In 2010, there was widespread awareness that the scale of budget cuts needed was beyond the domain of what can be delivered by traditional efficiency programmes. The key questions were how to manage the approach to efficiency? How to make sure that money is saved whilst doing as little damage as possible to organisational capacity and the delivery of priority outcomes? How to make sure that the services that remain meet the changing needs of different places and the people who live there? And how to make sure that the focus of budget cuts translates into new ways of providing services and frees up creativity to find fresh approaches to old problems?
This report explores the issue: If local government could not significantly improve outcomes for residents in many priority areas in the last decade of plenty, can it meet the challenge of spending cuts?
Local government & public services
Posted on: 1 March 2010 Authors: Nicola Bacon,