CorpComms Magazine

Like all councils we face some tough choices over the next few years - choices that we certainly never thought we would have to make three years ago - but now, faced with significant financial pressures, we are having to dramatically re-shape the way we work and the relationship we have with colleagues in other services. It is with one eye on this and the other on the dramatic upheaval in the NHS that we decided to explore some radical changes to our communications offer, which effectively involved merging with our local primary care trust.

Merging with the NHS was an obvious choice given our borough's poor health statistics. The health of local people is worse than average. Life expectancy varies between the poorest and the wealthiest parts of the borough - by up to nine years for men and six years for women. Improving health is therefore a key priority for both the council and local strategic partnerships and, as such, any proposal that involves an integration of functions around health is likely to work here if it is going to work anywhere.

It has been successful. By going down this route we achieved an immediate cash saving of £100,000 with no impact on either organisation's ability to deliver. This saving will increase as we begin to benefit from shared procurement and other shared working such as sharing media monitoring software and other IT back up functions. The NHS benefits from the lessons we learned from a recent marketing review, which cut the amount we spent as a council on marketing by £253,000. We will be replicating the new procedures and evaluation processes across the NHS with a view to identifying similar savings in spend on health communications, which can then be directed towards front line services. The strategy behind the merger is simple. We ensure that we are structured as a team around outcomes, as opposed to departments, with focus on the wider health and social care theme incorporating the day-to-day work with the NHS with the wider social care agenda, particularly on personalisation.

We've incorporated systems that worked well for the council in the past particularly around forward planning and public affairs and ensured that where possible the same systems work across both sectors. Aligned to this is a robust set of protocols which enables us to deal with any situation where the position of the NHS may differ from the position of the council - particularly important when dealing with issues such as serious case reviews where one partner may be more at fault than another. Six months on from our shared service arrangements and things are running smoothly. Lessons have been learned and new procedures implemented to deal with issues that could only have been foreseen after the shared service started. If I had to pull up three key issues that need to be planned for, they would be around culture, branding and accountability. First and foremost anyone embarking on the shared service route will need to get a handle on the cultural differences between local government and the NHS. Whilst we spend our time ensuring our members are kept up to speed with issues and develop particularly strong relationships with our executive members, the NHS places considerable importance around ensuring channels of communication are open with the Department of Health.

The Department needs to know when anything contentious is being dealt with, in case this escalates up the food chain and the Minister gets asked a related question without having the necessary briefing beforehand.

Therefore, it is important you build good relations with the strategic health authority and that the ministerial team is briefed on any major crises that are round the corner - a very different relationship with Whitehall to that experienced by councils. Secondly, branding is a massive issue for the NHS. The NHS brand is particularly emotive and can determine how a government is judged on Election Day. They therefore have strong brand guidance, which you need to work with especially if you are thinking about any joint structures. However, as we have found, the guidance is rapidly becoming out of date particularly as councils and primary care trusts merge, so this is something that is becoming a major priority for us going forward and something the NHS is developing.

Finally, if you are thinking of joint structures you need to be mindful of the other aspect of NHS culture, which is around structures and accountability. In Blackburn with Darwen we are pretty fortunate in that we are represented each week at our chief executive's strategy group, and negotiated a similar position for our work in the NHS by reporting to their executive team. However, in addition to this, there was a need to ensure we dealt with any issues before they escalated so we created a joint communications board, which sets the priorities of the shared service but also acts as a sounding board for any issues at an early stage. This is not a hindrance; it is simply an additional process that needs to be factored in.

Once agreed and implemented, the shared service operates very well, much better in fact than if you had two competing structures. Both sectors bring a unique set of skills with them but fundamentally they are the same. We're in the business of public service because we believe in the whole ethos of delivering services for local people and as communicators that doesn't change just because we operate within a different sector. As a local government communicator, I have learned a lot from colleagues in the NHS and vice versa but fundamentally this whole change is about offering value for money. There are other considerations that should be factored in, such as the upheaval of the NHS White Paper and the relationship with GPs and other primary care trusts but, in a nutshell, if you can address the issues I have laid out, you should be half way there to achieving a successful shared service across local government and the NHS.

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