AGENDA JONATHAN WALKER IN WESTMINSTER
year, and has led to a scramble for new savings in the years ahead.
It is on his watch that, for the first time, district auditors have issued an official warning about the accounts, and announced next year’s budget will undergo an independent review. has coped with the first five years of austerity without a major impact on services, the crisis point is now drawing close.
Many councils, of all political stripes, are reporting they are unable to afford the cost of social care as demand rises – people are living longer – and funding falls. tackle it in 2004 – shortly before he was voted out.
Finally, a key expense for the council through this period has been its major contracts with Capita Service Birmingham and Amey. These took no account of the fall in council funding and so millions were poured into the companies’ coffers while council budgets were shrinking.
What’s more, the council signed a five-year extension on the Service Birmingham deal in 2011, locking the council in until 2020. Since then it has found out that an in-house call centre and revenue collection service are more efficient and less expensive – a hard and costly lesson. Officials have a habit of being resistant to change and, as the gatekeepers of information, it is often feared that the tail is wagging the dog where politicians are concerned.
This year we have seen the failure to deliver £37 million of promised cuts, the majority of which was supposed to arrive through closer working with the NHS.
Chief executive Mark Rogers has been a leading figure on this agenda. And in the past, the refuse collection management failures and resistances to change contributed to the equal pay bombshell.