2. Page/02
I’d like to start with an admission...
Give a civil servant a good case and they’ll
wreck it with clichés, bad punctuation, double
negatives and convoluted apology.”
Alan Clarke MP
3. Page/03
Improvement East
A ‘jargon free’ introduction to us…
Who we are...
Regional partnership of 52 local authorities and six fire
authorities with a very small secretariat of 12 staff.
Member led - makeup representative of the region
Chief Executive champions for each theme
What we do...
Work with local authorities and fire authorities to:
• support improvement and better performance,
• spend available resources more effectively and deal with reduced budgets
• develop new skills and capacity for improvement, including leadership,
• encourage more self-reliance, including sharing and learning from one another
• promote more joint-working across the public sector
4. Page/04
Where does a Festival of
Ideas fit?
LSPs and LAAs
Supporting Local Strategic
Partnerships to deliver their
Local Area Agreements
Leadership
Skills and Capacity
Supporting authorities to of Place
develop new skills and ways
of working
Member development
Helping councillors to
develop the skills to lead
5. Page/05
What does that mean?
Focus budgets on places , not services from organisations
Look a lot further ahead and prevent rather than respond
Address the whole person, not the presenting issue
Break the cycle of the few people who consume a lot of public money
Combine our efforts, knowledge and resources across organisations
6. Page/06
In challenge, we might say...
'The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam
yesterday - but never jam to-day.'
Queen of Hearts in Alice through
the Looking Glass
7. Page/07
Or alternatively...
What we have works badly now.
It will work worse in the future.
Steven Taylor
PS: There is no money
“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the
road...they get knocked down.” Nye Bevin
8. Page/08
Our system seems to struggle
with the blindingly obvious...
Real life doesn’t fit into bureaucratic boxes
Sir Michael Bichard
We need to deal with the complexity of the problem,
rather than pushing it out to the people we serve.
For me, today is a small step towards looking at new ways
we might do that for the longer term unemployed
“No one suggests that Total place is the total answer...it is, an
opportunity” Michael Bichard
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Hopes and expectations
for the day
Forming contacts and alliances that may bear fruit
Increasing mutual understanding of what we do as individuals and sectors
Becoming more aware of what the possibilities could be
If nothing else...
Seeing the third sector as part of the solution
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The kind of conversation I like is one in which
you are prepared to emerge a slightly
different person.
Theodore Zeldin
