91Èȱ¬

If you were hoping to drop by for a little ray of sunshine, try somewhere else. I've been on a whistle-stop gloom and doom tour and don't see why you shouldn't have to join in.

It's a sort of magical mystery tour where all the surprises are awful and not that much of a surprise come to think of it. The pictures that break up the stream of depressing facts and figures help a bit. There's one of an axe, the sort of axe the Vikings used to slash and behead people as opposed to a neat and shiny woodcutters axe. There's a man standing on a precipice helpfully headlined "man standing on the edge of an abyss", a little kitten about to be mauled by ferocious dogs and another man with his head, literally, buried in the sand. They raise a smile but we're talking the rueful variety here.

The routine was devised by Steve Thomas, Chief Executive of the WLGA ("not the United States TV station 'We love Georgia and Alabama' ...") but the Welsh Local Government Association. He's the sort of man who laughs in the face of words like "readjusting", "reassessing", "juggling", "re-jigging" - then sobers up pretty quickly and starts thinking job losses.

After all, the gloom and doom tour that has recently visited a local authority near you, makes the points that if it was really all about making innovative use of existing resource, about "much greater efficiency," "accelerating the pace of change", "the optimum use of public money," "developing menus of good practice" - he has a sideline in cutting and pasting quotes from ministerial speeches - then there'd be no need to cut anything at all. But the Finance Minister Jane Hutt, who's on her way this morning to meet Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander in Westminster, won't be talking efficiency over tea and biscuits. They'll be talking cuts: how much, how much or little flexibliity, how soon.

Come to think of it, they'll probably do without the biscuits.

One of the highlights of the gloom and doom tour features a photo of Harry "Loadsamoney" Enfield.

Question: What do you get for a billion pounds these days?

You start thinking a collection of luxury homes, a fleet of cars, a shed load of Panini World Cup stickers, a Premiership striking partnership ...

Local Authority leaders think one billion and are then treated to what losing a billion would mean:

stop maintaining roads, turn off all the street lights, cut all spending on public transport, stop all winter maintenance of roads = £0.3b

close the libraries, sut the leisure centres and theatres and stop maintaining parks - = £0.3b

planning control activities, economic and community development to save another £0.1b and stop all home to school transport would add another £0.1b

Does the Chief Executive think for one minute that any council in Wales is about to slash and burn to that extent - even have to slash and burn to that extent? No, he doesn't. That's the scare-em-stupid part of the tour. But turn over the page and you get to the numbers he clearly believes they may well have to deal with. They're pretty scary too, the draft Deloittes, SOLACE and WLGA figures.

Under 'Best case scenario' is the advisory: "Ignore this".

'Moderate case scenario' has a small authority facing a budget shortfall of £21.9m, a medium authoritiy £42.1 and a large authority £79.1m.

The worse case - in bold - has a small authority facing a shortfall of £34.2m, a medium authority £65.8m and a large one £123.7m.

By the way the current annual budget of a large authority like Cardiff is somewhere in the region of £650m - £518m revenue and £136m capital.

And having pinned the audience to their seats, then comes the real advisory.

Stop thinking incremental change will do it. It won't. Don't even think ambitious when it comes to dealing with those budget shortfalls. Think very ambitious. Contemplate outrageous ambition and hope you'll never have to go there.

Ambition, in these terms, is about looking hard at education and social care budgets, considering statutory and discretionary pay freezes, considering other ways of financing investment, taking risks, getting central government to remove edicts and ring fencing on grants so local authorities are free to work out for themselves how they and the authority next door can cut least painfully.

Then comes the bottom line:

"They key question for political leaders is - what are you going to stop doing?"

Political leaders, bear in mind, who want to be re-elected in May 2012 - a year later than Assembly Members want to be re-elected, of course. Just what are you going to stop doing and just how are you going to time those deeply unpopular announcements for which trades unions and local action groups will crucify you?

Oh and by the way - and the tour ends here with councillors and officers alike pinned to their seats - we're all living longer so the cost of delivering adult social care is about to go through the roof, it looks as though the number of surplus school places will exceed 100,000 by 2014 and European targets on waste are about to get a whole lot tougher.

There. I told you not to expect a ray of sunshine.

Perhaps - in the spirit of the big society - you'd like to join in with your own thoughts.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?