With today’s horrendous levels of national debt, it is inconceivable that any government can operate without some reductions in public spending. Our borrowing levels are incredibly high and the cost of interest repayments is staggering. Today’s recession had extensive unsecured credit as a primary trigger. Any government which prolongs huge indebtedness is not learning from history, some of it very recent indeed.
Speakers at theTUC(Trades Union Congress) appear to be arguing against any reductions in public spending. This is a blinkered approach and it is difficult to understand which planet they might be on to reach such a conclusion. The country, like individual people, cannot live beyond its means indefinitely.
The two major political parties are slogging it out with language that seems unchanged over decades. Labour says that it wants investment and accuses the Conservatives of relishing cuts in spending. This is just a tedious re-hash of antagonistic politics.
In reality, we do need to seek efficiencies in the public sector and these have to be carefully targeted for most benefit and least impact on the vulnerable. It is certainly possible to generate efficiency savings as we have proved locally.
From just 18 months effort atCrawleyCouncil, we were able to realise efficiency savings of £3.2 million on our revenue budget for day-to-day services. This was a significant proportion of our total annual spending. There were direct benefits forCrawleypeople. We have been able to set a Council Tax increase of just 2% for three consecutive years, representing a reduction in real terms. At the same time, we have needed less interest from savings so that more capital could be released for major new projects. For example, the neighbourhood parade improvement programme was accelerated by two years. Some of the revenue savings were put into enhanced street cleansing and additional community wardens.
Beyond our basic budgets, we have also put new money into the Manor Royal Improvement programme and launched the Decent Homes Programme for our council tenants. New capital will be made available for flood prevention works because there are areas of Crawley where the risk is increasing and we want to pro-actively address this.
So efficiency savings can be found and new money put into emerging priorities. Any political party approaching the electorate and suggesting that everything can be business as usual needs to be seriously challenged and questioned. Elections need to be fought with aspiration and vision but with also with the communication of economic realities. We need to communicate what is possible rather than mismanage expectations and further damage our politics.
Councillor Bob Lanzer, Leader of Crawley Borough Council
16th September 2009