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Michael Burton reports from last week's PPMA conference in Manchester. Local authorities have two years to restructure themselves for the crackdown on public spending, or face last-minute cuts in frontline services, a leadership expert has warned. Speaking at last week's HR managers' conference in Manchester, Stephen Taylor, ex-chief of the Leadership Centre, said councils would come out worse compared with other parts of the public sector when the next CSR round started from 2011.And he called for public sector budgets to be unified locally under single management teams. He told delegates at the annual Public Sector People Managers' Association: ‘In the worst case scenario, the response from councils will be to do nothing until they fall off a cliff, leaving it too late to make efficiencies. They will then cut in a panic. We've got two years to avoid that. ‘The best case scenario is that we have two years of opportunity to change.' He added: ‘It's far easier to save 30% than 3%, and it's a big opportunity through redesigning services. ‘Public services aren't good enough. They cost too much and do too little. There are too many overheads, and they do not deliver decent value for money. ‘They're indifferent to the customer and do not deal with the whole person, just parts.' Mr Taylor, now a consultant, said one of the obstacles to better cross-sector working was that the horizontal ‘machinery across a place', such as LSPs, LAAs and MAAs was weak, while ‘vertical' institutions such as councils, the NHS, police and schools were strong. A proponent of the ‘total place' concept of allocating provision by need across a locality rather than via separate institutions, Mr Taylor added: ‘We need "place accounting" with one budget, unified teams, integrated sites and focus on the 1% of people who place the most demand on services.'

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We've two years to change warns Taylor

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