By Lucy Phillips
1 October 2010
Outsourcing almost all services at Suffolk County Council will not be ‘a quick fix’, but the leaders were left with no other option, Public Finance has been told.
Jane Storey, deputy leader of the Conservative-run council, defended criticism that offloading services to the private and voluntary sector would not lead to the scale of savings the council had estimated.
The council needs to cut its annual £1.1bn budget by 30%, but doubts have been cast that the target can be met. Last week, councillors voted to open up almost all service provision to other providers, particularly community groups, social enterprises and co-operatives.
Storey told PF that immediate savings would be achieved by cutting capital spending, internally restructuring the council and ensuring services were not oversupplied. Savings from outsourcing would kick in later. ‘The new strategic direction is about doing things in a different way, less duplication, seeing if voluntary organisations will and can do it.
‘There are ways of providing services that are not the traditional way that will save us money and won’t be a quick fix,’ she said.
She added that ‘the alternative is to put up council tax, which is quite untenable for us’.
Residents are being consulted over the plans. Storey said: ‘It’s up to communities to tell us what they want and need and it may be they offer up a solution themselves. Or charities may be more than happy to talk to us. We are not saying no to anything. We have to think of new and innovative ways of working and that will give us the flexibility in the future to meet the financial crisis we have been left.’
She added: ‘If the money is not coming to us from central government, it’s not a statutory duty and no one is saying they think it is a terrific idea, there may well come a point in time when we have to say we can’t afford to do that.’
Storey denied union speculation that the 27,000-strong workforce would be reduced to a core of a few hundred employees. ‘Until we do the consultation and see what services the community want we don’t know what we are going to need to deliver, so we can’t pre-empt this discussion by saying we will be down to 200 or 4,000 or whatever... There are so many ifs, buts and maybes,’ she said.
Storey also told PF that she was surprised at the attention the council’s moves had attracted. ‘Every council in the land is doing something similar but probably behind closed doors and has not yet come out with a paper... This has just been a volcano about to erupt.’
