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There is a credible alternative to frontline job losses and the resultant cuts in services. It involves public servants making sacrifices to help save the services they provide. Cllr Royston Smith is leader of Southampton City Council Many local authorities across the country say that making tens of thousands of people redundant is simply unavoidable. As a result, frontline services will inevitably be lost. But it doesn't have to be like this. Southampton has found another way. We will keep all libraries and leisure centres open. We will invest more money in our roads and footpaths to support the city's economy. We will keep all our Sure Start Centres open and invest more in children's social services. And we will continue to clean the streets and empty bins weekly. The ‘Southampton way' is to consult meaningfully, drive out waste, share the pain of reduced budgets and always put the customer first. Royston Smith: Job losses and impact on some services are unavoidable. It is a painful alternative for those affected, but it is one that will protect the leisure centres and the libraries and the Sure Start Centres from the axe. It is one that will mean more social workers to protect vulnerable children and one that will ensure bins continue to be collected weekly. In Southampton, we carried out the biggest public consultation in our history so we could understand how members of the public and our staff felt we should spend our money. Residents were given the chance to design their own budgets for the city, and prioritise which services were the most important. The public voice was clear – protect key frontline services and get the city's economy back on its feet. This is what our customers, the residents of Southampton, asked us to prioritise. So, we listened and then acted on what we were told. The first step was to cut down on waste. We will strip out management costs. One in five senior mangers will go – including two directors – and we will restructure the entire council to be focused purely on our customers. Modern day councils are guilty of working from the top down, creating bureaucratic organisations, which often do not adequately address the needs of the people they are there to serve. In Southampton, we are changing that approach by basing everything around the customer, and stripping our bureaucracy and unnecessary expense as we go. Councils only have finite resources, and they must do everything they can to prioritise those resources, cutting waste rather than valued services, The next step is to ‘share the pain.' Instead of cutting services and making redundancies, we are asking our staff to take a modest pay cut. The highest earners, including the chief executive, will take the biggest pay cuts. Our approach even allows us to give those on the lowest incomes a modest pay rise. Councillors' allowances will be reduced by 5.5%, which is the largest reduction and in line with senior managers. The biggest spend by any council is on its staff. But, by addressing this in the right way, savings can be made which will protect those vital services from the chop. Job losses and impacts on some services are unavoidable, but they do not need to be anywhere near the scale of losses we are seeing in similar-sized authorities. And finally, we are clear that it is our taxpayers – our customers – who must come first in any decision we make. I know a pay cut will be difficult for people, but by doing so, we will prevent a further 400 people from losing their jobs and, at the end of this process, we will still be providing hundreds of services to our customers and investing millions of pounds in our city. I will not allow hundreds of jobs and services to be lost when there is a credible alternative which will protect them. During these difficult times, local authorities have a responsibility to rise to the expectations of the public and provide good-quality services. We will continue to do this, and we will continue to prime the city for future development and investment to help create new jobs in the economy and new opportunity for residents and businesses. Southampton remains very much open for business, and it is local people who are shaping our policies.

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WHITEHALL

We must protect the frontline

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