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The tough new spending round means councils are having to re-evaluate their roles and prioritise services – not easy when many council taxpayers are not necessarily beneficiaries. Chris Williams describes how his authority has been planning for the age of austerity It is perhaps not surprising that Buckinghamshire CC is one of the authorities at the forefront of rethinking the role of local government. The council is a flagship Conservative council and its leader, David Shakespeare, is the leader of the Conservative Group on the LGA. Chris Williams, chief executive of Buckinghamshire County Council Even before last week's Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), we were already having to rethink the relationship between the council and its citizens and the phrase, ‘I'm sorry, we don't provide that service any more', is becoming commonplace. Our planning assumptions will mean that over the next three years, we will be taking out 30% of our non-schools budget, and the scale of this change means that no service will remain unchanged. This, in turn, is driving innovation at a much faster rate than previously, and leading to some radical solutions. The Government's priorities are reducing the national budget deficit and promoting economic growth. From the recent Conservative Party conference, it can also be seen that the Government is intent on breaking the dependency culture which our society has developed over the last 20 or 30 years. Over this period, people have come to expect that ‘they' – the council, the Government, or others – will meet all of their needs, whether this involves clearing footpaths of snow or care of elderly relatives. Alterations in child benefit and proposed changes to the welfare state also signify that the Government is using the squeeze on public finance to reduce the public's dependence on the state. To fill the void, the Government is promoting Big Society, as yet, not clearly defined. It certainly involves a ‘small state – big community' concept, and helping people to help themselves, with a much bigger role for both the private and the voluntary and community sectors. As far as local government is concerned, the Government clearly sees councils as enablers and as providers of last resort – a return of local government to its original Victorian purpose. A key role for local government will be as a provider of last resort. In Buckinghamshire, we are using our joint strategic needs assessment as a starting point for thinking about the needs of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. These include adults with disability and with critical and substantial needs; children and young people entitled to free school meals and with special educational needs; looked-after children and care leavers; and lone parent households, and those subject to domestic violence and alcohol and substance abuse. But even when focusing services on these sections of the community, we need to be developing transformational approaches – giving people the opportunity to help themselves – rather than simply making improvements. Although people will move in and out of this group over time, our current estimates are that there are only some 30,000 direct users of these core services with perhaps a total of 100,000 people, including their families benefitting from direct county council support. What of the other 400,000 people who live in Buckinghamshire? Recognising that councils operate in a political environment, the majority of council taxpayers will not fall into the categories of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. The council also has to provide some universal services which meet the residents' highest priorities. Each area will be different, but having recently carried out a wide-ranging consultation exercise called ‘The Bucks debate' to engage local residents in identifying the services that we should continue to provide and those which we should either stop or charge for, we have a clearer idea as to what residents' priorities are If we are to meet these priorities, it will include spending on highway maintenance, on crime and anti-social behaviour, dealing with household waste and on protecting the environment. In this sense, the council's role will be as a responder to citizens' priorities. If our core business is going to be providing for the needs of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged at the one end of the spectrum, and providing universal services to meet residents' priorities at the other, what about all the other services we provide which fall between these two extremes? Through The Bucks debate, we have asked residents, ‘Which of our services should we stop doing altogether, which should we charge for, and which can we encourage the voluntary and community or the private sector to take on for us?' Many of these are preventative services which help limit the number of people coming into our core services, but can we afford not to look for alternative ways of doing things? In terms of thinking about the scope for Big Society initiatives, we have developed the following typology: promoting greater individual responsibility: What is the scope for encouraging individuals to take greater responsibility for their own wellbeing? This can range from looking after our own health by taking more exercise, for example, through to taking initiatives which would reduce the demand on public services – such as self-directed support in adult social care). Often, these will also offer the potential for improving outcomes for such individuals promoting neighbourliness: In a bygone era, it was common for neighbours to look out for each other, for example, giving people lifts to doctors or to supermarkets, or calling to make sure an elderly neighbour was safe. Why is it that as a society, we seem to have lost our ability to do this sort of thing, and how do we encourage a culture change? In Buckinghamshire, we have a number of schemes involving building the community's own capacity for neighbourliness, and our voluntary and community sector runs a wide range of good neighbour schemes. We have also developed a community watch scheme, whereby people who are regularly out and about in the community, postal workers, and milk deliverers, keep an eye out for undelivered mail or uncollected milk, and have a simple, small card with the numbers of social services and other public bodies whom they can alert. voluntary and community organisations: In Buckinghamshire, we have more than 3,500 voluntary and community groups, ranging from very small, special interest groups through to major national bodies. Where the council is stepping back from direct provision of various services, there are opportunities to work with the voluntary and community sector to run them on our behalf. Current initiatives under investigation include community-run libraries and youth clubs; parish councils monitoring and enforcing speed restrictions; and community groups running day centres. We recognise these groups may require pump-priming funding to enable them to take on some of these services or a tapered funding model over time, as the council increasingly has to make further financial savings. For activities where there are no existing voluntary and community groups, the council will endeavour to establish them to take on the running of services, giving support and technical advice. So, as we digest the impact of the CSR, we feel Buckinghamshire will be well placed to develop a new role for local government. Chris Williams is chief executive of Buckinghamshire CC

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WHITEHALL

How we have been rethinking our role

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