As part of our blog post series for London Climate Action Week, Janet Greenwood, Aoife Doyle and Amanda Kelly detail how joined-up thinking is a must for making London more sustainable.
We know that public services are at breaking point and that we are spending too much money on delivering outcomes that don’t always deliver for people.
The unsustainably high level of local government spending, including on social care and housing, is driving pivotal reforms and new approaches across the UK: local government reform, public sector reform, the devolution of strategic authorities and integrated settlements.
These reforms all bring exciting opportunities to create innovation and disruption to solve some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges that we face.
We all know, intuitively, that our personal identities are intrinsically linked with place, and that our complex web of public services all come together in place.
Transport, skills, police, health are all linked, yet historically they have all been treated separately and addressed in silos, with benefits and disbenefits that impact other silos being ignored, discounted or poorly understood.
It is also clear that local government does not have unlimited scope to increase taxes to continue to enhance and extend public services. What is less clear is whether we are currently getting value for money or indeed whether local authorities have the tools they need to undertake a reliable assessment of this.
The environmental, social and financial pressures that we are facing mean that we cannot afford to keep working in silos.
We have known for some time that we need to think more broadly, and the case has successfully been made on prevention rather than cure, but where it has been proven it has been proven on a narrow basis — not system wide.
In short: we have to deliver those stitches in time, as we cannot afford the nine. We now need to identify and overcome the blockers to change and rapidly make the transition from pilots to BAU. We need to move innovation from the margins to disrupt the mainstream.
Moving to co-creation with a wide group of stakeholders, connected data sets can be used to map out and predict social and economic futures.
We can identify who and what is at risk, moving beyond rigid, static assessments into a dynamic picture which gives a better understanding what people and nature need.
We can offer interventions and support ahead of time – ahead of becoming homeless, ahead of flooding, ahead of a health crisis and deliver integrated planning across overlapping silos. If we wait until we cross thresholds to act it is often too late.
We can create the dynamic view to understand the impact of difficult decisions, delivering
better outcomes within financial sustainability. We can elevate the role of communities using a relational public services approach to meet people where they are, giving them agency to decide what they need to live well and tread lightly on their lives (to quote the prime minister).
We can connect the silos and work as a system, linking policy and delivery teams in a live environment.
Using predictive analytics, a relational approach to public services and a systems approach across the portfolio of services we can support people to flourish, addressing deprivation and health, creating skills and meaningful work.
We can make sure we are making the right decisions and not cutting early intervention as we can’t see the impact.
We can create governance and decision-making structures that cut across the system, using digital twins to better communicate the impact of decisions. Structures that allow interventions to be made in one part of the system to be recognised for the benefits they deliver in another part.
We have an exciting window of opportunity before us to do something radically different and deliver the change we need.