The coalition’s politics of passporting cuts to councils causes obvious pain, but also carries political risks to Labour councils. The public will be tempted to blame the council messenger if we act as in the same old ‘business as usual’ ways as few understand the complex interaction of government support for council finances.

Every Labour council cut Eric Pickles decries as a travesty. At times it seems the only substantive part of localism the coalition support is an attempt to localise the blame. Labour councils need to be radical and imaginative if we are to carry our residents with us, and not to foster a fatalism in our areas.

Councils have traditionally only dealt with budgets in one way. First, discussing various options behind closed doors, then announcing the least-worst set of cuts to the public at the budget meeting. Fresh thinking is needed and in Liverpool we employed a totally innovative way of setting the budget. We trusted the public with the full budget process.

In Liverpool we had already acted in a new way, making an offer to the opposition parties to put aside politics and join with us in proposing a joint budget. Liverpool Lib Dems refused, and we never lost an opportunity to remind the public that they were putting politics first above the city.

When I suggested that we publish all of the budget options being considered, one senior council leader described the idea as ‘brave’ in true Sir Humphrey-style. The risk was clear, every possible bad option would be blown up by the press and the opposition – residents would be in uproar. The public were not ready to be trusted with the details of the true dilemmas being faced by councillors.

However, we published all the options, which we shared with our voluntary sector, businesses and also to an open set of public meetings. The press were pre-briefed, and responded well to being brought into the process. As a council we said the scale of the cuts was so great, that we wanted to be upfront with the public and share with them the choices on offer.

We also asked the public to come forward with alternatives if they thought other options should have been on the table. We webcast our budget consideration meetings where senior councillors looked at the various options.

There was an initial flurry of press interest – and some concern by groups who could see they would be affected by the various options. However, it did change the nature of the debate. For every lobbyer who said ‘don’t take option A’, we could legitimately challenge them to propose an alternative cut. This is, in truth, the dilemma faced by councillors, and sharing it with the public leads to a more mature debate – and many comments in the media from people saying they did not envy our job.

In the traditional budget process, the public debate in the lead-up to the elections in May focuses on the cuts – not an easy place for a Labour council. This, however, was reversed under the new process. The public debate occurred in the autumn of 2011 on the range of difficult options.

When we got to the stage of proposing a budget in January 2012, we were able to shape the debate in terms of what services a Labour council had managed to save. Each option not taken was a victory and a sign of our values in practice.

We also achieved some significant changes to some options – not least children’s centres options following significant public involvement.

I firmly believe that if we are honest and open with our residents, voluntary groups and businesses then we will enjoy their support – and make better decisions. The public also seemed to relish being taken into the confidence of councillors – and this year rewarded Labour with a 60 per cent share of the vote in the mayoral and local council elections.

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Paul Brant is deputy mayor of Liverpool. He tweets @CllrPaulBrant

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Credit: BeingSelfEmployed.org