MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

So the phoney war is at last over with regards to public sector spending cuts. Last month's emergency budget outlined plans for 25% spending cuts in ministerial departments.

But as ever, it is not as simple as that. We have also recently learned that we could soon be witnessing 'a mexican stand-off' between government departments because the Treasury is allegedly asking them to draw up plans of 40% worth of cuts.

However, is was all clarified by Phillip Hammond MP, secretary of state for transport, who said that the average cuts in departments will be 25% but some departments will be asked to make no cuts, such as Health and International Development, while others will have less cuts, like Education (10–15%), and therefore some other departments will be asked to make more than the 25% cuts.

So it will be stand off between departments to see who ‘blinks first' and opts for a greater cut than 25%. Which department is voluntarily going to take on this mission impossible?

And so it seems departments that work closely with local government will be forced to make cuts greater than 25%. But we are going to have to wait to the autumn's Comprehensive Spending Review for the final results. We already know that Communities and Local Government (CLG) is initially being asked to make £1.2bn a year in expenditure savings.

But what about the people in all this? We know that from surveys that people don’t want to have cuts to services such as litter and bin collections, parks and leisure facilities, and street and road cleaning. Clearly these ‘quality of life’ and ‘feel good’ factors are important to people. But these are the areas likely to be most threatened by principal councils (county, district, borough and unitary councils).

So who will be listening to people’s opinions. One answer is communities themselves – if they are allowed to.

As Simon Jenkins, columnist and former editor of The Times, says across cities and towns: “Communal services are still divided into national silos, prevented from the sort of local collaboration that should be natural, and save money.”

He goes to say that we need: “more freedom for a neighbourhood authority, even as small as wards, to be allowed to ‘tax-and-spend’ for services such as parks, crèches, clinics and job centres, with ‘micro-mayors’ to tackle litter and antisocial behaviour.”
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The government and others in power, like principal councils, need to allow real localism in action give people the chance to have more control and say over local services. Set up more local (parish and town) councils, I say.