What do the ongoing pressures on local government mean for how tomorrow’s public services will be delivered? This is the question on the agenda of a roundtable meeting PwC and Progress are convening at the Labour party conference in Manchester next week.

As part of a party conference series of ‘Under Pressure’ fringe events, we are examining the multiple pressures public service providers are facing – from shrinking budgets and recurrent cuts to growing demand for services and an ambitious reform agenda.

We will be joined by local government leaders and key policy thinkers to consider these issues and reflect on how these challenges are being tackled day in and day out.  We will cover a number of key questions.  What local government services should be considered essential?  How can financial and service melt down in local government be identified early, and avoided?  What are the options for better managing demand for services?  And what does tomorrow’s council need to look like?

We know from ‘The (local) state we’re in’, our recent survey of councils that local authorities have done much to find savings in a way that has mostly safeguarded front-line services.  But with financial pressures building, 90 per cent of council chief executives believe that, in the next three years, one or more councils will get into serious financial difficulties. What’s clear is that the council of the future will need to look very different to meet challenges like these head on.

Cutting costs, simplifying and standardising their processes, securing back office efficiencies and procuring for outcomes using payment by results is necessary but not enough. Local authorities in future will also need to focus on demand management: what their ‘offer’ is and how people access that; what they will not provide; and how individuals and communities can source solutions for themselves.

What can councils do to specifically influence demand?  Some ideas include exploring the drivers of growing demand and pinpointing where early intervention can prevent future demand pressures.  In the longer term ‘influencing demand’ means fundamentally changing the relationship between the citizen and local government.  If councils are to manage these growing pressures, they need to bring communities with them – on the scale of the challenges faced and the steps needed to address them.

These pressures mean local authorities will need to operate much more effectively, corporately and with strong political engagement. And they will need to become more agile, building this as a capability within their organisations. In doing so, councils need to continue to engage more effectively with their users about the challenges they face, the options they need to consider and the decisions they need to take. If they do not do so effectively, councils are unlikely to be able to drive through change.

Local governments won’t, in my view, see a ‘Lehman moment’.  The more likely scenario is that some councils will fail to deliver essential services – indeed, 70 per cent of council executives and 80 per cent of leaders in our survey thought this. But this means the council of the future will need to look and feel very different and be more agile in delivering services to meet the needs of their residents.

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Andy Ford is local government lead partner at PwC

You can read PwC’s new book, Under Pressure: Securing success, managing risk in public services here.

Find out more about the Progress and PwC roundtable at Labour party conference here.