Council efficiency measures 'won't save enough'

20 Oct 10
Cutting bureaucracy through improving efficiency, sharing services and introducing place-based budgeting will not be enough to make the savings required from councils, local government groups have warned ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review
By Jaimie Kaffash

19 October 2010

Cutting bureaucracy through improving efficiency, sharing services and introducing place-based budgeting will not be enough to make the savings required from councils, local government groups have warned ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

A survey of council chiefs, carried out last week at the annual conference of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, showed that 66% believed their authority was well equipped to ‘weather the storm’ of spending cuts. However, a qualitative survey presented to the conference by Ipsos Mori found that chief executives expected staff cuts of up to 33%. 

David Monks, chief executive of Huntingdon District Council and chair of the Solace electoral matters panel, told Public Finance that it was ‘inevitable’ that there would be a cut in the quality of services and in staffing.

‘We will need to find out the size of the storm first, after the Spending Review tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But like any authority we are going to be preparing for some pretty bad news.

‘It is naïve to think there will not be cuts in local services. We can achieve things through efficiencies and sharing services but that will not be sufficient to make the cuts we need to make. Without doubt there will be a difference in the quality and the extensiveness of the services we provide to the public.’

Andy Sawford, the director of the Local Government Information Unit, told PF: ‘A lot of the focus is still on how we do things more efficiently and better, which is the right focus in many ways.’

But, he added: ‘In truth there has not been much conversation about what is going to be painful. Not much talk about the extent of job losses, service reductions and so on. It is necessary and helpful for local government to be sharing more about what it is that councils are going to stop doing.’

Westminster City Council today spelt out what it has been doing to make savings. It announced that it was expecting to make 60 to 70 staff redundant in addition to the 350 people it has already cut. It predicts that more 55% of savings will be made through income generation and increased efficiency and it is currently undergoing a ‘fundamental service review’.

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