CSR 07: A need for fundamental change

Monday, October 29, 2007

Can the local government sector find yet more savings, asks Liberal Democrat Richard Kemp

Its always interesting to delve into the entrails of the CSR or indeed budget statements to look at what is there, what could have been there and what the ‘politics’ of each initial piece of work is. Certainly that is the approach taken by the media and most of the puppeteer politicians of Westminster. Who proposed it first; who stole our ideas; should this have been done four years ago; the debate was not illuminating!

But two questions seem to me to remain largely unasked – never mind unanswered in the debate.

The first was raised by Vince Cable the Lib Dem Shadow Chancellor. He raised, as he has raised before, the question of borrowing. Our so-called wealth and the growth associated with it seem to be dependent on levels of borrowing which would normally be considered reckless. Even the jolt caused by the sub prime lending in the USA feeding into a domestic crisis at Northern Rock seems to have failed to dent the real enthusiasm for consumerism and spending. Can we live forever on borrowed money? Won’t we at some time have to pay up not only as individuals but as society as a whole. What are the implications of that for the public sector with the continued push into over expensive PFI routes.

The second was a consideration of the package as a whole based on thoughts emerging from local government. Can we go on doing things this way? The local government sector gets real growth of 1% a year for the 3 years of the CSR. But this is predicated on us being able to find cash saving of 3% a year. This is really hard going for a sector which the Treasury has conceded has been best at finding real saving and improved efficiencies. Real costs in our sector are rising for services like care of the elderly and waste disposal. But perception costs are rising even faster. People want more and more from their public services and require the ends without willing the means. My belief is that unless we do things very differently we will not be finding savings or efficiencies but making cuts and certainly delivering services at a standard lower than that anticipated by our electorate.

Of course there are things that are an obvious waste of money that could be taken out. The ID card costs and the costs of an unnecessary war in Iraq are but two of them. There are also clear areas of concern in public procurement. The Government has yet to purchase a major IT contract on budget and on time and the MoD seem incapable of buying anything on budget and on time.

But even if these obvious wastages are stripped out the future looks bleak for public sector services unless we undertake a major redesign of service delivery which strips out silos and builds services closer to the customer both in terms of geography and in terms of requirement.

Local government both has and can lead the way in this. Let me give three examples which I suggested to Hazel Blears and John Healey on the day that the CSR was announced:

Lets close most of the individual front doors to the public sector and set up locality based one stop shops, web sites and telephony so that the public needs to remember only one number or go to only one place to get their majority of their problems dealt with. Having people go to one place for one type of benefit, another place for another type and yet a third for advice on them both is wasteful. It’s wasteful for the individual and it’s wasteful for the public/voluntary sectors that have staff who listen at three points instead of one.

Then let’s link together services on a locality basis so that the back offices also work together. Some families or individuals with difficulties can be visited by tens of staff from a multiplicity of agencies. Some go to cajole, some to control, some to seek vengeance and some to actually assist. But the problems don’t seem to get solved by staff with a short time to operate and who swiftly move from location to location.

Then let’s look at how we consult people. How many times does the public sector send people with clip boards around the same people in the same houses? Why not assemble information once, consult once and then we all use what comes out?

Public Servant readers will all know examples where all these ideas are happening or beginning to happen. But we now need to embed them in the public sector as a whole. We need to change thoughts of local government and central government to those of local governance and local service delivery. We need to break down the silos of departments, agencies and quangos and move to a people centric service delivery approach. The alternative is a fragmented public sector mechanism that will deliver less and less.

Richard Kemp is a Liberal Democrat councillor in Liverpool and leader of the Liberal Democrats at the Local Government Association