We are all agreed....

That cuts which affect front-line services should be avoided. Apparently.

Its just beginning to get nasty and a bit personal, isn’t it? Today’s letter to ‘The Times’ (10th February 2011) by 17 Lib Dem Council leaders and 71 Lib Dem local party leaders makes very direct accusations about DCLG Secretary of State Eric Pickles. And interestingly, while refusing to sign the letter, Nick Clegg’s own Sheffield Council  Leader, Paul Scriven, has made two points in support of its content; that Mr Pickles is using a gunship mentality, and that the ‘front-loading’ of the cuts is making them more difficult to implement, and more invasive in their effect.

The Government response? That Councils which cut front line services are too readily ignoring back office cuts (as though those don’t also have job cuts and devastated families as a result), for example by sharing support services or indeed chief officers with other councils. And that megaphone diplomacy is no diplomacy at all.

What price megaphones over gunships?

Whichever side you are on in this potentially fearsome political debate, or whichever side you are listening to, it is front-line services which must be protected. And we certainly are aware that too many councils are so pre-occupied with the scale of this year’s cuts that they are worried they may never get beyond the current reactive mode, that they may never stop squeezing, and never get into proactive re-design of services.

Yet we notice one curious dimension of this phenomenon. Who is it that is actually involving local people in those decisions? Who is it that understands that local people could help replace some services and protect others by designing better, more appropriate ones, including front-line services?  And we are not talking about B**S*** here, just good-old co-design and co-‘ownership’ (literally or metaphorically) of decisions, of structures and of the means of delivery.

This dimension is sadly missing from the debate and the debate is poorer as a result. So too are the solutions being found. The route we advocate will take longer in many instances, but we’d rather councils chose that route now, than wait another year for another go at ‘squeezing’ and ‘salami-slicing’ to fail, for the battle between megaphones and gunships to generate still more heat and a lot less light and, worse, to lead to trench warfare.  Now there’s a battle with one certain loser.

And if we are to avoid being in the same position this time next year, the time to start changing this is now.