Press Releases

New models for delivering public services?

by Jane Steele, Mary Tetlow, Alison Graham
Public Management Foundation

Published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Price: £5.00 | Paperback | 64pp | ISBN 0 903319 99 3

Publication Date: 17 March 2003

With the current controversies over proposals for Foundation Hospitals, Network Rail and London Underground and how they should be controlled and financed, the question must be asked: does Britain need a new type of organisation in order to deliver effective public services? The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation publishes Public Interest: New models for delivering public services?, the result of new research from the Public Management Foundation which addresses this question.

Public Interest focuses primarily on three sectors of public service delivery - support services to schools, social housing and residential care – exploring current problems in these public services, and the extent to which they might be solved by a new organisational form.

The report reveals that there is considerable consensus amongst people involved day-to-day in the delivery of public services about the barriers to greater effectiveness. Problems related both to organisational structure and to the wider political and public service environment in which they must operate, and which in recent years have led to the increased involvement of the private and voluntary sectors in public service delivery. Company and charity models were not designed for public services. Has the time come for a new type of organisation, which would protect the public interest while providing a stimulus to creativity, risk-taking and entrepreneurship? The authors believe so.

• This report develops an analytical framework to assess the effectiveness of organisational forms for public services - including the Public Management Foundation's proposal of a Public Interest Company.
• Argues that there is also a strong case for experimenting with new forms of organisation.
• Warns that, while diversity of organisational form, coupled with greater organisational autonomy, can lead to greater responsiveness to local needs, critics will label this as inequality.
• Recommends further development of the structures and processes of accountability and the incentives that will motivate individuals and organisations to be innovative, responsive, entrepreneurial and efficient.

Greg Parston, Chairman of the Public Management Foundation says: ‘the research has made two important messages clear to us: first, there is merit in developing and testing new forms of organisation for public services, but, second, any new forms that are developed must address, in an integrated fashion, the interconnectedness of the problems facing public service organisations. To pick and choose features of organisational forms that seem to address those individual problems that are most prominent to the media and politicians at any particular time is unlikely to be successful.’

Public Interest offers key research and recommendations for policy advisors and all those involved in public service delivery in the continuing debate about how to make public services more effective and more accountable.

The authors are available for interview.

Further information and review copies from: Felicity Luard or Louisa Hooper
Tel: 020 7908 7604, Fax: 020 7908 7580
E-mail: info@gulbenkian.org.uk

Public Interest is available through booksellers in the UK or can be ordered from Central Books:
E-mail: orders@centralbooks.com
Website: www.centralbooks.co.uk

Notes to Editors:

• Jane Steele, Mary Tetlow and Alison Graham are a research team at the Public Management Foundation.
• The Public Management Foundation is a research centre concerned with improving the impact of services that create public value. The Public Management Foundation merged with the Office for Public Management in August 2002.
• The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation was set up in Lisbon in 1956. The UK Branch gives grants to Arts, Education and Social Welfare projects, and publishes books reflecting emergent trends. Recent influential publications on social welfare issues have included Social Enterprise in Anytown by John Pearce (February 2003), Locked In – Locked Out: The experience of young offenders out of society and in prison by Angela Neustatter (2002) and Why Restorative Justice? Repairing the harm caused by crime by Roger Graef (2001).

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