Richard is a Chartered Public Finance Accountant with more than 14 years' consulting experience. Richard has worked across the public sector, in Scotland, Wales and England. Most recently, he has supported local authorities to deliver transformational cost reduction programmes. All of these programmes have involved adopting a new operating model, typically with the focus being on the authority repositioning itself as a 'strategic commissioner' of services. In this context, strategic commissioning involves strategic and operational decisions concentrating on: forecasting customer and community needs; modelling affordability constraints; interpreting political priorities; evaluating and selecting the best delivery model to address service requirements, and managing performance.

Richard has supported a range of collaborative, outsourcing, in-sourcing and ‘spin-off’ ventures over the past 14 years. Richard leads the Deloitte local public sector ‘shared services’ team, which has to support authorities evaluating and implementing a range of different delivery models. There are numerous factors that impact on decision making and likely success: politics; market capability; partner relationships; the baseline position and forecast constraints/requirements. In reality, experience has shown that any model can work and can fail. The trick is to interpret the triggers, requirements and levers that ensure an organisation makes the right choice for their circumstances and can deliver against it.