Urgent Public Service Reform Needed - Report

The Northern Ireland Executive must pursue public service reform with greater urgency, according to a new report by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

'Moving up a gear – Assessing the pace of public service reform in Northern Ireland', calls for greater progress in rebalancing the Northern Ireland economy via the opening up of public services to competition.

It also proposes several areas in which partnership between the public and private sectors can be utilised.

Commenting, Ian Coulter, CBI Northern Ireland Chairman said: "In our 2010 report Time for Action we called for the re-engineering of delivery in four specific areas of public service – health, education, housing and policing and justice.

"While there has been some progress towards reform in each, especially policing and justice and health, there remains a significant amount of work for the Executive to do. We remain concerned at the absence of joined-up thinking when it comes to aspects of reform and a concerning lack of momentum."

While the report found that some progress had been achieved, it said Northern Ireland is not adequately enough for economic challenges post-2015.

Subvention from Westminster has risen from £6.3bn in 2006/07 to £10.5bn in 2010/11. The report said this was unsustainable.

Jackie Henry, Chair of the CBI Northern Ireland Public Services Reform Committee said: "We have identified several key areas of public-private sector partnership which we believe can achieve mutually beneficial goals.

"With a CBI/Deloitte Commissioners Network poll last June showing that 77% of people would accept a private business, charity or social enterprise running some of our public services at the same level of service quality, we believe there is a clear appetite for change.

"The opening up of public services routinely realises savings of 10-30% elsewhere in the United Kingdom and we believe the Executive must take a more ambitious approach to this subject.

"We have also been greatly encouraged by the progress that we have made already, specifically the procurement task and finish group and the knowledge exchange scheme with planning service, and the clear desire for change that senior officials have shown."

(IT/CD)