Shared Chief Executives - leading from the front
Really successful workshop at the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (Solace) conference last week where a number of the chief executives who have pioneered running two councils with one CEX shared their experience. Given that the number of CEXs at the conference, and the growing public and political interest in their pay, it was not surprising that the workshop was packed.
The context for the workshop was the publication of the IDeA report “Shared Chief Executives and Joint Management Teams - A Model for the Future?”. For me the report was interesting both in terms of how it was produced and what it said.
The approach to the work was genuinely one of co-production. Although not actually writing it, all the pioneering chief execs were closely involved. This guaranteed a really rich report with fresh insights into the benefits of the approach and the issues involved in implementation. More importantly it put the chief execs, rather than mediators (like the IDeA), on the podium as advocates.
Secondly the report has generated for me some fresh insight in terms how shared services can be made to work. Its a simple point but its clear that things really start to move when change starts from the top and moves downwards. By sharing a chief executive, and than a management team, the really big obstacles to shared services seem to melt away.
Given the pressing need to reduce administrative costs the savings already generated by the councils involved are significant. These are small councils and with some of the partnerships projecting savings of up to £3million per year you don’t need to be a mathematical genious to project the savings nationally. If you want another more public take on this from me please go to Guardian Public.
I am the Director of Services at the 
John - this provides more of the evidence that the key barrier to significant shared services is one of trust and shared vision between the leadership (political and executive) in the partnering authorities. A shared CX and management team removes the executive problem around that issue.
One question we are left with, is that in the longer term is a shared CX and SMT the pathway to a unitary development by the back door? After all the new unitaries are a number of councils who now have a shared CX and SMT and have removed the political boundaries through less councillors.
The question is a good one. Definitely the case that a number of the authorities embarking on shared CEX did so as a defence against restructuring. A key part of the business case for restructuring is captured once you have shared the CEX and SMT and the costs of additional change become harder to justify. It would also make transition to a unitary authority easier particularly as the emerging evidence is that other parts of the public sector realign to take advantage of the shared CEX and SMT (policing units etc). I think it goes too far however to say that this is a back-door to unitary status because the key decision around political representation does not necessarily follow from shared CEXs.