In his article on page 6 of The MJ this week, Sir Steve Bullock, chair of the LGA's HR panel, does a sterling job in explaining why the employers decided to up their offer from an initial 0.5% to about 1%, thereby encouraging the wrath of many council leaders. As he admits, the employers have been between a rock and a hard place, but he also accepts that there must be ‘even greater consultation and accountability at the highest level' to head off threats of councils quitting national pay bargaining altogether. But suggestions that council employees risk losing out to higher wage settlements elsewhere in the public sector may be correct, but are simply irrelevant at a time when swathes of job losses are sweeping through the private sector, and a massive downturn in public spending approaches. The system of maintaining parity has been simply overtaken by events. Evidence of their impact is already plain at local level. As we report on page 3, one district council is following the route of private companies such as British Airways by proposing unpaid leave to reduce costs. On this page, we also report on two other districts planning to share a chief executive and other services in anticipation of the downturn. The message from the more far-sighted who can see the financial tsunami approaching is to batten down the hatches now, not wait until the eve of the next CSR spending round. And, having to find an extra 1-1.25% for salary rises is out of synch with attempts to cut costs elsewhere. This is not to say that local government needs play the victim over the difficult times ahead. Indeed, evidence of its major role in governance, enhanced during the recession, is reflected in Whitehall poaching yet another council chief executive, in this case Ealing's Darra Singh, to head up Jobcentre Plus. (It is, of course, entirely without coincidence that last month his council won The MJ's Best Achieving Council Award). These may be difficult times but local government will get through them, just as it has in the past with other crises, so long as it – and the employers – accept that the world in 2009 is not that of 2008 or 2007. Michael Burton, Editor, The MJ
