It is fair to assume the Individual Budgets that people receive will not always be able to give them all of the services that they would like to receive. At its most extreme, an Individual Budget could also leave someone as an isolated consumer of individualised services.
There are examples across the country of people being supported to pool their Individual Budgets so that they can buy services together. This could have clear benefits for holders of Individual Budgets, and could also be attractive to providers of services, who may find it easier to develop and sustain new services if they are able to sell to a number of customers at once.
Interest has been expressed by a number of organisations in developing this idea further. We would like to think that the idea could be explored more as part of the Personalisation Made in Bradford Network.
