Taking a radical view of services

The 2020 Commission’s blue-sky thinking report into the future of local services deftly manages to draw on the lessons of the last Government’s Total Place initiative while also picking up the coalition’s Big Society philosophy. This means – in theory – that none of the parties can find it objectionable while for local authorities it is a distillation of all they have been asking.
In essence the report confirms the direction of public sector reform outlined in the Total Place programme, or what is now termed place-based budgeting, namely that early cross-sector intervention saves money long-term. Furthermore, it argues the case for much more devolution to local level, in particular welfare regimes. It also warns that the cost of our ageing population could increase by as much as 6% of annual GDP and that services therefore need to be reconfigured and devolved, with all the postcode lottery implications this entails.
Ministers are certainly moving in the direction. It is likely that place-based pilots will feature in the CSR and in the next local government Bill, though it is uncertain whether other Whitehall departments will pay a blind bit of attention to them in their scramble to protect their own diminishing budget silos. A test will be how staffing cuts are handled since taking costs off a council’s payroll and placing them on the welfare budget might help the council’s finances but does little for place-based budgeting.
The coalition Government has so far shown it is prepared to be radical with public services such as its health White Paper and in the abolition of the RDAs and the Audit Commission. It is also set to review again local government finance. It should also scrutinise the proposals of the 2020 Commission and consider whether they might be piloted in high-performing local authorities.
Increasingly public sector practitioners accept that tackling the public sector deficit requires more than trimming of annual budgets. The 2020 Commission proposals may be unpalatable for some Whitehall fiefdoms and more long-term than short but they deserve serious examination because the alternatives are decidedly thin on the ground.
Michael Burton, Editor, The MJ