Public sector

Local and central public services face a familiar squeeze. Demand for adult and children's social care keeps rising, budgets do not keep pace, and residents expect the same online convenience they get from their bank. Many authorities have run several rounds of savings already, and the easy options have gone.

We help public bodies find savings that also improve services. That starts with demand: understanding why residents contact the council, how much of that contact could be prevented, and where cases bounce between departments. We then work with frontline teams to redesign services such as council tax, housing, waste and adult social care assessments, testing changes on live cases before rolling them out. In a typical authority, between a third and a half of contact in high-volume services is avoidable.

Lasting change in the public sector depends on people inside the organisation, so we always build internal capability alongside the consulting work. Through our public-sector service academy we train managers and improvement leads in the same methods we use, and coach them as they lead projects of their own. Clients typically see avoidable contact fall by 20 to 40 per cent in redesigned services, shorter waiting times for assessments, and a programme that continues under its own steam once our work is done.