In our latest Andrew Fisher Interview, our columnist discusses Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Spending Review with Jo Michell, Professor of Economics at the University of the West of England in Bristol
Given the news around Croydon Council over the past few days, the discussion takes a look at local authority funding, or the lack of it.
With Chancellors of the Exchequer since George Osborne in 2010 all choosing to squeeze the central government funding of councils, in an outsourcing of taxation misery in the name of “austerity”, Prof Michell describes the past 15 years’ policy as “a false economy”.
“The damage that’s done to whole cohorts of young people in particular who don’t have leisure facilities, don’t have the youth clubs, don’t have access to outside spaces and so on, now we’re seeing big increases in budgets for special needs education for example. Now I can’t draw a direct connection, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are sort of longer-run effects that outweigh in pure cost terms, the cost savings.
“It’s ongoing because with councils, an ever-increasing share of their budget is going towards social care. And that’s very, very hard to squeeze. I mean, it is being squeezed, but it’s very hard to squeeze, which means everything else is getting squeezed.
“Those budgets were cut substantially under Osborne, they haven’t come back in real terms, certainly haven’t come back in real terms per person, they have come back somewhat, but not back to pre -2010 levels. So that does feel, as you say, like an ongoing austerity.”
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It is difficult to balance the books with increasing social care needs. The state of Croydon council’s finances and many other councils is concerning. I think public services are brilliant in the sense that they improve our living standards. But, I think there is scope to improve public services and I’m sure a lot of people working in the public sector agree.
How do we do this when we have limited financial resources? I think we need to be innovative and reward the people working in the public sector who perform the best. This could be a staggered pay regime as is done in the private sector whereby pay is performance related, you get a basic salary with the potential to increase your wages when certain work related targets are achieved. Surely this would incentivise people to make our public services the best they can be. It seems that there isn’t much accountability when standards are poor so people aren’t minded to improve working practises, etc.
Believe it or not, Moya, many people go into careers in the public sector out of a sense of vocation – they include nurses and the police, of course, but also social workers, care assistants and even council staff. They are rarely on the kind of eye-watering salaries enjoyed by decision-making execs, though their working lives often adversely impacted by them.
You are right. I worked in local govt for 10 years (before the cuts.) The ethos was entirely different to the private sector. It was all about service and looking after the ‘customers.’ Helping them was the point not maximizing ‘profits.’ And the effect of good and well-resourced local government was to be seen everywhere in the borough. Just as decay and neglect are so apparent to everyone now. It was madness to ham-string local govt.
I see what you mean but I’m thinking back to the terrible way the council housing maintenance department was being run for residents in Regina House in South Norwood, and Children’s Services. How do we get best practise. I still think my idea is quite good.
I don’t think it’s good to pit the private sector as a bad thing in comparison to the public sector. I think they work hand in hand to make our lives better. The private sector have to look after customers well or they go bankrupt. They employ people who pay taxes which helps pay for our public services the two rely on one another.
And some talented and ambitious social workers go on to become council CEOs. I know three.
Yes quite true. But as I’ve got older and had more experiences of using council services, the health service, etc, and hearing from people working in public services there is a definite need for more accountability.
At the risk of making a ‘slippery slope’ argument, doesn’t that imply that paying public sector workers more isn’t necessary, because they’ll do it for the love of it, not the money (who needs to pay the workers, when we’re giving them their vocation!). Except when they get offered to move to Dubai or Australia to do it there for double or treble instead.