On 9th December Eric Pickles was Kirsty Young’s castaway on  Desert Island Discs. During the programme Eric expressed how proud he is of his experience in local government as well as working in his families grocers shop. He  served as a Councillor in Bradford from 1979 and was leader of the City Council from 1988 to 1990. It seems as though the last 22 years have dulled his memory of running a local Council, even if he is confident he can still cut cheese accurately. Freshly returned from the castaway island he announced major funding cuts to councils across the country but attempted to soften the blow by sending them a 15 page pamphlet full of homespun wisdom.

Eric appears to believe that the pain caused by cuts to budgets that care for vulnerable people and educate children can be offset by a cheery booklet entitled “50 Ways to Save, Examples of sensible savings in local Government“. If the alderman and alderwomen up and down the country are expecting to find a selection of vouchers for making million pound savings at local wholesalers, or to provide days out to theme parks for some of the thousands of children affected by the cost cutting, sadly they and the people most affected will be thoroughly disappointed. 

The booklet is a bit incoherent in places and someone should definitely have proof read Erics ideas. For example he refers to West Sussex Borough Council (it is a County Council!). I also understand the detail regarding the cuts themselves are a bit confused. According to the Foreword of the booklet “All parts of the public sector need to do more to spread best practice and encourage creative and innovative solutions.” However if this is what passes for best practice in Erics mind he needs a reality check. The ideas include:  

The plainly patronising – Ideas such as: 4 (tackle duplicate payments), 7 (tackle fraud), 8 (clawback money from benefit cheats) taxpayers might want to clawback money from all cheats!, 11 (Stop the scope for procurement fraud), 13 (improve council tax collection rates), 30 (Review and reduce absenteeism).

The bleeding obvious – Suggestions such as: 1 (Share back office services) most public services have been working on this for several years, 5 (clamp down on corporate charge cards), 6 (special spending controls) control what you spend!, 9 (get more for less by improving procurement), 10 (buy together), 14 (Encourage direct debit and e-billing for council tax), 25 (Introduce a recruitment freeze), 27 (Cut spending on consultants and agency staff), 29 (Cut spending on head hunters and expensive adverts) note to Eric – not all local newspapers have advertising rates that are much cheaper than national papers!, 33 (Stop spending money on commercial lobbyists), 40 (Reduce first class travel), 41 (Cut mileage payments) down to maximum HMRC rates!, 47 (hire out the town hall), 50 (Ask your staff for their ideas) some of us would have expected to see this at the beginning of this list of ideas, not at the end.

False economies – some of these ideas may actually cost more to enact than they can save: 2 (Community Budgets – bring staff and money together) this appears to be a blurring of two ideas. Community budgeting depends on bringing people together with councils to discuss how to deliver public services. This process demands additional resources initially, takes time and may not deliver any savings (although if done well satisfaction levels should rise), 3 (Use transparency to cut waste) it can cost more to publish details of expenditure than is saved by a few ‘armchair auditors’, 35 (Reduce the number of publications and media monitoring) beware – ignoring external news media may lead to more time firefighting if things go wrong!, 39 (Stop providing free food and drink for meetings) if people are being dined at the tax payers expense then the gravy train must stop, however inviting residents to help shape strategic plans without offering coffee or tea might lead to very fruitless meetings, 49 (Save money on computer software) it is vital to ensure that all partners sharing documents agree which shareware to use and do reduce usage of paid for products and not simply add to the support demands for IT departments with unfamiliar software.

China eggs – all of us have bright ideas that may not bear fruit: 12 (Utilise £16Bn of reserves creatively) this can be a pet idea based on a quick look at balance sheets and assumptions that all reserves are in place for rainy days. Sometimes these funds are being held in short term accounts to make pre-planned payments, 42 (Video Conference instead of travel) good use of this technology is vital, as well as recognising it has limited value in most local settings, 45 (End lifestyle and equality questionnaires) well used these can reassure certain groups that their  needs are being taken into account and Governments that localism is working!

Cut pay and rations for those at the top whilst these ideas will please the Tax Payers Alliance, they will not be wildly popular with senior officials who must enact these and the other ideas. It would be helpful if the Government applied such thinking to all of their own decisions. The pay award for the new Governer of the Bank of England and recent MPs expenses claims fly in the face of these sort of proposals: 22 (Cut Senior Pay), 23 (Share senior staff), 24 (Scrapping the chief executive post entirely), 26 (Freeze councillor allowances and end councillor pensions). In the last of these Eric tactfully points out that Councillors are meant to be volunteers and how even ‘full time Ministers’ have taken pay cuts! I imagine that this will have gone down particularly well in County Halls up and down the country. Many Cllrs do an excellent job for modest rewards (around 10-15% of the pay of our MPs), dedicating many hours to their posts. We cannot allow our Council Chambers to become the domain of only those who do not need to work!

Reduce costs across the Council workforce: 19 (Close subsidised council canteens) apparently subsidised catering for MPs at Westminster is still ok!, 20 (Cancel away days in posh hotels and glitzy award ceremonies) a ‘posh’ hotel out of season may not cost a lot of money, but it clearly offends Erics view of what is right. He suggests travelling out of the area to use buildings belonging to other Councils, but no civic building is really free to use and there are travel costs to consider!, 28 (End expensive ‘leadership’ courses) the rationale for this is based on a Parliamentary debate from 2009 with course costs from £1,000 per course and most examples used were of community leaders and students, not Government employees. In any case cutting training for potential leaders may prove to be a false economy.

Attempts to reform industrial relations – the risk is that babies get thrown out with all of this bathwater. Trade unions enable agreements to be sought with individual employees en masse. A return to individual bargaining may be just as costly: 31 (Scrap Trade Union Posts), 32 (Charge for collecting trade union subscriptions) what’s next, a charge for making pension deductions?

Attempts to turn local Government into a social enterprise – this simplistic guide will not help those not sure where to start and will be of no value to those well on their way: 18 (Open up a ‘pop up’ shop in spare office space) a recent guide on this idea by CLG is equally brief and written by people whose experience of pop up activity seems non existent, 21 (Open a coffee shop in the library), 36 (Earn more from private advertising), 46 (Sell services), 48 (Lease works of art not on display) a potential disaster unless done well. This may actually be something that a central agency could help with!

A focus on communicating less – every silver lining is potentially surrounded by huge clouds. If the big society is to be engaged with, these ideas could be  counterproductive: 34 (Stop translating documents into foreign languages), 38 (Scrap the town hall Pravda), 44 (Cut printing costs).

Land and Property examples – these ideas do not have quick returns. Done effectively they depend on agreement with other organisations including Government agencies who appear less enthusiastic than Eric Pickles at sharing data, let alone buildings: 15 (Close council cash offices) these savings depend on the availability of Post Offices which have their own efficiency programmes, 16 (Better land and property management), 17 (Hot desking, estate rationalisation and sub-letting).

The voluntary sector – Two of Eric’s ideas show either a woeful misunderstanding of the voluntary sector or else a very cynical view of the relationship between the state and the so called ‘Big Society’: 37 (Cease funding ‘sock puppets’ and ‘fake charities’) the term ‘sock puppet’ appears to originate from a ‘charity’ that is itself a think tank or lobby group. Eric has not defined what he thinks a ‘fake charity’ is so perhaps this comment is best ignored!, 43 (Help the voluntary sector save you money) there are many services that the voluntary sector can deliver much more effectively than the state or the private sector. Part of this effectiveness may lead to lower costs. However the sock puppet term was developed to suggest too close a relationship between charities and the state. Perhaps Eric can decide what sort of relationship he really wants with the sector before he issues draft 2 of his ‘helpful’ guide!