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With Parliament in recess, it would be wrong to paint a picture of ministers and officials dispersing to customary Tuscan retreats and Dordogne haunts, leaving government lulled to a summer standstill. It would also be unfair to deny our public officials the opportunity to rest and refresh themselves below soft southern European skies after enduring a relentless and remorseless year. Perhaps this is a prerequisite for tuning into the mindscape and aligning one's mind with the ‘horizon shifts' of Number 10's strategy director, Steve Hilton. After languid reflection, perhaps it's possible for any common mortal to see the sense in abolishing maternity leave, the wholescale closure of jobcentres, scrapping all consumer rights law and investing in cloud-bursting technologies to provide year-round sunshine. But then again, come September, it's a case as SoulIISoul sang, of Back to life, back to reality. And what a stark reality. Commentators had predicted 2011 would be the ‘crunch year' for the coalition as the impact of applying an £81bn brake to public expenditure for four years sank home. Given what is now known, and where the Government finds itself, frustrated equally by stalled economic growth and policy headaches aplenty, and this a mere four months after the Spending Review's deficit-reduction measures have kicked-in, what will they label 2012? Government managers will hope the still-confused picture around health, welfare, education, pensions and wider public reform, will be resolved through the passing of time and legislation. Apart from a winter of co-ordinated industrial action threatened by the massed ranks of the six million-strong government workforce, which can be planned for, ministers will fear the mobilisation of popular anger against rising electricity and petrol prices as the cost of living takes on stronger political momentum. The reality facing local authorities is the greater dependence of economic growth within their areas when the emergence from the recession is proving slower than even the Great Depression. How prepared are council finances for a further decade of minimal growth and relatively-high inflation? This suggests a Japanese-style lost decade. Given this context, frustrations with the pace and direction of community budgets might become more evident. LackingHM Treasury's crucial direct backing and leverage for Total Place, buy-in from the departments for health and work and pensions has proved troublesome. Unlike Total Place, the current stream are focused on longer-term prevention measures around families facing multiple problems. As such, they are restrictive, specific and offering few incentives to get things in motion. Community budgets do not as yet represent the better use of resources in the immediate present, promising to release substantial capital receipts from rationalising the public sector estate. Whole area approaches and pooled funding for local services into a single pot are promised, but how useful will they prove in this climate? Perhaps the time to get the cloud-busting equipment out is sooner than we think, Steve.

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Jonathan Werran

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