Let’s cut them down to size

We’ve had the politicians telling us their hopes for the sector in Housing Today over the past few weeks. Now I think it’s about time we tell them a thing or two.

All three main parties have promised to reduce the burden of government.

Labour has capped county councils’ spending power in the past – to which council leaders typically responded by threatening to cut back vital services or increase council tax. Not to trim bureaucracy. Residents of West Sussex, for example, will still remember their council asking whether they’d prefer social services, primary schools or library services to get the chop. As if this were ever really a choice.

The Conservatives have suggested slicing out whole departments and getting rid of quangoes to make their political point. Inevitably, that would mean local services being cut to the bone, while bureaucratic functions simply returned to central office. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, want to devolve power to local authorities. Housing benefit is a good example of why that’s a bad idea. Social security services were fine run by government; they got back-logged and delayed when councils took over the job.

Like registered social landlords, local authorities are inspected by the Audit Commission. Unlike RSLs, those that perform badly do not end up in supervision – they may get a smaller housing investment programme funding allocation, but would never have payment withdrawn for really abysmal performance.

And yet if housing – and other former government services such as the railways – are threatened with supervision, mergers and funding freezes, or being overseen by watchdogs, why not government offices? Government is quite happy to change the remit of local councils when it wants to. Regional planning boards, which take power over planning decisions away from councils and give it to the ODPM instead, are a not-so-subtle example of that.

Councils respond to spending caps by cutting vital services; not bureaucracy

The commission has the power to demand efficiency savings from RSLs, but also to ensure they continue to provide good services. Why do governments demand cuts at council level – but never challenge when services suffer as a result?

If the commission was given full reign to alter or merge parishes and local authority borders, and to put government departments and quangoes under supervision or forced amalgamation, larger savings could be achieved than the government expects RSLs to deliver.

The same, or better, services to customers – and a tougher scrutiny of where savings should come from – could be achieved without a loss of front line services or costly, ineffective job restructurings.

We should be asking why we still have the same layers of government as in the 19th century, despite devolution in Scotland and Wales, which means government now serves a far smaller chunk of the UK and a lot less of the rest of the world. We need to maintain vital local services; we don’t need thousands and thousands of council offices. Most local services are already a shadow of their former selves. One only has to look at care for the elderly, meals on wheels and home help to notice this.

Restoring the commission to its original role as watchdog of government spending and efficiency would be a small political step. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice it. But it could help put power in the hands of the masses in a meaningful way; not to mention create an unprecedented financial windfall for whichever chancellor embarks upon a new term come May.