Time to fasten the safety belts

Industrial-strength seat belts need to be ordered for all local government managers from next week, ready to face the biggest roller-coaster ride of their careers.
Their challenges are not only in tackling the long-awaited spending cuts but also its consequences, such as maintaining morale when staff are being reduced, dealing with a public angry at the loss of some of their cherished services, and protecting the good brand name of their council under fire from local media and opposition councillors.
The question is, how prepared council managers and staff are for the downturn, and whether the public are ready for the impact on their services. Certainly, the election campaign has cast little light on the issue.
As the recent Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS)’ study showed, all politicians have been telling porkies about what they intend to do with the public finances, promising on the one hand, to slash billions off spending, while on the other, maintain frontline services. While cynics have long ago dismissed ‘efficiency’ savings as a smokescreen to confuse the voter, politicians continue to infer that cuts will come from the back office rather than the front, and that, therefore, the imminent fiscal ‘adjustment’ will be tough but bearable. The voters, however, have certainly had ample warning from studies such as the IFS and in the media that this is anything but the case – assuming they choose to give them attention.
Either way, local government managers will find themselves squeezed between a rock and a hard place. An incoming chancellor is almost certain to claim the finances are worse than envisaged, blame his or her predecessor, and impose swingeing spending cuts and tax rises in an emergency Budget. Council managers will be dealing with internal budgetary challenges along with external hostility to ‘de-commissioning.’ Unions, striking over pay and redundancies, will add to the picture of disintegrating services.
But local government has grown used to dealing with declining budgets – tackling ever-rising demand has always been its remit, and it has beaten all other parts of the public sector over efficiency savings. It will rise to the challenge.