Here's a cautionary tale about a better alternative to Total Place Initiative..

(a) Back in 1972 my Shelter Neighbourhood Action Project (SNAP) published proposals which focused on the central targeted of priority exceptional spending - but thereby clearly distinguishing that from clear local government executive control of the vast area of routine spending on the whole range of local services

(b) With all the latter relying on effective local taxes (including effective revaluations, local charges, etc) - and of course also continuing the tried system of formulaic compensation for inevitable local disparities of yield

(c) The former (centrally targeted spend) was obviously a key to strategic change across Whitehall - but essentially at the margin of overall public spending. It was (and it is) badly needed to strategically dealt with exceptional problems or exceptional tasks that are clearly beyond local resources

- But please note! - this interdepartmental Whitehall strategic spending had to be annually validated by a "Cabinet Office Unit" and, crucially, by Parliament as an annual input into (the then) PESC round - now CSR. In this way indvidual Ministers (and Departments) would be permanently locked into the overall system. No more playing with the bricks themselves!

(d) But then, as a civil servant, I had to watch our DOE civil servants and ministers effectively sabotaging all of this - as they also proceeded to wreck the whole context; our 1972 "Total approach" that had been announced in that year's Budget Debate - and as they excluded any local government finance innovations within the planned new English local government system.

(e) So I then managed to launch my own 1974 DOE Internal Review across some 20 Directorates to pursue the above "expenditure-based planning" model (including informal liaison with HO, DTI, DES, CPRS, etc); details still available!

(f) Eminent authorities (even now Noble ones!) have claimed this internal review was frustrated by the then DOE permanent secretary. But it was also evidentially part of a general political and official failure across the board - similar to those same failures today.

(g) Later on - my voluntary 1985 "Area Information System" (showing all English local outputs online) plus user-friendly access (well before the Internet) - and this effected a voluntary approach to the basic information (and one which DCLG knows, completely anticipated the present "Total Place Initiative").

(h) And then, by 1985, this had also isolated online the de facto central "targeted" spending - (helped by UK experts in local government finance!)

(i) But even that Area Information System was then sabotaged. This time by new 1986 DTI Whitehall rules which required that Whitehall should sell any tradeable official data to highest bidder (a problem that has been only recently overcome!)

(j) So now the "Total Place Initiative" (and more importantly our government and local government as a whole) badly needs the above framework

(k) Since it does provide an intelligent and coherent whole - and since it is still the best way forward - one that can be truly called a "Total Approach"; a "Total Place Initiative"!

(l) By comparison there's simply no way that the DCLG and Sir Michael Bichard's efforts so far measure up. And now new proposals for a "Super-department" or a "Department for Everything" are quite obviously despairing and relatively naive. Sooner or later if the government (whichever government"!) does mean business - it will have to proceeed more or less along the above lines!

Des

Working with Shelter as a volunteer and then in housing in Liverpool in the 1970's and 80's the SNAP report and the subsequent CDP initiative are part of my history too.
Yes developing a view of the totality of investment in neighbourhoods and looking at how value can be derived from it goes back 30 years and re-emerged as part of the NDC programme.

What Total Place offers is a different perspective. Rather than stating with a community like Granby, eviscerated by years of unemployment, poverty, racism, crime and exclusion, where the principal public sector inputs are disproportionate per person spending on income maintenance, criminal justice and health the focus is how what is being spent can work harder, improving outcomes not just meeting targets.

Holding no candle for any model or delivery system I suggest that any process which looks at how people can access the public services they need, when and where they need them is far better than a plethora of multiple delivery channels competing for scare resources and duplicating support services has to be more effective at meeting needs. A paradigm is the 999 system, in an emergency one number accesses a service that identifies and responds to need.

Moving forward instead of Total Place what about "Total Person" - how can a person get the services that need from income maintenance, through health or social care to public protection or environmental management. Trying to list all things that could be accessed forced me to think about which agency supplies what service.

Delivering services in a way that makes sense to to the user not the provider has to be the way to get more from our public purse.