The Guardian and other papers carried more reports and analysis of the grim position of Northants CC now that it has pretty much run out of money. This is a position that Brent has so far managed to avoid through taking a series of difficult decisions during the 2010-2014 period, which allowed cuts to the budget to be made in a more measured and less painful way. Subsequently, my impression has been that the regime has got a good deal laxer, with for instance a fairly kneejerk reaction on fire safety.
The problem now facing Northants is that after significant prevarication, it is being forced into making all its cuts at once. That makes it far harder to manage the process rigorously. It also means that finding alternative routes through other institutions becomes much tougher.
For instance, if Northants were to seek to have cushion either the closure of libraries by handing over to volunteers or (say) the moving of childrens centres from those libraries it would be much harder. There is now a ticking clock to make the cuts happen within budget. Any delays from legal action or delays in staff consultation will lead to extra costs and therefore even deeper costs. Any one off payments necessary to the process will bite into a much lower level of reserves, and the reserves in Northants seem to be much lower than they have historically been.
The problems facing local government were predictable years ago, and have been made worse by Central government. At some point many of the cuts being imposed will have to be reversed.
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