Title

They say, never start an after-dinner speech by way of an apology, and I'm wondering if the same applies to articles for The MJ. But apologise, I must. I promised last time to change my broken record of the last two years and talk about something other than the impending ‘squeeze' on public spending. However, as former prime minister Harold McMillan once said... ‘Events, dear boy'. This particular event is that the dreaded ‘c' word is now allowable in polite company. The party conferences, which are now in full swing, will spend time focusing on how to curb public spending at a time when demand for public services has never been higher. But also at a time when our taxpayer's desire to fund the public purse has never been lower. In previous articles, I may have been a wee bit hard on politicians for not grasping the nettle. In fairness, market research indicates that many citizens still ‘don't get it', either regarding the need to curb spending, and at the same time, are firmly committed to not paying a red cent more in tax. With unemployment spiralling and the lack of confidence in the economy, who can blame them for feeling this way? It is, therefore, challenging for the parties to tackle the issue, and I pay credit to all politicians – belatedly or not – for focusing on the job in hand, which is to find a way of reducing spending but in a way which has the least impact on frontline services. The latest market research shows – unsurprisingly – that if taxes have to rise, then, in the words of one columnist, the ‘not me guv' syndrome applies – that is, tax someone else. The least-favoured tax ripe for increase is again, unsurprisingly, council tax, and there is significant pressure across the country for rises to be no more than inflation, and in many cases 0%. For local authority politicians, managers and staff, there has, in my view, never been a better time to be in local government. The parlous state of the economy and the need to cut local spending calls for a higher-quality style of leadership than we have ever seen before. This, in turn, will inevitably focus on collaboration between authorities and other public bodies within the Total Place agenda. We have a unique opportunity to make a contribution to our communities, and without getting too jingoistic, we could do a lot worse than adopt a Churchillian approach, rallying together to ‘fight them – in this case, the downturn – on the beaches'. Bill Taylor is chief executive of West Lancashire BC

Title

WHITEHALL

District View

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING