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Spending cuts could lead to a retreat into silos and a loss of all the pioneering work carried out by the Total Place pilots, as well as jeopardise community budgeting, warns Iain Roxburgh The realisable aim of the reform of local public services – producing better outcomes for less money in the long term – is being jeopardised by the massive short-term financial pressures bearing down on local authorities and other local agencies. On the day of the Comprehensive Spending Review, I published research I had conducted over the summer period on preparations, locally, for mainstreaming Total Place. Commissioned by the Local Government Centre at Warwick Business School, it concluded that big cuts were a potential threat to Total Place – or ‘community budgeting', as it is now to be known. Good signs: The Greater Manchester pilot provided invaluable information about cutting costs in children and young people's services If the cuts were too severe and quick, and without reform in the relationship between Whitehall and local authorities, the research found that the cuts would drive all agencies concerned back into their silos. With reform, substantial devolution, and the patience to wait for real savings as a consequence of better outcomes, the detrimental impact caused by deficit reduction-driven cuts could be minimised. The scale and pace of the cuts now announced make this threat real, and could completely swamp the will and capacity to put in place the long-term transformational changes needed. Indeed, already there is evidence of the learning and experience of the Total Place pilots being lost through key people moving on, reorganisation – especially of the local health services – and the lack of any serious indication on the Government's part that it intends to reform Whitehall fundamentally. And there is a real danger that the cuts will squeeze the very teams in local authorities and other local agencies which are planning and making transformational change under the pressure to cut back on the back-room and ‘pen-pushers'. For local authorities, there were very few things to welcome in the Spending Review. However, the announcement that ‘community budgets will be established in 16 local areas to pool departmental budgets for families with complex needs, and rolled out to all local areas over the Spending Review period' has received an unreserved welcome for its own sake, and for the indication it gives that the Government is serious in its promises of localism and that it has learned from the Total Place Pilots. And if the Government can only handle one theme initially, the choice of ‘families with complex needs' is the right one, so long as it is interpreted widely and flexibly. The Total Place pilots established a very strong case for early intervention and investment in order to radically improve outcomes and save considerable amounts of money in the medium and long term. Public services have been, and are still mainly structured around symptoms rather than causes. They aim to cure problems rather than prevent them. The NHS is overwhelmingly a sickness service, not a health service. There is much less support for families with problems than for young adults in trouble. This is why the one glimmer of hope for local services is the promise of community budgeting. The case for early and co-ordinated intervention to support families is overwhelming. The Greater Manchester pilot calculated the costs associated with an individual child in each of the four classifications of family were ‘thriving' £6, ‘coping' £643, ‘just coping' £6,527, ‘chaotic' £49,425, and research in the US suggests an investment/return ratio of one to 10 for early intervention and investment in positive parenting. The potential cost savings are huge. Each child with untreated behavioural problems costs £70,000 a year – ten times the cost of a child without behavioural problems. The case might be overwhelming and the will may be present, but where are the resources, in money and people, to make it happen? Community budgets don't mean extra money, just the freedom to pool budgets. Local authorities are struggling to understand the implications of the scale and pace of the grant reductions announced, and won't know the details for their individual council until early December. They have very different mixes of income sources, and this will affect how hard they are hit. The Spending Review announcements mean that those authorities most reliant on central government-specific, ring-fenced grants stand most to lose. These are overwhelmingly the most deprived areas, because this funding is distributed, in part, on a needs-resource basis or targeted towards problems associated with high deprivation. And these areas are just the ones which could benefit most from co-ordinated early intervention and community budgets for helping families with complex needs. he learning and common cause established through the Total Place pilots and in all the ‘parallel places' that have adopted the same approach must not be lost. This experience and learning crosses the political spectrum, agency boundaries and professional boundaries. It unites local leadership with the frontline and citizens, and communities with public service-providers. It offers long-term cost savings that should not be jeopardised by short-term cuts. Iain Roxburgh is senior associate fellow, Warwick Business School and chair, New Local Government Network

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WHITEHALL

Short-term cuts may be long-term losses

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