Publish the Problem: Why Councils Should Brief Founders Like Clients, Not Grant Applicants
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Every few months, a local authority somewhere in Britain opens a grant round for innovation. The call is usually broad, the criteria are dense, and the deadline lands in the same week as everything else. Founders respond by guessing what the council really wants. It is a strange way to buy solutions: the buyer hides the problem, then scores the seller on how well they can read minds.
There is a simpler model. Councils could publish their actual problems as short, concrete briefs, and invite founders to pitch against them. Not a grant scheme with a pitch event bolted on. A proper front door for small firms that want a first public-sector customer.
The brief is the product
A useful council brief should fit on two sides of A4. It should say what outcome the council needs, what it currently costs, what constraints apply, what data is available, what budget range is realistic, who owns the decision, and when a pilot could start. It should name a real officer, not a generic inbox. And it should be written in plain English.
That sounds obvious. In practice, it is radical. Most public-sector opportunities arrive as a specification written for incumbents, or as a funding call that asks founders to reverse-engineer the council's strategy. A brief flips the direction of travel. The council does the work of describing the problem. The founder does the work of solving it.
Then comes the pitch day. Not a Dragon's Den-style contest, and not a networking jolly with warm white wine. More like speed-dating between a service director and a small firm. Shortlisted founders get ten minutes to explain how they would test an idea, what it would cost, and what would count as failure. The council gets options it would never have found through a standard tender. Both sides leave with a next step.
Why small firms should care
Landing a first public-sector customer is brutally hard. Procurement portals are labyrinthine, references beget references, and a small firm can spend weeks on a bid that never gets read. A published brief lowers the cost of sale. It also signals that the council is serious about buying, not just consulting.
For a founder, a paid pilot with a council is more than revenue. It is evidence. It is a referenceable customer with a real problem, a real budget and a real deadline. It can unlock the next contract, the next hire, the next round of private investment. And because councils buy locally where they can, the multiplier stays in the area.
A council that spends thirty thousand pounds on a pilot with a Bristol or Barnsley startup is not just buying a service. It is buying proof. That proof can help the firm sell to other councils, to NHS trusts, to housing associations. The first customer is often the hardest. A brief makes it easier to find.
The awkward bits
None of this works if councils treat the pitch day as free consulting. Founders should be paid a stipend for preparing and presenting, or at least have their costs capped and covered. Otherwise the model selects for firms that can afford to work for nothing, which is the opposite of what a local economy needs.
Procurement rules matter too. Many sensible pilots sit below the threshold where full tendering kicks in, but councils need to be transparent about how they choose. Innovation partnerships and pre-commercial procurement have a role, though they are not a magic wand. The brief should say plainly what happens after the pitch: a pilot, a contract, a framework, or simply a thank-you and a published note. Ambiguity corrodes trust.
Intellectual property needs a grown-up conversation. Founders should keep their background IP; councils should get a licence to use what they pay for. Personal data should not be handed around like loose change. And someone in the town hall needs enough authority to say yes to a small pilot without convening a committee for a quarter.
A small start, not a strategy deck
The temptation is to turn this into a twelve-month programme with a logo and a theory of change. Resist it. Start with one directorate and five briefs. Host the pitch day in the council chamber or the local library. Invite the NHS trust, the university and the housing association to watch. Use existing networks, not a new platform.
Good places to begin are the unglamorous problems that cost real money: adult social care transport, temporary accommodation, waste collection routes, pothole reporting, loneliness referrals, licensing enquiries. These are not sexy. They are exactly the kind of operational pain that a small firm can solve with a focused product and a short pilot.
Measure what matters: how many briefs were published, how many founders pitched, how many pilots started, how many days of officer time were saved, how many pilots turned into contracts. Publish the results. Let the model improve in public.
The big idea is not that councils become venture capitalists. It is that they become better customers. Publish the problem, pay for the pitch, buy the pilot. Britain has plenty of founders looking for their first break. Councils have plenty of problems looking for a solution. A brief is a cheaper way to introduce them than another grant scheme.
