Service Design for Local Government Reorganisation
Client: Inner Circle Consulting (ICC)
Sector: Local government / housing & homelessness
The challenge
Norfolk’s councils were asked to explore how housing and homelessness services might look under a new unitary authority. Each of the eight districts had different processes, pressures and cultures. The risk was that the conversation stayed at the level of structures and efficiencies, missing what really matters - how people actually experience services.
What I did
I used service design methods to bring clarity to a very political debate:
Discovery across eight councils – listening to staff and working with SMEs to uncover how services were really working. finding where the problems are, and where the opportunities lay for each of the new unitary areas.
Blueprinting the current system – mapping services across housing growth, and homelessness, showing hidden connections and points of friction.
Prototyping future options – creating visual models of how services could operate in a unitary setup, making it easier for leaders to see trade-offs and opportunities.
Facilitation – running workshops that gave officers and leaders a safe space to be honest about services, challenge assumptions and see beyond district boundaries.
The outcome
The design focused the conversation from ‘how do we merge councils?’ to ‘how do we design services that work better for residents ?’. The blueprints gave local leaders shared evidence and artefacts they could point to in making their case to government.
The result was a more human centred vision of reform: one that didn’t just promise efficiency, but showed how a new authority could prevent homelessness earlier, grow housing more strategically and provide a more consistent experience for residents.
The full proposal can be found here
A big thanks to David Colbear and Karen Barke for a brill project.