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Over the next few months, we will see, with more clarity, the new Government's policies for public spending and the local government sector. I will be surprised if the budget deficit facing districts is much different from the £1.6bn gap estimated recently by the Society of District Council Treasurers. In the run-up to the election, all the main parties were emphasising efficiency measures in order to minimise service cuts and, with this in mind, shared services and partnerships will inevitably become even more popular. This is particularly true for districts, where central services and, particularly, senior management costs are, in my view, disproportionately high. The evidence emerging from the IDeA research is encouraging in this regard, with 10 pairs of district councils with shared services saving more than £4m in two years. While the emphasis on shared services in many areas has been between neighbouring districts, another option is for greater collaboration between county councils and their district colleagues. Lancashire, which was once dubbed ‘the Iraq of local government', has in recent years emerged as an outstanding example of co-operation between the county council, two unitaries, and the 12 districts. In my view, a strengthening bond between county councils and their district counterparts could lead to a mixture of centralisation and decentralisation, where central and back-office services are run on a county-wide basis – by the public or private sector. At the same time, opportunities exist for county councils to devolve some of their services to districts – for example, libraries, and youth and community. The benefits of this twin-hatted approach being efficiency through economy of scale for the back office, but at the same time, promoting localism for front-facing services. This model might also be applied to senior management, where county councils and district colleagues could promote shared chief officer arrangements. The above concept may appear to some to be a little fanciful at the moment, but over the next few months, as details emerge of this £1.6bn black hole, then ‘left field' ideas such as the one I am suggesting might very well come to the fore. The beauty of the shared approach between both tiers is, first, about becoming more customer orientated – with ‘two councils – one set of taxpayers' as our focus, and second, continuous improvement in terms of efficiency through sharing, and third, the promotion of localism and, in particular, local governance at a district level. And if this works, it puts the unitary debate on the backburner. Bill Taylor is chief executive of West Lancashire DC

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WHITEHALL

District View

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