A delegation from West Oxfordshire has presented the case for change, innovation and collaboration to the Minister for Local Government, Rishi Sunak MP.
Robert, along with Cllr James Mills, Leader of West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC) and David Neudegg, Managing Director of Publica, met with the Minister to outline the modern approach to local government being taken by West Oxfordshire and the partner councils which are part of Publica, a company set up to provide more effective and cost efficient services to local communities.
Facilitated by Robert, the meeting enabled a discussion concerning the opportunities presented by remote service delivery and digital transformation of services, freeing up capacity to deliver local priorities. The meeting enabled those delivering this to local communities to demonstrate to central government that the ground-breaking, not-for-profit model for partnership working has exceeded expectations and offers great potential.
Robert said: “It was great to have the opportunity to explain to the Minister the innovative shared services model which has been so beneficial for West Oxfordshire. It has led to more effective and efficient services for residents with more money available to reinvest for further improvements. It was useful to explore how the model can be developed in the future to enhance how local government delivers services for communities.”
Cllr Mills said: “In my capacity as Leader, I was able to give the Minister insight into and tangible examples of the benefits we’ve realised through adopting the Publica service model, which sees us sharing services, but retaining our sovereignty and reinvesting savings into better services. He appeared genuinely interested in our approach and how it might be applied elsewhere in the future.”
David Neudegg said: “It was really encouraging to meet with the Minister and to discuss in detail the way Publica can and does facilitate truly efficient and collaborative working and how the flexibility of our model could offer a solution to other authorities who wish to share services but don’t have an obvious partner with whom they can do so.”
