Unit costs of personal social services in Inner London. Stage one report

<p>This discussion paper presents a description of the research strategy of the London Costs project and preliminary results demonstrating the progress made in establishing reasons for the high costs of social services in London.

<p><p><p>The first stage of this research is concerned with a quantitative analysis of the high unit costs in London. Section 1 describes the policy background and the research strategy. Section 2 analyses unit cost data for 1988-9 to demonstrate that London has far higher unit costs for nearly all personal social services; also that these cost differentials persist despite recent efforts to rein in spending in London. Section 3 investigates, as far as it is possible to do using aggregate data, causes of these high costs: results seem to eliminate some explanations while raising the salience of further research on others. The circumstances of clients, local party control, service mix and use of substitutes do not appear to be major reasons. The most pervasive explanation for the high unit cost is the high cost of labour, combined with low output per member of staff for some activities. Section 4 proposes a fieldwork strategy for the research project to pursue these explanations further.