Delivery arrangements
Eleven model families
Model names cover wide variations. Use the family to find promising territory, then examine the actual arrangement and its consequences.
The in-house comparator
Keep direct provision in the appraisal. It can be a deliberate and well-supported design choice, including after an external arrangement ends. Define its actual costs, constraints, capabilities, and potential for improvement.
The scoring model below compares 11 alternative families. It contains no numerical in-house reference profile. A low-scoring requirement doesn't establish that direct provision is best; a high fit with an alternative doesn't establish that change is justified.
Some families cross-cut others: a mutual can also contract for a service; a socially focused body may be community-led. These aren't mutually exclusive boxes.
Contracting variants
A separate provider performs specified work under a service agreement or contract. Variants include a single supplier, a prime contractor, a framework, stewardship provisions, and different risk-and-reward arrangements.
When it can help
Useful where the required work and outcomes can be specified and the market has relevant capability. It can bring expertise without establishing a new body.
What it asks of you
The commissioner needs procurement and contract-management capability. Clarify interfaces, information rights, and what changes when demand changes. Responsibility for doing the work can move while public accountability remains.
What to examine
A contract can leave scope gaps, reward the wrong activity, or create mutual dependence. Competition at award does not establish continuing contestability.
What can we specify well enough, what will need joint judgement, and can either party realistically exit?
Grouped models
Several providers work through an integrator, alliance, consortium, or federation. Integration can remain with the commissioner or sit with a third party.
When it can help
Useful where no single organisation can provide the required combination of skills and capacity.
What it asks of you
The integration role must have authority and capability. Parties need a shared account of the whole service, as well as their individual obligations.
What to examine
A simpler contract may do the job. Otherwise complexity can be shifted into unclear interfaces, contested responsibilities, and contractual gaps.
Who holds the whole result when every participant has met its own contract?
Joint ventures
Partners combine resources, ownership, or risk in a distinct venture. Arrangements range from a jointly owned company to a strategic partner or public-private partnership.
When it can help
Useful where the combination of capabilities and investment has a clear purpose, and both parties have reason to remain committed.
What it asks of you
Specify delegation, ownership, value sharing, conflicts, and exit. The parent needs commercial and relationship capability of its own.
What to examine
The partner is built into the arrangement. Mutual lock-in, differing time horizons, and weak challenge can undermine the intended gains.
What can the combination do that a simpler arrangement cannot, and what happens when the partners no longer agree?
Arm’s-length bodies
A distinct delivery body sits at some distance from its sponsor. Forms can include public trading companies, executive agencies, statutory bodies, or other public entities. The legal powers and freedoms vary.
When it can help
Useful where a clearer mission, specialist capability, or defined commercial freedom justifies separation.
What it asks of you
Define outcomes, boundaries, funding, and sponsorship. Build the new identity and governance while keeping an effective relationship with the parent.
What to examine
Separation brings administration and transition work. The body can become absorbed in its own survival, or be nominally independent while the parent intervenes unpredictably.
Which decisions will we actually allow the body to make, and what support and challenge will make that freedom workable?
Community-led provision
A community, user group, or volunteer-led body has a substantial role in ownership and decision-making.
When it can help
Useful where there is a legitimate, willing constituency and a credible way to sustain the work.
What it asks of you
Develop capability and governance, make support explicit, and test whose voices the body represents. Give the transition enough time.
What to examine
Funding, succession, uneven participation, and volunteer capacity need attention. Accountability can be unclear if the public body still guarantees continuity.
Who wants to own the responsibility, who is missing, and what will sustain the arrangement after the initial energy has passed?
Enabling and making the market
The public body supports an environment in which others can provide: a platform, community provision, timebanking, licensing, concessions, or personal budgets and vouchers.
When it can help
Useful where enabling a range of responses can serve people better than a single predetermined provider.
What it asks of you
Establish and maintain the enabling framework. Test access, incentives, information, and the capacity of providers and users to participate.
What to examine
Choice may be nominal, provision uneven, and essential support absent. Someone still needs to see and respond to gaps across the whole system.
What must we maintain so others can act, and who will notice and respond to people the arrangement fails to reach?
Giving up control
Authority, assets, resources, or provision move beyond the public body’s continuing direction. This family includes distinct choices such as devolution, asset transfer, open resources, sale, or exit from provision.
When it can help
Useful where others can appropriately carry the work, and the public body can accept the consequences of relinquishing control.
What it asks of you
Understand and test the implications, including legitimacy and continuity. Different variants need separate appraisal; this family is particularly broad.
What to examine
Rebuilding provision may be difficult or impossible. Do not infer that a change in ownership removes a continuing public responsibility.
Can we genuinely let this go, including when others make choices we dislike?
Mutual models
Employees or members hold a stake in ownership and governance. Variants include employee-owned public service mutuals and co-operatives.
When it can help
Useful where the people involved want the responsibility, and there is a credible public value and business proposition.
What it asks of you
Staff must be able to lead the change and govern the body. Test employment, capital, commercial, and commissioning arrangements.
What to examine
A new ownership form does not remove market dependence or guarantee participation. The public service purpose and the interests of members may diverge.
What are employees or members choosing to own, what risk comes with it, and how is the public purpose protected?
Venture approaches
Funds, incubators, investment, prizes, and related mechanisms seek new ways of achieving outcomes.
When it can help
Useful where developing new capability or provision is part of the purpose, and an investment approach is justified.
What it asks of you
Specify the investment logic, public benefit, risk allocation, and basis for continuing or ending support. Build capability to judge and support emerging work.
What to examine
The mechanism can favour investable proposals over necessary work. Failure may leave little service capability to bring back.
What are we trying to bring into existence, and what evidence would justify further investment?
Failure and return
Fail back asks who must take responsibility when delivery fails. Step in asks what rights exist to intervene. Roll back asks what can be brought back, and how. A contractual right may be worthless without people, data, access, equipment, or money to exercise it.
Assess your requirements · Test the transition and failure plan
Socially focused models
A social purpose shapes the entity and its use of surplus. Possibilities include social enterprises, community interest companies, charitable forms, community benefit societies, and trusts. These forms are not interchangeable.
When it can help
Useful where the purpose and the capability of a credible social organisation fit the work.
What it asks of you
Select and establish an appropriate form, with capable governance, a sustainable income model, and a clear commissioning relationship.
What to examine
A social mission does not settle capability, representation, or financial resilience. Restrictions attached to a legal form need examination in the actual case.
How will the purpose survive financial pressure, leadership change, and changes in who funds the work?