One of the many interesting contributions to the CIPFA conference came from Philip Hammond, the shadow chief secretary. Referring to the Brown-Cameron spat about cuts or investment he said that, as he went around the country, more and more practitioners were not waiting for new pronouncements from the centre; they understood the necessity for, and the inevitability of, a period of retrenchment and were simply getting on and making their preparations.
If this is the case, I think it is very encouraging. We might not know the precise scale of the correction that is coming but the direction of travel could not be clearer. Waiting to be told is not a good strategy; starting to slow the engine and making full use of the lead-time available to make more significant adjustments must be the right approach.
I was reminded of Steve Bundred’s ‘Armageddon’ article in The Times a couple of months ago which argued ‘plan early’. Another conference speaker, Tony Travers, had also covered this ground very effectively. One of his slides was a neat summary of the main options available to organisations:
Hard choices
- Increase fees and charges substantially?
- Introduce more co-payments for services?
- Outsource much ‘routine’ activity?
- Partnerships to deliver joint services?
- Means testing for some services or parts of services?
- Use of existing reserves and investment resources?
- Cut back or stop non-compulsory services?
- Salami-slice all services?
Over the weekend the news suggests that the government is set to announce a new policy of giving citizens statutory rights to receive specified levels of service. This will complicate the challenge of scaling back spending plans. Are we going to have an elite group of ‘statutory services’ that are effectively protected from cuts? Rather obviously this will have serious implications for other services.
I am intrigued that this appears to be being done in the name of abolishing central targets. On the contrary, it seems to me to be about enshrining targets (for all time?) in legislation.
Perhaps I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. We shall see when the policy announcement is made.
