies are free to invest-to-save. For example, the pilot will focus on people who are highly dependent on a wide range of often expensive public services but who - with the right support - could become more self-reliant and productive. The pilot will test new ways of public services jointly investing in helping such people to help themselves. Some of the money saved can then be reinvested in further reduction of dependency - a virtuous circle.
Success will yield dramatic savings. For example, taking 4,000 Manchester complex families out of dependency would save around £50 million across public services.
The other positive would be that more Greater Manchester people would be making a positive contribution to the economy and reaping the benefits of better paid work.
Greater Manchester, which has a population of 2.6 million, is the largest functional economic area outside London and generated £50 billion of Gross Value Added (GVA) for the national economy in 2008 - some four per cent of the national economy.
Lord Peter Smith, chair of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, said: "Greater Manchester's strong track record of cross party co-operation and private sector leadership means that we are ideally placed to demonstrate the benefits of a Whole Place budget approach.
"It is forecast that 56,000 private sector jobs will be created here in the next four years which will help support a rebalancing of the national economy so that when there is growth it will be in Greater Manchester and the North West, not just in London and the South East.
"But unless we can tackle worklessness, low skills and dependency on central and local government we will not be able to achieve the region's full potential. We want Community Budgets to form a central plank of our Greater Manchester Strategy to achieve prosperity for all."
The Community Budget approach will represent a scaling up of successful joint work which has already taken place in Greater Manchester, for instance a collaborative procurement approach for foster care - in which Manchester, Trafford and Liverpool led a framework contract involving 13 North West authorities which is saving £9 million. Greater Manchester-wide improvement and efficiency projects delivered £12.2 million of savings in 2009/10 and 2010.
