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AWARDED! UNISON encourages members – either in
teams or on an individual basis – to enter for both external
and internal awards that can celebrate achievement in public service
delivery. There are also some competitions specific to the union
you might also be interested in. |
This year’s prestigious Public Servants of the Year award featured amazing stories of teamwork, achievement and dedication on behalf of UNISON members. We tell the stories that led to our members’ success. Gary Flood reports
Public servants of the year
UNISON members have been celebrated for their achievements in high-quality
service delivery in this year’s prestigious Public Servants of the
Year Awards.
The scheme (see left hand box) highlights the achievements of individuals
and teams who’ve made a difference, with this year’s overall
award for outstanding public service team of the year going to Dartmoor
prison for introducing innovative practices and radically improved rapport
with prisoners.
Such teamwork is central to great public service delivery, say the judges.
“Here is one of the great challenges for the delivery of public
services in the years ahead – our ability to join up effectively
with others doing related jobs to ensure that we give a better, more seamless
and more cost-effective service to the public we serve,” pointed
out local government minister Nick Raynsford, speaking to the 750 attendees
of the black-tie ceremony.
The awards also mark out individuals, and this year the overall winner
was Badrul Hussain, who was commended for huge efforts to improve community
cohesion on the streets of Tower Hamlets in East London.
And UNISON members did very well this year in both team and individual
categories, with their contributions both bearing out that message of
joined-up thinking and commitment to the community.
Teams high in UNISON membership won the Local Government award (Bromley
Trading Standards team, London Borough of Bromley), the Housing award
(Housing Rents Service, Denbighshire County Council), and the Health award
(Community Brain Injury Team, Down Lisburn Health and Social Services
Trust).
And at the individual level UNISON member Nirmala Sharma, senior development
officer at the London Borough of Camden was awarded 2004’s Social
Inclusion award (see right hand box).
Taking on the cowboys
Bob Gilham, from the trading standards team at the London Borough of Bromley,
said teamwork delivered results. The team has adopted flexible working
approaches that have helped it combat a serious problem facing Bromley
residents - the curse of the rogue trader builder.
Bromley is an outer London borough with a significant elderly population
of property owners. Unscrupulous tradesmen - tarmacers, gardeners and
roofers mainly - have targeted some of these vulnerable citizens, touting
for work by suggesting minor urgent repairs that soon spiral into thousands
of pounds for possibly unnecessary work.
“It’s always been part of our job to both enforce consumer
law and offer consumers good advice,” says Gilham. “But here
we saw a pattern emerging over the last couple of years that we knew needed
a proactive response.”
The council, as well as local police, wanted this issue to be sorted out
as part of the crime and disorder policy. But strictly speaking all the
team could really do was point out to homeowners their right under the
law to change their minds. Would this be enough?
The team quickly decided not, and powered ahead with a multi-skilled approach
that’s been very successful in gathering evidence from all the sources
available and passing this on to the relevant authorities. This included
going out and tracking suspected builders, interestingly enough a process
helped by honest traders who’re anxious to get the rogue traders
off the market and stop reflecting badly on them.
A breakthrough came with the successful prosecution and imprisonment of
a particularly bad family of conmen - not just for cowboy building but
who turned out to be of interest to the local burglary team.
Boosted by such success and the award itself, the team isn’t planning
to rest on its laurels. “We expect quite a busy summer, when the
con they try on is driveway ‘renewal,’’ says Bob.
The co-ordinated approach
Another outstanding team effort came from the housing sector. In 2001
the Audit Commission in Wales decided that the Housing Rents team in the
Housing Service of Denbighshire County Council in North Wales was the
worst in England and Wales. It gave it a zero star rating, and found no
prospect of improvement.
Only two years later the same body gave the team two stars and had raised
its improvement ranking up to ‘excellent’. The story behind
this dramatic turnaround is what gave the team this year’s Housing
award, according to senior housing rents officer and UNISON member Glyn
Roberts - who says he’s still amazed at winning.
“On the night we were looking at the other candidates and were very
impressed with the quality of their submissions. We never thought we’d
win – we were just glad to be there. It was a great surprise to
get called up,” he says.
Surely the judges recognised that the facts speaks for themselves. The
situation was pretty bad. Rent shortfalls stood at over £1m, as
a team constantly in flux and full of agency and temp staff struggled
to cope with the complex demands of social housing tenants across nearly
4,000 properties in a range of both rural and urban environments in the
council’s region.
Three years on, those arrears have been slashed by two-thirds. And a new
and completely rebuilt team continues to break targets, providing focused
and effective services to tenants including collection of rent, co-ordination
with benefits and debt advice, support with financial problems, and as
a focus for tenants’ working with the council through a revitalized
Tenants and Residents Association.
“It’s been about a culture of massive improvement,”
says Roberts, a member of the original team who’s helped work through
the transformation. “We’ve had big changes in working practices
and really work together as a team now. We have worked through a 50-point
action plan to get here and taken best practice advice from a wide range
of sources to help us get there.”
But the team also didn’t lose its focus. “Our priority is
and has been supporting tenants so we don’t get to ever having to
evict them, and that’s what we’ve been working to achieve,”
he adds.
Does Denbighshire have any tips for other teams? “Don’t be
insular,” he suggests. “Don’t just look inside your
organisation for the answers; don’t be afraid to look outside, for
the successes and failures that can teach you something. We were great
users of the Internet, for example, as we researched ways to improve,
and I think it can be very helpful to take the best ideas you can find
out there.”
Still, it’s the reality of the turnaround here that tells us that
the judges picked the right team – even in the face of such strong
competition. And it’s this level of teamwork and commitment that
will help UNISON members deliver ever more effective public service –
and win even more prizes next year.
The winning team - from Denbighshire, North Wales - for the Housing section of the Public Servant of the Year awards |
IMPROVING THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT |
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