It's grim up North!

Had a busy few days of meetings with colleagues based in the North East and North West of England, in order to keep in touch with what is happening on the ground in these troubled times.

Firstly met up with a Director of Environmental Services from one of the Lancashire authorities and he was in the midst of this years budget cuts. He explained to me how the triple whammy of a tight financial settlement from central Government along with falling revenues from charged for services and the implementation of concessionary travel schemes added up to some of the severest cuts he had seen in years.

Followed this up with lunch with one of the team from the Government Office of the North West and we discussed how difficult the financial issues is for many authorities. At a time when we are looking for local councils to play an ever more active role in local economic regeneration, the financial crisis is making this difficult. It's a real catch 22 situation but I suspect that local authorities have a massive role to play in helping their communities recover from the current downturn.

Another day another meeting this time with a colleague who is going through the local government reorganisation process in the North East. From my personal experience in Scotland I know how difficult this is for the vast majority of staff involved. Despite reassurances that it will not have a major impact on their organisational roles, uncertainty, speculation, culture clashes and favouritism all add up to make it a really unsettling period. My only advice is to try and stay positive and focused, those that do tend to come through any major change process intact.

Having been out and about and assessed the situation on the ground, I guess local government is just the same as it always is full of challenges, continuously changing and scarce on resources.

The great reorganisation debate!

Speak at our Northern Region lunch near Blackpool today on the topic of local government reorganisation along with Dennis Cooper and Mark Hammerton from Eversheds. We have an audience of over 30 and it ends up in a really good debate.

A number of those present have travelled from the North East where Durham County and its seven districts are due to be merged into one new unitary authority. You can almost feel the tension crackling in the air as I carefully pick my way through my own reorganisation experiences from the nineties in Scotland. When I mention some of my concerns about recruitment, culture change, harmonisation of terms and conditions, and how a 'them and us' can develop you could sense that many had concerns of their own as to how the situation now will play out in practice.

I also touched on communication, developing common systems and processes, called for a moratorium on inspection and one of my personal bugbears the lack of an independent staff commission to oversee the process and rule on disputes. I think this is a major blunder and predict that DCLG will come to regret this.

Dennis and myself have different views on the relevance of this but my view is just because the one in England in the nineties was a bit limp it doesn't mean you can't draft its powers differently and make it successful like the one in Scotland was. I guess it comes down to whether you believe that disputes should be settled through a legal process in the first instance or as a last resort!