by Paul O'Brien
Tuesday 16 March 2010
Spoke today at the City and Financial seminar in London on the topic of ‘Grasping the scale of the medium to long term challenge facing local government.’
Basically my role was to set the context on the scale of the financial cuts facing public services and examine how cuts of up to, and beyond 15% can, be achieved.
Some of the proposals being put forward include shared management structures, a complete 3 year spending freeze on capital and revenue funding, structural reform through reorganisation, the CBI are obviously promoting outsourcing, the total place approach, shared services generally, increasing charging beyond the £11b per annum that local government gathers at present and my own preferred approach of lean or systems thinking combined with good local performance management systems.
It was a good debate and most local authorities will examine what is correct for their own specific local circumstances.
