Written - Beecham Report

I have today published the Welsh Assembly Government’s overall response to ‘Beyond Boundaries’, the report of the review of local service delivery, chaired by Sir Jeremy Beecham. The report was warmly received across parties and elsewhere as a landmark document, and we are deeply indebted to the team. Its big message was that, in ‘Making the Connections’, we were on the right lines in the Assembly Government, but that the approach needed to be pushed faster and further. We recognise the many achievements made by Welsh public services in recent years, but we accept the Beecham conclusion that performance is too variable and that there remains scope for further improvement.

The broad principles in our response relate to the better integration of public services, the need for more consistency in public services and more effective performance management, and the need for more engaged leadership from the Welsh Assembly Government. The people of Wales continue to be at the centre of our ambitions for the Welsh public service. The greatest scope for improvement lies in the better integration of services. That is particularly true for those groups most at risk, such as the frail elderly, vulnerable children, or those suffering from mental illness, for whom, all too often, different parts of the public service offer a wide range of different support, but with a lack of co-ordination.

We now propose a local service board for each local authority area to bring together the key local delivery organisations with the aim of monitoring service delivery and developing joint action where it is most needed. The board membership will consist of the leaders and leading officials of existing organisations, devolved and non-devolved, and the local service board will not itself employ staff. Local service boards will be a development from the existing community strategy partnerships and will provide a focus for the rationalisation and effective working of other existing partnerships.

By 2008-09, we intend the Welsh Assembly Government to have put in place local service agreements involving a limited number of local service boards to start with, which will specify the key cross-sector outputs that the boards will aim to achieve. We intend to develop innovations in funding that will encourage the pooling of budgets in support of local area agreements.

The second principle to which I referred covers the more effective use of performance information and the achievement of greater consistency. We shall establish in the Welsh Assembly Government a small new unit entitled Performance Wales, which will be charged with working with existing providers of performance information to provide more co-ordinated and accessible information that can be used to support service improvement. In all parts of the Welsh public service, we need to give more support and accord more status to the task of monitoring and appraising performance. As the Beecham report noted, this role needs to be developed within the Assembly. In local authorities, the new service boards and the NHS, we need to better support those who can support service improvement by their appraisal of performance.

As we improve our performance information and develop agreements with service boards, it is our intention to develop a limited number of core standards in service delivery, which is an entitlement that can be assured for all citizens in all parts of Wales. At the heart of our approach is putting people first and not bureaucracy: for example, delivering pathways of care focused on the person, and not the organisation.

The third principle relates to the aim of developing more leadership, good governance and more engagement by the Welsh Assembly Government in the process of delivering public services. Performance Wales will also help with this aspect, but we are determined not to undermine the responsibility that local organisations should have for service delivery. We do not intend to micromanage or to centralise control.

However, when the Assembly Government sets out goals and strategies for service delivery, and when the Assembly regulates on service delivery, we have a responsibility to provide support and leadership to local organisations. In this respect, the Assembly Government needs to become more outward-focused and engaged with the delivery process.

Our proposals will allow us to provide local service boards with more useable performance information across service sectors. In addition, we have a radical intention for officials of the Welsh Assembly Government to be participants in each local service board, providing information, bringing messages back to the Assembly Government, and creating a transfer of experience from one local service board to another.

Our proposals for cross-sectoral working at a local level are in addition to the support that we are giving for innovations in collaboration at regional and national levels. Today’s response refers to the intention that, in the NHS, all local health boards should collaborate to form three regional consortia to commission specialist hospital services. We intend to roll out the north Wales experience of developing an NHS shared service programme in each part of Wales. We will continue to support the work of local authorities in finding regional solutions to service delivery in waste, transport, specialised care and public service ICT networks.

The actions that I have set out build on the exciting start that our workforce support organisation, Public Services Management Wales, has made, alongside the National Leadership and Innovation Agency for Healthcare, and others. We value the people who work for our services and their readiness to embrace change. Partnership with the trade unions will remain key, including our unique public services workforce forum.

We know that we cannot depend on large spending increases to finance the service improvements that we all want to see. Value Wales has, and will continue to have, a key role in helping public services to improve the way in which they do business. There has been good progress on procurement, but there is much more to do on building shared service models.

The document is but the first stage of our response to the Beecham review. In due course, we will provide a series of further documents on our intentions for a community-based health service, on public health, on local government, and on the role of regulation and inspection.

This is about a shared vision across public services, informed by grass-roots experience and responding to people’s lives. I am grateful to all those who have helped build the vision. The Beecham report team set the challenge for Wales to become a small country exemplar in the way in which services are planned and delivered. I believe that we can do just that, by working together.