Cameron's Pledge is already real in Blaenau Gwent

I have to have my say on David Cameron’s pledge to give public sector workers the chance to form co-operatives and take on the running of services themselves.

The Conservative leader wants this to embrace primary school teachers and nurses, for example, allowing them to make decisions. A brilliant idea indeed. But these decisions would be within certain national standards…and there’s the catch. You can’t hand over power but then tell them what to do with it. If you hand over power to the frontline then that has to mean they get to decide what is a high standard. It has to be like this, because everything is context specific. You can’t – or shouldn’t - generalise.

Mr Cameron thinks this policy would "unleash a new culture of public sector enterprise". Not so new in fact – this is exactly what I am already doing in Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council. The authority’s environmental services department has been turning itself upside down, quite literally, since last autumn. Recycling, the binmen, highways, stores and transport - all are undergoing a radical change which has seen the frontline staff allowed to take control. And this is in an ‘Independent Party’ authority and with full consent from the chief executive and corporate leaders.

In his speech, Mr Cameron said employee-owned co-operatives would be able to decide on management structures, "innovate" to cut costs and improve the standard of service. They’d also get to share any financial surpluses among the staff. Admirable stuff, but there’s another problem. When I start work with any organisation I’m faced with removing 19^th century management practices. Getting managers to unlearn the past, treat people like adults, not children, and start to behave as they’d like to rather than as they’re conditioned to is a difficult process.

Nor am I sure where the surplus of money talked about would come from. Public services I come across are generally in – or in danger of being in - huge deficit. And anyway, at the risk of generalising too far, people don’t go into public services for the money. In fact, at Blaenau Gwent Council I’m working with the staff to re-invest “surplus” money back into frontline services.

The problem is not with co-ownership itself, which can and does empower frontline workers to achieve a high level of customer service. The problem is whether managers can give up their power, status and money as a result of the shift.

Mr Cameron also described how there are millions of demoralised public sector workers who feel disrespected, and lack recognition. Isn’t that incredibly obvious? It’s a result of being management-driven machines given targets and performance measures and treated, quite frankly, like children. Then today Durham University released evidence that flexible working creates happy staff and happy staff equals better performance… another exceedingly-obvious claim, but at least one now supported with ‘evidence’. I have been saying this for about ten years, and I see the results in practice time and time again.

I know that frontline workers in a democratic, management-free zone can boost productivity and staff morale and reduce absenteeism.  Even in a short period we saw a 2% reduction in sickness. Savings also ranged from the £100 removal of a fixed cost to nearly £500,000 in the reduction of ‘management’ cost/overheads to a service.

These ideas are no "gimmick". Even though the frontline staff at the Council have only been immersed in this for a few months the authority overall has been working hard at this transformation for more than two years now. It’s no quick fix – but nor is it a passing fad.

You’ll be able to see how the frontline staff have risen to the challenge in a BBC documentary to be shown in the next few weeks. Watch this space for more details…