Haringey Council apparently not sharing services to save money

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on December 12, 2012 at 18:15

In Haringey's budget process in recent years, there were plans to share some services. So I assumed this was in place in at least a few areas. But perhaps the planned sharing didn't work out?

Over the years, as a councillor, my contribution to such discussions was usually to ask about measurement and evidence. In any words, is it working? I know that shared services as efficency savings is a "conventional wisdom". But I also know that quite often the truth about conventional wisdoms turns out to be counter-intuitive. Sometimes it doesn't work!

Frank Lloyd Wright said that: "Doctors can bury their mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines" . So the advocates of shared services will display their blooming successes, while discreetly removing failures to the organisational compost pile.

My scepticism comes from personal obervation and from examples other people have described.

Also from the work of John Seddon. As a Systems thinker Seddon is interested in how the work works; not what's currently fashionable. He's been raising doubts about the Shared Services mantra for several years. Here's an article from 2008. And another from January 2010 in the Local Government Chronicle.

Alan Stanton

(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)

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