After the Downturn – Managing a Significant and Sustained Adjustment in Public Sector Funding
We have been working with our colleagues at CIPFA over recent months to produce this report (click here). Our report lays bare the challenge facing public services. The need to pay off the UK’s significant debts will mean that public services will no longer be able to continue in their current form. Greater efficiency alone will not be enough to deliver the transformation that is needed. We are arguing for a new deal in public services where people matter more than process and local decision makers are given the freedom to lead.
Our report sets out the potential scale of the funding cuts and puts forward three interdependent strategic options that, if taken seriously, will provide the transformation we need:
- Redefining the relationship between the state and the individual – a reconsideration of three variables: what services are provided by the State and how; the people to whom they are provided; and the way they are funded.
- A significant de-layering of the public sector with many more decisions taken locally with minimal oversight – transferring greater power and responsibility to local authorities and removing much costly central government control and oversight.
- A major initiative to maximise economies by much more effective collaboration between public bodies – driving efficiencies by sharing services between public bodies or across whole sectors.
We appreciate the Government of the day will make some important choices; but we pin our hopes on local democratic systems being able to stimulate and shape this debate in the real places where people live, rather than all being decided in Whitehall.
The next few months will see many kites being flown. The future of public services needs to be shaped by detailed, mature arguments about what really matters to local people, not just Whitehall.
SOLACE and CIPFA members will be at the heart of these debates.
Source: Solace UK
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