In the ordinary course of events we would have seen a Comprehensive Spending Review during 2009. But, as in 2006, it has been postponed - this time it’s because there’s an election looming and the government does not want to show its hand. However, despite this, we all know that public spending is under the greatest pressure in a lifetime, local government spending included. Last week's Pre-Budget Report and November's Queen's Speech give us the only indications to date as to where this pressure might lead.
Firstly, the good news. The government has set out its stall as the protector of vital public services. Schools, the NHS and care for the most vulnerable are to be protected – indeed spending on schools is set to increase. For local government this means that a large part of its overall spending will be cushioned from the pressures affecting the rest of the public sector.
Secondly, the bad news. Because of the good news, everything else is going to feel the pressure even more greatly than would otherwise have been the case. Regeneration, roads, parks, leisure, services to the less vulnerable and the rest of the 'public realm' will have to take the strain and see spending cut drastically, perhaps by as much as 20% if we accept the usually reliable forecasts of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
This means that local government faces a changed future. Instead of being responsible for 'place shaping' in its widest sense, the building of strong and prosperous communities, it will be responsible for pockets of continuing provision in an otherwise degrading environment of public services. This will face it with difficult choices, primarily choices about what to degrade as a priority. Public satisfaction, already declining in the face of a decade of increased and improved service provision, will almost inevitably plummet further.
This, then, if the opinion polls are to be believed, will be New Labour's legacy to local government, handing it a poisoned chalice of invidious choice, albeit one not filled by itself alone, but also by the economic crisis. This chalice is also one likely to be gilded by increased powers and responsibilities, if not by increased resources. Those of us who remember the difficult years of the 1980s will also remember where this could lead us. Faced with compelling that this choice be made, who would be a Section 151 officer now, not just in Lambeth and Liverpool, but anywhere beyond Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea?
Damian Dewhirst is associate director in government and infrastructure advisory at Grant Thornton UK LLP
