Commissioning Review Now Available

The independent review of Newham Council’s grants-to-commissioning process between 2006 and 2008 was completed in March but has yet to be formally launched. The report, with the rather dry title of “Pointers to Better Outcomes”, is critical in a number of important areas about the process undertaken by the local authority. It says:

“There has been little consultation so far on what services third sector organisations could best provide to meet Local Area Agreement priorities and no accompanying mapping of the provider landscape”

“Unfortunately the process did not model or further good partnership working between third sector organisations and the Council nor between third sector organisations themselves.”

“The confusion around the process, inconsistent technical input and the difficult timeline meant, that even with high quality support, the transfer of grants to commissioning did not work as well as it could have done for both the Council and for third sector organisations.”

“Partnerships were rushed together in very short spaces of time or established consortia rushed together bids. Both are unsatisfactory and do not allow for the building of trust and the development of supporting systems and structures.”

“The Council did not appropriately design the consultation and planning stage of the Grants to Commissioning process and therefore did not meet best practice.”

“The Council does have an understanding of need based on its own and others research and resident feedback. However, what was missing was a process of dialogue whereby third sector organisations could feed in emerging needs and beneficiary aspiration to further shape that understanding.”

Many of these criticisms will be of little surprise to groups who took part in the commissioning process.

Pointers to Better Outcomes (Word, 495K)

Section 4: Conclusions and Recommendations (Word, 118K)