Councils cut management costs while protecting services for most vulnerable, LGA survery shows

1 April 2011

Councils have cut senior management costs while protecting the services that the most vulnerable people rely on, a survey of local authority finance directors reveals today.

Nine out of 10 councils have already reduced the cost of senior officers, either through cutting numbers or pay, and eight out of 10 have cut middle-management costs.

Of the services facing funding reductions, more than half of councils are seeking to protect adult social care (57%) and children's social care (63%) from cuts, while one in five are protecting the waste and recycling service they provide.

The survey of council finance directors, carried out by the Local Government Association, found 58% of local authorities were planning to make proportionally greater savings in 2011/12 through central services, such as administration, human resources, finance and IT.

One in five said they were seeking to make proportionally the greatest savings from services for young people and 16% said they were targeting library and cultural services for proportionally the largest cuts.

More than two thirds (71%) said they are already sharing services with another local authority, while more than half said they had set up shared service arrangements within their own organisation.

More than half of councils (52%) said they were planning to make savings through pay freezes but nearly three-quarters (73%) said they had no current plans to implement pay reductions for staff other than senior and middle managers.

Sixteen per cent of councils said they had already made changes to the way the authority is structured in order to make necessary savings, while a further 57% were currently making similar structural changes and 26% said they were planning to do so within the next two years.

Eight out of 10 councils (83%) said they were planning to make savings from library services. Of these, more than a quarter plan to mitigate the effect by transferring library services to community ownership while a fifth of councils (22%) planned to move services to alternative buildings alongside other services.

Two thirds of councils (63%) said they were planning to make savings from Sure Start. Of these, 62% said as a result they would target resources at the most vulnerable families, and 41% said they would make savings by focusing on the most deprived neighbourhoods.

Baroness Margaret Eaton, Chairman of the Local Government Association, said:

“This survey shows just how hard councils are working to protect the services that people care about most. Councils know just how much value their residents place on the services they provide and are doing all they can to make sure they can continue to do so wherever possible.

“However, we cannot escape the fact that councils are dealing with an unprecedented squeeze on their finances and some have seen their funding from Government cut by up to 17%. The fact that the cuts have been frontloaded and councils have had to make the largest spending reductions in the first year has limited their ability to make savings through conventional efficiency drives, such as shared services.

“No councillor goes into politics to cut services to the residents who elected them. But local politicians have had to make incredibly tough decisions in recent weeks about the services they continue to provide and those they are having to reduce.

“Where resources are under pressure, the survey shows that councils are targeting services at those most in need, while at the same time taking steps to reduce the cost of bureaucracy and management.

“Councils knew the cuts were coming and did all they could to prepare. They already cut more than £1 billion from their budgets in the middle of this year. They are now pulling out all the stops to minimise the impact of these cuts and build on their record of delivering new and better ways of doing things.”

Notes:

http://www.dodsmonitoring.com/downloads/Misc_Files/Budgetsurvey2011.doc

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