Frontline council services face a funding shortfall of up to £20 billion a year by 2015 if budget cuts in the Government’s spending review are imposed without reform of the way the public sector operates, local government leaders warn today.
A submission to Chancellor George Osborne by the Local Government Association, an all-party organisation representing 350 councils in England, warns that councils will be forced to make cuts to vital services if a spending squeeze of that scale is imposed.
The estimated annual shortfall - equivalent to more than the entire adult social care budget in England and Wales – includes possible Government spending cuts and unavoidable increases in demand for services which councils must meet.
It includes:
- Anticipated cuts in central government grant funding, other than schools funding, of 20 per cent.
- An estimated £5.6 billion increase in the cost of adult social care by 2015, to meet the needs of Britain’s growing ageing population.
- Meeting an estimated £1bn increase in the cost of waste disposal by 2014-15.
- Covering the costs of predicted increases in demand for primary school places, children’s services and child protection costs
- A potential increase of up to 20 per cent in the £1.1 billion cost of concessionary bus travel for pensioners.
The report calls for wholesale reform of the way the public sector operates, to devolve power over a host of services to a local level. The LGA estimates such reform could save at least £20 billion a year without harming frontline services.
The report has 20 proposals to cut red tape and improve services. They include:
- Funding for local public services to be pooled into local budgets – to save up to £100 billion over five years.
- All ring fencing on local authority budgets to be removed.
- Integrate health and social care policy.
- Pool funding for local infrastructure projects.
Baroness Margaret Eaton, chairman of the LGA, said:
“Councils deliver hundreds of frontline services from collecting rubbish to helping elderly people live independently in their own homes. They have made huge efficiency savings in recent years, and the scope to make further savings without cutting services is limited.
“We know the public sector is facing deep cuts in the Government’s spending review. We have laid out practical plans to deliver big savings by cutting out unnecessary waste and red tape in the system and devolving control over public services to local people who know best what their areas need.
“Ministers have moved quickly to cut burdens on councils, but they need to introduce further reform to make the savings we think are possible.
“People will not forgive those who cut frontline services without first exhausting every possible avenue for cutting unnecessary waste, complexity and red tape within the system.
“Local public services like after-school clubs, meals on wheels and care for the elderly or youth work should not be put at risk because of Whitehall turf wars with civil servants refusing to devolve their department’s budget because central government knows best.
Author: LGA Media Office
Contact: Tel: 020 7664 3333
Notes to editors:
Read the executive summary of the LGA’s submission to Government
Read the full LGA Spending Review 2010 submission
The LGA has published detailed plans for reform of the public sector to deliver £100 billion in savings over five years.
PDF version Public service spending cuts – more evidence of hitting the worst-off hardest?
The latest research from the TUC into the impact of spending cuts on public services further fuels the debate about the ‘fairness’ credentials of the Coalition.
In similar fashion to the IFS analysis of the Budget, the report by Tim Horton of the Fabian Society concludes that the impact on the poorest tenth in our society will be considerably greater than on the richest. This excludes the tax and benefit changes already analysed by IFS and shows that lone parents and single pensioners will be the hardest-hit groups.
So what exactly is being measured in this study? It is not immediately obvious. Families, for example, do not directly spend money on most public services (most of which are free). And spending by government is usually targeted at specific services or infrastructure (such as education, housing, transport etc.) – not directly on individual families.
The research takes a detailed look at the amount spent as a whole on specific public services (e.g. GP services, dental services, in-patient treatment) and then apportions this to household types. A key assumption here is that you can successfully determine the levels of spending based on people’s age, family type and where they live, for example.
There are different patterns in public spending, in terms of cash spent. Education spending is – unsurprisingly – focused on families with children. This means that the poorest adults without children do not benefit at all from this expenditure (or, one could argue, are protected from spending cuts to education). Health spending is higher on unwell middle-income older people, and transport spending assists the better-off because of their greater road and rail use. Across-the-board cuts to transport spending would therefore affect the richest more than people with lower incomes.
However, it is hard to imagine how spending cuts to public services, in this kind of analysis, would not hit the poorest hardest. Relatively flat-rate spending – for example on education – divided up per household is inevitably regressive; this together with other flat-rate spending accounts for about three-quarters of the overall estimated impact of cuts on different families.
So, if the Coalition are serious about protecting the most vulnerable, they should use this kind of analysis to determine where public spending is already helping the better-off. This could then inform the best way of making sure the cuts are progressive in income terms as well as in the use of public services.
Spending cuts need to be made with the precision of a scalpel, not a chainsaw.
http://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/2010/09/public-service-spending-cuts-%E2%80%9...
"In a time of famine, reform is absolutely essential, rather than the alternative, which is to slash, burn and retrench."
These were the words of care services minister Paul Burstow (pictured above) at the Liberal Democrat conference two weeks ago when he attacked councils for cutting care spending before the outcome of the spending review was known.
Burstow also attacked as disgraceful the low proportion of adult service users with access to personal budgets - just 13%.
He did not deny that it would be difficult to achieve the efficiencies that chancellor George Osborne is looking for.
His answer will be the vision for adult social care, which will map out how the efficiencies can be delivered without affecting care - in other words how more can be done with less.
It is currently under development and will be published during the National Children's and Adult Services conference in Manchester next month.
This will come alongside a refreshed Putting People First strategy, on which the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services is currently working.
The vision is being developed in parallel with the spending review and with the health White Paper outlining a brave new world for the NHS.
A Department of Health source said it will contain messages about personalisation and choice and control with personal budgets being further developed.
This will be combined with themes on Big Society, integrated working with the NHS, voluntarism and volunteering, as well as efficiencies through the use of assistive technologies.
The themes largely represent continuity with the Labour government's vision. The difficulty is in the delivery at a time of massive cuts.
Richard Jones (right), president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, cautions: "I don't think the vision will be able to impact significantly on the kind of considerations councils will have on the spending review."
This underlines the core problem. Adass's submission to the spending review said that adult social care had already delivered radical change through major outsourcing and the focus on personalisation.
Furthermore: "No one has identified how savings of almost £6bn from adult social care could be achieved Any attempt to get close to this sort of reduction would have significant adverse effects on very vulnerable people."
Adass and Jones recognise that further radical change is required, including next year's report from the commission into long-term care funding, but this does not solve the immediate dilemma.
Jones suggests some efficiency gains can be made in councils' personalisation processes. His hope is the vision will talk more about how an integrated approach with health can be further developed in the context of the health White Paper.
However, he says: "Reform takes time and doesn't necessarily deliver the immediate balance."
Richard Humphries, senior fellow at the King's Fund, says that despite a deepening personalisation agenda, the cuts "will sharpen councils' care role in relation to safeguarding and will leave them with a residual role for sorting out care for the poorest."
The only answer was a complete transformation of the system, complete with a new funding settlement, but this will not appear until 2014-2015.
Personalisation consultant Jeremy Cooper, of iMPOWER, was similarly doubtful.
Its modelling suggests that 10% to 15% can be saved through more personalised processes creating efficiencies, but such a transformation would take a three-to-four year period.
"Any more [cuts] than that and you are going to be talking about stopping services out of the new social care offer.
"I wouldn't say that stops you having a personalised solution but it means you have to take more out of it," he says.
John Bolton (right), the former director of strategic finance at the DH, warns the scale of the challenge to reform systems should not be underestimated, and nor should the gains from reablement services and telecare be overestimated.
"Assistive technologies can't do everything. We've not yet got robots to do the personal care tasks," he says.
The health White Paper, which is facing increasing opposition from GPs, is a further fly in the ointment.
Burstow wants to see further integration between health and social care to bring about efficiencies.
But Jo Webber, deputy director of the NHS Confederation, warns that the upheaval caused by NHS reform could damage joint working with a retreat to the silo mentality.
Webber says: "The danger during the interim period is retrenchment of social care because of the cuts in local authority budgets and taking our eyes off the integration agenda.
"If the vision doesn't enable us to have a clear direction of where we are going, then we will have missed the point."
So having a vision is one thing. But without the resources to back it up, a vision is meaningless.
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/10/04/115479/Adult-care-sec...
Government plans for closer working between health and social care could be damaged because of savage cuts to local council budgets, doctors' leaders warned today.
In its response to the health White Paper, the British Medical Association warned that local authority funded care will be affected by budget cuts making it more difficult to commission integrated care pathways and services.
It said that for such plans to work local authorities needed to be properly funded and appropriate services needed to be in place.
Moreover, the policy of promoting competition through an "any willing provider" policy would make it impossible to achieve the goal of integrated care pathways.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of council at the BMA, said: "Doctors want to build on the founding principles of the NHS, and to maintain and improve services despite the hugely challenging financial climate.
"However, they can only succeed if they can work in partnership with others in a co-operative environment."
Its views mirror the fears of local council leaders and the NHS Confederation on the effects of the cuts on current and future joint working arrangements.
The health White Paper, which was published in July, unveiled plans to give GP-led consortia control over much of the budget, while at the same time scrapping primary care trusts and strategic health authorities by 2013.
The BMA backed better joint working and urged the government to provide a clear definition of adult social care in its forthcoming vision to help better joint commissioning.
It added it did not support an insurance model as the basis of future care funding arrangements, which is under consideration by the commission on the funding of long-term care and support.
A voluntary insurance scheme is backed by the Tories, though the BMA has said it favours a "partnership model of state and individual funding".
The BMA pointed out that GP-led consortia will not be able to function if they are expected to pick up all the current statutory functions and responsibilities of PCTs.
Such roles include child protection and will still have to be carried out after PCTs are abolished.
The BMA said it supported aspects of the proposed reforms outlined in the paper, such as devolving more control to patients and frontline clinicians, and a stronger focus on public health as well as increasing local democracy in health.
However it had concerns about extending choice of treatment and provider to mental health services, without such an offer being piloted and evaluated.
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/10/01/115475/council-cuts-w...
The recent Voluntary Sector Forum (VSF) conference challenged London councillors over planned budget cuts.
Representatives from the 256 organisations funded by London Councils questioned councillors on the nature, speed and consequences of proposals to cut up to 80% of the sector’s £26.4 budget, primarily through the London Boroughs Grants Scheme (LBGS).
The VSF had several objectives:
- To ask London Councils to honour existing funding arrangements and offer transitional funding support.
- To request London Councils agree to a consultation discussing options that take all areas of London and their residents into account.
- To request transparency in all decisions.
- To urge London Councils to carry out equality impact assessments ensuring cuts will not disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
Chief executive of London Voluntary Service Council (LVSC), Peter Lewis, said:
“It is very disappointing that these councillors, all of whom state they want to help the poorest Londoners, and who have take on roles at a London-wide organisation, seem to be taking a short term parochial view in relation to a London wide scheme desired to help the most disadvantaged Londoners and that this money can be better spent in their individual boroughs.”
Mayor Bullock, leader of Lewisham Council and Councillor Carr from Bromley Council agreed on the necessity of transitional support but both backed the proposals for cuts.
http://www.fundingcentral.org.uk/newsview.aspx?RF=NEWS&WCU=DSCODE%3dOTSS...
Ministerial statements on public spending have thrown councils into "turmoil", leading some to start cutting adult care services in advance of next month's comprehensive spending review (CSR).
That was the message from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services as it defended councils from a scathing attack from care services minister Paul Burstow on some councils' decisions to start cutting before the review reports.
As trailed by a number of ministers, the spending review is expected to make cuts of 25% or more to council budgets from 2011-15.
In anticipation, a number of authorities have already announced plans to raise eligibility thresholds or charges for care services, while councils have also had to deal with in-year cuts to budgets in 2010-11, which has hit Supporting People services, among others.
But Burstow told last week's Liberal Democrat conference: "It is unconscionable to be making the decisions they are when they do not know what the spending review will contain. There is a lot of scaremongering going on at the moment."
He stressed that cuts announced in the spending review would be "phased over four years".
However, Adass president Richard Jones said: "Councils have to prepare budgets both to deal with the in-year cuts in grant funding and in preparation for the CSR which is expected to be hugely challenging. They will be responding to their own local circumstances, and to statements made by government ministers over the past few months. Those statements have thrown English local councils into a certain amount of turmoil and, understandably, some will have taken anticipatory action."
Burstow also attacked councils for the fact that 13% of service users and carers in England were on personal budgets, at the last official count, which he described as a 'disgrace', accusing councils of not wanting to yield control to service users.
However, his comments came under fire from blogger and social worker Fighting Monsters, who works in a older people's mental health team. She said: "What does he think that the lack of roll-out is to do with a nefarious political plot to hold on to the control aspect? No, it's not. It's all to do with poorly adapted and poorly administrated systems."
She added: "I wish Mr Burstow would meet and talk with people who actually DO the job to understand the difficulties, rather than meeting and talking to people who manage people who do the job or people who write the policies or people who audit accounts."
Councils are on course to hit next April's target to have 30% of service users on personal budgets, said Jeff Jerome, national director for social care transformation, who has been charged with helping councils implement the personalisation agenda.
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/09/28/115436/Adass-hits-bac...