Planning for the next 12 months

The financial year is six weeks old, but it is too early to say whether the budgets laid out by local authorities across the country will ever be met in this fiscal year, even though everyone agrees the settlement has been brutal. Already, however, the public relations battle is under way.
The DCLG has issued figures maintaining an average per capita spend by local authorities of about £1000 a year, just to ram home its point that local government still has a hefty share of public finances. In the past 10 days, there have been reports from the CBI saying sickness absence levels in the public sector continue to be higher than in the private, and from the right-of-centre Policy Exchange, that even pay is higher in the former than the latter.
The voluntary sector, in addition, which at times seems to think it is excluded from the public sector deficit, maintains that it has taken the hit on those cuts which one might term ‘low hanging fruit’, ie, easy to achieve immediately with no strategic thought of the consequences, a response that, so far, councils have been distressingly willing to implement (page 13). That particular chicken will certainly come home to roost in the years ahead.
Furthermore, some major private sector suppliers express concern that the so-called ‘burning platform’ provided by major spending cuts has still not galvanised councils into making long-term efficiency transformation plans. Some councils have even put major contracts on hold, regarding the spending cuts not so much as an opportunity to reorganise ailing departments but as a reason to postpone decision-making until the dark clouds clear.
The message is that a few weeks into the new financial year finds councils no less under pressure from angry residents, furious voluntary groups, ministers anxious to deflect blame from themselves and private sector suppliers keen to engage in long-term partnerships but finding instead, closed doors.
The last six months have been about retrenchment and the short term, irrespective of the impact on long-standing stakeholders. The next year has to be about looking above the parapet and planning for the longer term.