Tony Eccleston
1 Local government has been making efficiency savings for well over five years, prompted in part by the Gershon reviews. This has already gone beyond the 'salami slicing' that was the approach often adopted a few years ago. Outsourcing, collaborative procurement and shared services are already being used. There is a limit to how much blood can be squeezed out.
2 In parallel with the drive to make efficiency savings has come the growth of the performance management culture. A couple of years ago I estimated that about 15% of senior officer time was spent on meeting the demands of external assessors, rather than delivering services.
3 Some authorities, especially those under conservative control, are much leaner than others. There are reasons for this but there would be danger and unfairness if this were not recognised and cuts applied uniformly. So there is a political difficulty here.
4 Cuts need to be carefully managed. The worst possible approach would be to stop filling all vacancies. Imagine a situation in which increasingly hard pressed social work team leaders leave (as many are doing). Who could justify not seeking to keep child protection services up to strength?
5 Back office staff, such as finance and personnel officers are generally the ones with expertise in keeping expenditure down and reducing staffing. Get rid of enough of them and it is unlikely that targets will be met or new approaches such as collaborative purchasing extended.
6 It is neither easy or quick to reduce staffing levels, so there is a time lag in getting the benefits of cuts.
I have not spelled out the implications - I think they are fairly self evident - but it won't be easy to find and eliminate waste. There will be effects on front line services. The only sensible way is to bite the bullet and cut budgets and then let those best placed to work out how to manage it.
But that wouldn't be comfortable for any national political party to accept.
Tony Eccleston is a former director of children's services
From Flip Chart Fairy Tales
From Bubb's Blog
Comments
There are no comments yet for this article.