Yesterday I attended two significant meetings each with a focus on the work of local statutory services in the period 2015-2020. Although substantial cuts have been made to many of our services (Police, Local Government, Health, Fire and Rescue) to date, the views of the leaders of these services in Sussex is that we aint seen nothing yet. Irrespective of which party or parties win the General Election in 2015, of which party is the most successful in the European Elections in May, the next 4-5 years will need to see a major transformation in the way in which we understand such local services. There are several significant implications:

Our need to work together as residents and businesses so that some of the expectations we currently have of the state can be addressed through what we can do to help one another. This may change our relationships with our neighbours, strengthening our sense of interdependence, and perhaps just as significantly it will change our relationship with the state and those who currently claim to be the leaders of civil society. In practice we will need to work together as residents to create stronger and safer communities, with the assistance of the smaller state, not expecting it to achieve all it might have done in the past. The need for the state to support the most vulnerable will remain, but even here, there is much we who are not so vulnerable can do to help our neighbours and colleagues.

The local public services will need to organise themselves very differently, in many ways getting closer to the understanding that many residents already have. In practice some of us have no real certainty regarding who does what. This is most pronounced in areas where there are currently 3 tiers of local government, where many people have no idea which tier does what. However it is also clear from some of the issues that we raise with the emergency services or even in the health sector, that we are not at all sure where the demarcation exists. This is particularly acute where the emphasis of the Fire and Rescue Service is involved in fire prevention, rather than putting fires out, or where the Police have been focusing on preventing crime, rather than locking up criminals.

Finally and perhaps most significantly there will need to be a major reduction in size of the one part of the State that this Government, despite its rhetoric, has extended ambitiously since 2010. The part of the state in which Politicians operate. Perhaps the most evident aspect of this obese state is in the employment of special advisers, or the appointment of Lords that are generally too old to leap very far. Much of this bloated edifice will be defended on the grounds of tradition and history. Sadly for those who find that part of our history and tradition reassuring, the past will need to fade away. It is widely known that many Millions need to be spent refurbishing the Palace of Westminster so that our Ministers and their special advisers can return to use their power to make decisions about us, all too often without us, until the next election when these decisions will be reversed at huge cost to you and me. This needs to end, and there is no time like the present. It is time to have a serious look at how our Parliament operates, and we may find that the people resisting the cuts and changes in their comfortable existence are the same people who are currently imposing cuts in our communities. The same is true at a local level, where leadership will need to become more constructive and consensual, ending some of the vanity projects and ideas that are of interest only to a few people and their egos, and also ending the tit for tat debates that achieve very little. Based on my meetings yesterday it was evident that the people least prepared to change how they operate are those whose role is to provide political leadership!