A Legacy of Excellence
Since taking over from Cllr Paul Bettison who was chairman of iESE for 18 years, I have had the pleasure of leading the organisation in thinking about its next 18 years. November 2024 was the 20th Anniversary of the founding of iESE. We will be marking this occasion in a celebration in London next month. iESE started as a voluntary partnership of councils, police and fire authorities in the south east of England funded by government grant. iESE was unique amongst regional partnerships in its member leadership with every county nominating a leader and every key spend area nominating a cabinet member to serve on the board. Another hallmark of iESE was a ‘roll up your sleeves and get stuck in’ approach which included those leaders and cabinet members shaping and overseeing parts of the work program. This program touched every part of local public services from health and social care to construction.
Always ambitious and always set up to run as a business, that program quickly started to deliver savings, new income and huge impact. As time went on and the incoming Conservative Liberal government saw the end of the regional partnership funding, iESE transformed itself. This time into a non-profit business that worked for its owners, removing procurement barriers and using its reserves to chart a course to be a self-sustaining business.
Key Achievements
Successfully supported the creation of the first joint local authority Adur and Worthing and built a team to share this learning with others that followed.
Developed the first digital platform enabling care commissioner to deliver ‘fair price faire care’ at any address in the country for complex and bespoke care packages.
Created a construction procurement programme that reduced cost overruns from more than 20% to less than 1%, delivering design awards developing and delivering environmental standards.
Developing a best practice platform from the UK Public Sector Transformation Awards (now internationally recognised) to the Innovation Club of public service organisations sharing best practice.
As we mark the 20th Anniversary of iESE we enter a new vibrant era for an established and sustainable group of three local government owned transformation companies. The parent company is now iESE CIC, a Community Interest Company, ensuring that the iESE legacy will be used for the sector’s benefit going forward. iESE CIC, with its UK and International links, will continue to share best practice through Transform Magazine, the UK Public Sector Transformation Awards and by providing essential support where it’s needed. The iESE subsidiary companies support the development and deliver the results for 2 missions critical to local government at a time. The iESE subsidiaries change over time, some of our successes have become businesses in their own right, and others remain in the iESE Group.
IESE Innovation is currently delivering change in digital social care processes building upon its class leading CareCubed care costing tool. The Cyber Centre of Excellence (CCoE) was born out of iESE’s future trend scanning which identified a huge risk. A risk, not just to councils, but to our wider communities as well as our councils that could deliver the sharing of best practice and support for struggling public bodies. As we found out in the pandemic, we don’t just need to plan for the continuation of our services, but the continuation of civil society in the case of a large scale (digital) virus.
Celebrating a Remarkable Team
The iESE team of staff, members and officers old and new gathered in February to celebrate this marvellous achievement of our sector. Demonstrating not just the entrepreneurial and commercial acumen of the sector, but its willingness to share and commitment to mutual support. It is this team that has and will continue to deliver the successes that we so clearly need.
iESE has led the way in its development of not just processes and technology but also people in the sector. The first large scale use of behavioural frameworks to supporting local public services across the UK; bringing certainty to cultural change and ensuring culture is linked to the design of the new organisation. Culture and behaviour have as much focus in transformation as the hard-edged services. Of course, iESE has not only trialled and rolled out this approach in the private as well as the public sector, but it has also applied it to itself. This focus has developed a team with remarkable skills and behaviours to lead iESE into the future.
Annabelle Atkin joined iESE as a graduate trainee and is publicly best known for her work developing and evolving the sharing of best practice and the UK Public Sector Transformation Awards. What won’t have been seen publicly is that Annabelle led the conversion of the iESE parent into a Community Interest Company and oversees the governance of the iESE Group. Having been a Director of the parent company for over a year now, Annabelle takes over as the Chief Executive of the iESE Group.
Sherif Attia started at iESE as a graduate trainee and supported a number of transformations in the field. He developed his design skills, developing the latest generation of iESE digital products. He now leads the design work with an international team. Craig White joined iESE from a large software provider to local government helping grow the uptake of iESE products, and ensuring that our customers determine the focus for development, resulting in iESE products becoming class leaders. Together Sherif and Craig were appointed Directors of iESE Innovation and will lead the organisation into an even more successful future.
Kurtis Toy joined iESE to lead the Cyber Security programme. A successful entrepreneur and company owner in his own right, Kurtis brings together the best of British talent from the intelligence services, the legal community, and new technology providers linking them to the new Cyber Centre of Excellence for local public services. Kurtis is the Chief Executive of this new iESE subsidiary and one of the few fully qualified chief information security officers in the country.
A Fond Farewell … and hello!
With a new generation of iESE leadership coming through we are saying thank you to Dr Andrew Larner and Heather Lumby who have led the development of iESE since its inception and are moving on in May of 2025 to a new stage in their careers. Heather and Andrew really have been a superb partnership, and we have benefitted hugely from their commitment to iESE. Andrew is now a full time carer for his wife Debbie and we wish them both well in their travels around Europe in the new EV! However, we won’t be losing Andrew. Stepping down as iESE Chief Executive will allow Andrew to focus his time on the Cyber Centre of Excellence, supporting Kurtis to build up that business. Heather started her career in iESE building up its consultancy support. With the launch of iESE took the lead corporately on finance and resources. Her commercial acumen has been a terrific asset to iESE and has driven its establishment as a financially stable and successful organisation delivering for the sector. Heather too has a caring role, in this case for her father. Heather will also be supporting the next stage of iESE’s role ensuring that the financial and commercial scrutiny that she has brought continues, ensuring that iESE remains the stable business that she has developed.
Looking Forward
That brings me to my position, I have the immense please of taking over as Chairman of IESE CIC. As the former leader of Eastbourne and the opposition leader at East Sussex County, I know that we will face even more opportunity as we go through reorganisation. iESE intends to support this across its portfolio and bring together the collective knowledge from its, and others work on transforming local public services from the first voluntary merger of two councils to the complete reorganisation of local government. It’s not just the marginal savings of reorganisation that motivate us but the opportunity to release the collective and creative talent of the sector to create new human centred services that join up the whole public, voluntary and private sector around our customers, creating vibrant communities that are future fit. We look forward to working with you all in this endeavour.
Conclusion
In closing, we extend our deepest thanks to Andrew and Heather for their extraordinary contributions to our organisation. Their dedication, hard work, and unwavering commitment have left an indelible mark on iESE. We wish Andrew and Heather all the best in their new adventures and look forward to working with them in the next stage of the iESE adventure.
By David Tutt, Chairman of iESE CIC
Contact Information
For any inquiries or to send messages of appreciation, please contact Michelle Pearson at michelle.pearson@iese.org.uk.
Embargoed: 5th March 2025.