Pickles points to further £2bn of savings
0Eric Pickles has urged councils to keep working on initiatives such as shared services, shared management and contract savings.
Speaking at the Local Government Association conference last week Pickles said that local authorities could still make many savings by sharing and streamlining. Referring to financial projections published by the LGA last week, forecasting that most of councils’ spending would be soaked up by adult social care by 2020, as “the “Graph of Doom” analysis”, Pickles said that councils “are not passive players”.
Pointing to London’s Tri-borough shared service set up, which should save £40m per year, Pickles said that councils who “simply copied this example” could save in the region of £2bn among them.
To help out, he added, central government was looking into how to remove chief executive posts “without having to hand out massive payoffs”. The £60bn a year spent by councils on procurement should also be reduced, he said, and further savings made on property. Each area could see savings of 20%, as demonstrated by DCLG’s Capital and Asset Pathfinder, said the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
