Council services threatened by cuts in 2015/16?

Having fought a good fight in the face of Government cuts over the last three to four years, it is clear that councils across the country are finding it increasingly difficult to protect front line services.

Local authorities  are now finalising their budgets for 2015/16 and reports from all over the country show that financial pressures are clearly starting to be felt.  Cuts in staff and bureaucracy have already been made, the ‘easy wins’ have been won, but on average spending power next year is estimated to be some 14.5% lower.  

In the Independent on Sunday today here we read about a number of councils who are looking to local communities to take on services that they have been able to provide up to now.  Many of these are ‘non statutory’ and so in theory at least can be outsourced, or even cut completely, without legal challenge.  

 At Suffolk County Council we have already undertaken a good deal of this sort of activity; devolving country parks and rights of way for example and transferring our Library Service into a mutual.   Other activities have been spun off into wholly owned companies, and many of our in house services are now commissioned from elsewhere.    It may be due to this early action, combined with planned service transformation, that the budget for 2015/16 is likely to balance without the need for too much pain.

However, according to another report, Austerity Uncovered, by the admittedly partisan TUC  and the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, some councils are now threatening to cut back on statutory services, having done all they feel they can in the discretionary area.  Here they are straying into dangerous territory since a judicial review of service failure can be a very expensive process.

The response of Central Government to this prospect of systemic service failure has been sanguine to say the least.  In part this has to be put down to wilful blindness about what is actually happening outside the Whitehall bubble.   It is also due to ignorance.  I do not say this out of pique.  A recent report by the highly respected National Audit Office found, in the words of the Local Government Information Unit, that while there are signs of improvement, the Department of Communities and Local Government ‘does not gather sufficient evidence to tell whether individual councils are able to cope with expected cuts in funding.  The regulatory constraints have so far prevented any council suffering wholesale financial failure; instead, financial stresses are felt in particular service areas.  The report finds that DCLG’s information is too patchy to identify where particular authorities may be unable to maintain the statutory level of service in some areas.’ 

As someone who now spends a good deal of time trying to balance the budget at Suffolk County Council, I find this ignorance depressing, but not particularly surprising.  We, in common with other local authorities, have tried to communicate the problems that lie ahead both to Government through our MP’s and other channels, and also to local residents .  It seems however that neither central government, nor, according to the article in the Independent ,  two thirds of people have taken this on board.

The real situation in unlikely to be hidden for much longer.