Passing control of vital public services to local councils will end duplication, cut red tape and potentially save the taxpayer 100 billion pounds over five years, council chiefs said on Tuesday. The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents 350 authorities across England and Wales, said its radical reform plans were needed to end waste and soften the blow of expected cuts to front-line services.
LGA chair, Dame Margaret Eaton, told the association's annual conference there were big opportunities to save money and give people a bigger say "by starting with a clean sheet and giving power to the people who know their areas best." Her speech coincided with the publication of an LGA report arguing that public services could be more cheaply funded by making locally-elected people responsible for taking budget decisions. Policing, housing, health, employment and local transport could all be devolved from central government, the report said. Eaton said that was the way to reform the system and save money "rather than to cut services we know people really need."
Asked if the proposals would ultimately result in a cut in jobs an LGA spokesman replied: "Further work will be needed to answer that question in detail." He said authorities had been arguing for years for the devolution of powers to a local level and that the reform plans did just that. This is not (about) efficiency savings in the conventional sense of it, what this is a systemic reform of the way the public sector operates," the spokesman said. "We are talking about a different constitutional way of accounting for local public services across a wide range of subjects and we are saying big savings can accrue."
Asked if the proposals would ultimately result in a cut in jobs an LGA spokesman replied: "Further work will be needed to answer that question in detail." He said authorities had been arguing for years for the devolution of powers to a local level and that the reform plans did just that. This is not (about) efficiency savings in the conventional sense of it, what this is a systemic reform of the way the public sector operates," the spokesman said. "We are talking about a different constitutional way of accounting for local public services across a wide range of subjects and we are saying big savings can accrue."
