The following post focuses on one of the key issues explored in our white paper on improving Health and Social Care Services and significantly reducing costs. Download your free copy here. Improving health and social care outcomes, while significantly reducing…

A dispute that erupted in the first half of last year is once again in the news media. Stagecoach, one of a number of public transport providers in the UK and US, took the Department for Transport (DfT) to court…

Even before the age of austerity, the public sector has often had to find ways to do more with less. And now, this remit is more crucial than ever. In an era when public funding has been cut sharply, many…

The degree to which organisations engage in the strategic commissioning process can greatly affect the future of their service delivery partnership, their relationship with the service provider, and can even dictate whether they save money or incur costs that they…

In 2007, when Southwest One was formed as a joint venture between private sector Goliath IBM, Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council, and Avon and Somerset Police, many pointed to it as a trailblazing move: an exemplar of how…

The perception of honesty and integrity in the outsourcing sector has been shaken in the wake of the negative media coverage of Serco and G4S and the announcement on 12 Dec. that both firms lost their tagging contracts. While many…

As I recently read through yet another Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report uncovering yet more failures of Government procurement and project failures, I found myself wondering whether the squandering of the public purse is ever going to be addressed with…

With the best of intentions, strategic partnerships and major projects can still falter. Such failings are typically down to a lack of quantifiable goals or a failing in the translation of business outcomes to contract terms (which are typically easily…

At Best Practice Group, we regularly get involved in established commissioning partnerships that are in dire need of revitalisation. More often than not, a client will seek out our services with the aim of dismantling their commissioning contract with minimum…