Richard Harbord: The difficult year ahead

2014 was the year when it became apparent that the financial difficulties facing local authorities were only at midpoint at best. It was the year the new pension regulations came in which in the long run will reduce pensions by 13%. A year when the uncertainties on the future of welfare reform became more apparent. Worries about the loss of key housing benefit staff without the certainty or even the probability of losing housing benefits. Decisions were necessary about maintaining corporate fraud work whilst losing staff to the new fraud service and the value of the work undertaken against the need to save staffing costs.

It was a year when the difficulty of estimating accurately the total of business rates against a rising background of unresolved appeals, a situation now exacerbated by the deadline on appeals imposed by the Autumn Statement.

All this set against an apparent background where local authorities had made difficult savings with apparent ease and without financial difficulty.

2015 will be a difficult year. It is a general election year and the outcome is much discussed and seems more open than ever. There are uncertainties over devolution in England and the outcome of the Scottish Referendum on all parts of the United Kingdom. There are discussions ongoing about the future structure of local authorities and particularly around combined authorities. And we can expect announcements after the election about welfare reform and hopefully a decision to remove housing benefits from the unified credit proposals. At the moment each party has made vague announcements about the future savings needed from the public sector to reduce the budget. The sums do not appear to add up. All should become clear in 2015.

The difficulty here is that it could just be that the outcome of the General Election will be such that a further election will be necessary which would prolong the uncertainty. The spectre of the need of the NHS and the subsequent effect on local authorities resources is a worrying one.