Britannia Radio

This is, perhaps,  a straw in the wind of expected cuts in welfare  
payments by the present government

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FINANCIAL TIMES        19.3.09
Town halls look for deep cuts in services
    By Nicholas Timmins, Public Policy Editor

Council chiefs are launching a “doomsday study” of what services may  
have to be cut if the government makes swingeing reductions in public  
spending.
The Society of Local Authority Chief Executives is combining with  
Cipfa, the treasurers’ body, in a piece of scenario planning that  
could see central government being told that it has to reduce  
people’s entitlement to social care and healthcare, children’s  
services and much else.

Trish Haines, president of Solace, said: “People are talking about  
possible reductions in public spending of 10 to 15 per cent, even of  
up to 30 per cent” in the years after the current spending round  
which runs until April 2011.

“That would require a quite different approach to the 3 to 5 per cent  
efficiencies that we have been making in recent years,” said Ms  
Haines, who is chief executive of Worcestershire county council.
“We need to think now about what that could mean and what it would be  
appropriate to do.”

For example, in social care, she said, councils faced legal duties to  
assess care for the elderly and statutory requirements for care  
standards that it cannot legally abandon.
“If we have to take 40 per cent out of those sorts of budgets we  
would have to tell government that it would have to change the  
statutory framework, and think not about maximum standards but what  
would be the minimum standards for a safety net service.”

Councils also face legal duties to continue to help children who  
leave care once they are older than 18. And local authorities and the  
National Health Service are introducing personal budgets which can  
lead to improved care.
“But what happens if the public sector can only fund 40 per cent of  
that package,” Ms Haines said. “And what would be the impact of these  
measures on families and carers? Would they be able to cope, even if  
they were willing?
“We have to ask questions about street lighting – whether it should  
be left on all night because it makes people feel safe,” she added,  
noting that hard questions were likely to be asked about leisure  
centres, or other facilities that benefit only part of a community.

She said the study, which the two bodies hope to publish this year,  
“is not shroud waving. It is a serious piece of scenario planning to  
think through what the implications would be of big cuts in public  
spending.
“I would much rather people have a plan that they then don’t have to  
use, rather than not have a plan”