Business goes on as the cuts bite

It is right that the LGA should be bolshy about the financial settlement for local government. The sector has been stuffed, and as the full impact of the settlement percolates through departmental budgets, the reality is worse than it first appeared.
Even in the past few days on the circuit, all the chief executives can talk about is how many redundancies they are conducting and whether the first year cuts are 10%, 20% – or, as two district chiefs told me this week, 40%.
PM David Cameron’s speech to the RSA this week maintaining that public spending would be the same as 2006 earned a riposte from one district chief to me that in his council’s case, the 2011 budget took it back to 1997.
Meanwhile, because councils always do what they are told, business has to go on. So, for example, this week, SOLACE’s annual election conference was packed with anxious chiefs, because on 5 May, there is the perfect storm of not only elections in 280 English councils, but polls for the parliament in Scotland, assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland, four mayoral elections and last, but definitely not least, the UK-wide referendum for a new voting system (subject to legislation passing).
All of this is the responsibility of council chief executives and electoral administrators, none of whom can afford any more repeats of queues at polling booths, as happened last May.
Even although turnout for the referendum is expected to be 30%, there is still the risk of students deliberately causing chaos by turning up en masse to polling stations 10 minutes before they close as part of their tuition fees protests.
Admittedly, the Government, conscious of budget cuts, is ensuring the elections are fully funded and, despite slashing public spending, is managing to find some £54m in the otherwise-empty Treasury cupboard to cover council referendum costs.
Even assuming the costs are met, councils are still grappling with severe budget cuts and reduced staffing levels, and need the headache of the referendum like a hole in the head.
But then, getting on with whatever they are asked to do in whatever circumstances and with whatever financial constrains is what councils do and what, it appears, governments expect them to do. For how long is another question.