Squaring the Circle: What lessons can be learned from the Hinchingbrooke franchise fiasco?

In 2012 the first ever operating franchise was awarded to a private provider to run an NHS district general hospital – Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire, UK. Less than three years into what was supposed to be a ten-year deal, the franchisee, Circle, announced its withdrawal from the contract, raising concerns about the process of risk assessing and monitoring the franchise arrangements. This commentary begins by telling the story of the decision to award Circle the Hinchingbrooke franchise. It sets out the context in which the franchise was awarded and outlines the stated reasons why it failed. The failure of the Circle franchise is used to question the ‘logic’ of the neo-liberal approach to public service reform. The Circle case illustrates how market mechanisms and privatisation are likely to create as many problems as they are supposed to solve

From Accountability to Assurance – Stakeholder Perspectives in Local Government

This article reports on research which sought to explore the understanding of accountability for performance amongst constituents of local government in Western Australia. Recent trends to increase the public accountability and financial reporting requirements for local governments underline the need to understand the value and use made of this performance information by local government constituent

Reducing the compliance burden of nonprofit organisations: cutting red tape

Australian governments now rely on the non-profit sector to provide essential services. Yet, anecdotally, the compliance burden imposed by governments consumes scarce service delivery resources. This study quantifies the cost of government generated paperwork for Queensland non-profit organisations. Fourteen non-profits kept logs to record government paperwork over 12 months. The non-profits also provided their experiences of government paperwork and in particular grant submission and reporting processes. The study finds that government grant paperwork forms the bulk of a non-profits total paperwork burden with grant submissions being the most costly to complete. Costs are clearly regressive with small non-profits bearing a significantly higher burden. Governments need to lead the way and empower the non-profit sector by reducing this administrative burden and releasing the funds for direct service provision