The local government secretary must be a happy man this week. The overwhelming majority of councils in England have decided to freeze their council tax precepts this year, leading to the lowest increase in history.
Councils haven’t frozen their only means of raising local revenue out of the goodness of their hearts, particularly in the light of 26% budget cuts in the next four years and significant frontloading for 2011/12. It’s rather as a result of the particular form of persuasion adopted by Eric Pickles plus the rather minor sweetener of a £650m pot to help.
The secretary of state, an ardent proponent of localism, has begun to describe his ever-evolving policy of freeing local authorities from central diktat as ‘guided localism’. In fact he has ‘guided’ local authorities not to politically embarrass the government by hiking up council tax and is pleased as punch to be saving the average taxpayer £72 this year.
One wonders if the many thousands who have marched, protested and stormed town halls would mind paying this £72 if it meant securing an extra library, protecting care services or saving community centres this year and over the next three. That, perhaps, would have been localism.
In reality, guided localism is just the same as central diktat. Dress it up all you like but cutting grants by 26% then springing frontloading onto authorities leaves very little room for freedom. Those authorities diligently following Pickles original guidance to slash the back office, join up services, share senior executives and reduce administration costs before turning the axe to frontline services, were all thrown off course by this diktat.
Suddenly the four-year plans for ‘flat’ budget cuts and long-term cost reduction and restructuring projects were all frozen in a madcap rush to find enough cuts to shove into the first year. In many authorities every possible stone has been unturned resulting in reductions in frontline services, mass redundancies and the subsequent protests.
Only now that budgets have been set can authorities start to turn to the task of actually balancing them and finding long-term ways of meeting rising needs on significantly reduced expenditure. That’s only, of course, if Pickles doesn’t flex his guided localism arm again any time soon.
Karen Day is a freelance journalist and the former editor of Local Government Chronicle
