A rethink of spending on public services is what we really need

IN last week’s Free Press, it emerged that Lancashire county council had paid consultants to assess the impact of budget cuts.

PriceWaterhouse Coopers produced a 70-page report which urged the government to rethink the scale of the spending cuts it is planning.

The bill for this report was £180k, part of a £1m spend on consultants, the county council said.

The idea of a council which has already revealed it won’t have enough money to provide services it is legally obliged to offer within two years’ time, spending money on consultants to tell them how badly off they will be, is quite remarkable.

Rossendale council leader Alyson Barnes, who is also an influential county councillor, said: “They needed to do something to show the government it isn’t just them saying the situation is bad.

“They simply don’t have the staff to do a report themselves.”

Those two sentences give an insight into an awful lot that is wrong about the way councils are run at the moment.

Looking at LCC’s summary of the report, it is being described as confirmation of what they already knew.

So why isn’t government listening?

The idea that the government listens so little to local councils that councils feel they have to spend £180k on a report which confirms what the council already believes, but carries the badge of authority from an independent firm of accountants, is frightening.

Questions need to be asked on both sides here.

Bearing in mind the man in charge of LCC’s finances, deputy leader David Borrow, is a former MP, you would have hoped LCC has a bit of a head start in negotiating the corridors of power at Westminster to get an audience with the people that matter.

LCC is one of the largest councils in the country.

If it doesn’t feel it is being listened to, it needs to ask itself what it is doing wrong.

Resorting to spending wads of cash to re-state known facts feels like the perfect action to take if you want government ministers to turn round and say ‘See, we told you you waste money.’

But there is also no denying that even the best-connected Westminster operator would have struggled to get over the Conservative government’s deep-held belief that councils can operate with less money.

There is no doubt that they could, and indeed they are proving they can.

But there’s a limit to efficiency savings, as the padlocks on the doors of Helmshore Textile Mills and several local libraries prove.

If there is a chink of light, it’s the change of leadership at the top of the Tories.

New prime minister Theresa May is promising to be a PM for the ‘many, not the few’ and pledging to build a country which helps people get on.

There’s been no sign of that resulting in a let-up in the cuts to council funding, but it surely should. Many of the services LCC provides act as a safety net for people who do need help just to get by, let alone get on.

The government’s autumn statement is expected to pause some austerity measures to ensure the country doesn’t go into a Brexit recession.

There’s already talk of spending big on infrastructure projects (rail services from Rossendale anyone? Sadly, still unlikely.)

What we really need is a rethink of spending on public services, especially local councils.

Well-funded local councils are good for the economy too, don’t forget.