17 October 2003
Councils are failing to drive down costs, improve productivity and provide greater customer satisfaction, local government minister Nick Raynsford told local authority chief executives this week.
Reiterating the threat to cap excessive council tax rises, Raynsford told the conference of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (Solace) in Edinburgh that more councils needed to cut costs and become more efficient.
He said surveys suggested that customer satisfaction was not rising. The public expected to see continuous improvements in the products they bought in the private sector, such as cars, high-fi systems and holidays, and expected prices to remain competitive or even reduced in real terms, he said.
'They expect providers to achieve efficiency savings so as to provide better quality and value for money. We need to apply similar principles in local government.'
He added: 'We can't just operate on an incremental basis, adding new services and therefore costs but never questioning the scope for achieving economies on existing spending patterns – and that is where the pursuit of excellence comes in.'
He said he remained frustrated about a lack of evidence of real progress in driving down costs. In spite of the extra money that had come into local government there was little net gain – in other words no real improvements in productivity and in value for money.
During a session on diversity and excellence in local government, Raynsford gave a list of examples to show the greater freedom and flexibility Labour was giving to councils, including the removal of a series of consent regimes, innovations such as new borrowing arrangements and a reduction in the number of inspections.
But he stressed that, with freedom, came responsibility. 'The public are clearly very concerned about unreasonably large council tax increases. In some cases, the increases have borne down very heavily on people of fixed incomes, particularly the elderly. The average 13% council tax increase in 2003/04 is simply unsustainable.'
Speaking later, the minister told Public Finance that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott had made it clear the powers to cap rises would be used next year if there were further, unacceptable increases.
PFoct2003
