Causing the Cuts

Martin Francis has a round up of various cuts stories here.  Many of the comments he cites suggest that it is the Council that is causing the cuts.  Of course the reality is that it is the current government that has created a financial settlement specifically to shrink public services.  Ministers are pretending that the current cuts are avoidable, but no one who knows about local government believes that.

Cllr Margaret Eaton, the chair of the LGA and a Tory councillor, said as much in her Guardian piece a few days ago.  The four arguments I have heard the likes of Eric Pickles present are:

1) That major savings can be made from the pay of senior managers.  In fact sacking all Brent's most senior managers would achieve only a tiny fraction of the savings necessary to balance the budget

2) That reserves can be used to moderate the cuts.  Brent Council has only £7.5 million in reserves.  After George Osborne's July budget last year, Brent Council faced a projected overspend of £7.1 million, so there is an argument for us increasing the reserves rather than reducing them.  In any case, reserves can only be used once.  It you support your spending with them this year, you will find the money run out next year.

3) That "shared services" between Council can generate economies of scale.  In some cases this is true, and Brent does participate in some shared services (The West London Waste Authority is effectively an example), but ministers have made it as difficult as possible to achieve such savings by frontloading the cuts.  Brent Council is getting a cut in grant of almost 12% this year, and 7.4% next year.  This was announced in December as part of a 28% cuts package over four years.  Joining up a service with another Council requires legal and financial agreements and major organisational restructuring.  That takes much longer than the three month period between the grant announcement and the setting of the Council Budget.

4)  That lots of local government money is spent on things people don't value.  A lot of the commenters on Margaret Eaton's piece seem to have fallen for this line.  In fact, the reaction recorded by Martin Francis demonstrates exactly the opposite.  People are protesting because they value the services that are being cut.  There simply are not large sums of money lying around being spent on nothing of value.

I note that that some of the quotes in Martin Francis' piece come from former Liberal Democrat councillor Peter Corcoran.  It would be interesting to hear him or any of his colleagues justify the govenrment that they campaigned for at the General Election.  So far, I have heard a number of Brent Liberal Democrats defend their government's strategy of public spending cuts beyond what they were calling for in the General Election, but they have not presented any alternative ways for the Council to react to the decisions of their government.