Suffolk’s ‘virtual council’ in trouble

Radical plans to outsource all town hall services hang in the balance after a revolt by Tory backbenchers unnerved by public hostility to funding cuts Tory-controlled Suffolk’s much-vaunted “virtual council” experiment looks like it is grinding to a halt. The council’s radical strategy, unveiled last year, controversially promised to cut costs by 30% by outsourcing everything it does to private companies and local social enterprises and charities. But now, after what is seen by some as a “backwoods” Tory councillor revolt, the prosaically named New Strategic Direction (NSD) is in tatters: the leader of the council who introduced the plan has stepped down; his annointed successor was unexpectedly defeated by a putative Stop-The-NSD candidate; and the highly-paid CEO who masterminded NSD finds herself under constant attack from a hostile media, locally and nationally. The jury is still out on whether the changes amount to a u-turn or something less fundamental – a “pause” in the NHS reforms sense – while the council takes stock of the speed and scale of the NSD, and comes up with something more palatable to the public. But what is clear is that this amounts to perhaps the first notable Tory “cuts revolt” we have seen in local government as councillors start to feel the wrath of local voters. Interestingly, it appears to be micro-politics that have scuppered NSD: for all the political class grumbling over “privatisation” it was the council’s stubborn determination to cut entirely the county’s £180,000 school crossing budget – a tiny if highly symbolic fraction of council spending – that crystalised public unhappiness. That act caused Tory backbench councillors – sick of what what blogger (and Suffolk Lib Dem councillor) Craig Dearden-Phillips has described as months of “getting it in the neck at parish council meetings” – to mutiny. Dearden-Phillips explains Suffolk’s “Lollipop Lady” policy disaster eloquently as a kind of “how not to” guide to major organisational transformation (which has fascinating echoes of the Coalition’s disastrous approach to NHS reform): “This wasn’t, of course, about saving money. It was a Big Statement, to say, this is what we are doing – and it’s up to communities now to pick up where the state is leaving the stage. Many of us sensed that, regardless of the merits, this was Bad Politics – and a really daft way to get people signed up to major change. But the Administration pressed on, despite an outcry. Rather than pull back and say ‘We’re listening’, they ploughed on, leaving many on their own side, privately, very upset.” The first thing the new council leader, Mark Bee, did after being elected was to suggest that school crossing patrols will be saved . The NSD, which has been portrayed as a “Tory flagship” model of municipal reform, might be less vulnerable had its leadership not had to deal with the consequences of Communities secretary Eric Pickles’ relentless attacks on council chief executive “Fat Cats” . The media’s sustained and often personal pursuit of Suffolk’s colourful £218,000 a year CEO Andrea Hill (she published this extraordinary and lengthy defence of herself in the council newsletter last month) has left Hill and the council hierarchy wounded. Hill was the architect and driver of NSD: last month she was named the fifth most influential figure in local government by the Local Government Chronicle. But political support for her on the council seems to be fading as the controversy surrounding her grows. There are whispers that staff morale is low. The council has also had to deal with the recent departure of two senior managers , and the death by suspected suicide, of a third . The political heat in supposedly sleepy Suffolk has become intense, and not everyone likes this. As local blogger and Lib Dem parish councillor James Hargrave puts it: “Suffolk never asked to be an experiment in ideological political ideas be they from the left or the right. We just want the County Council to get on with running services the best they can, accepting that there need to be savings made. We don’t want the county we love turned into a laughing stock nationally, a byword for wasteful and overpaid local governement with the Chief Executive literally all over the national papers. At times I have maybe said that Suffolk is a bit too sleepy and behind the times. Can we go back a bit more to those days…?” So what will happen to the “Virtual Council”? The lessons of Suffolk will be studied closely by other Tory-led councils who share its ambitious dreams of municipal minimalism and have seized on the spending cuts as an opportunity to pursue radical change. Some Suffolk political bloggers – like Ipswich Spy – believe NSD must be scrapped; others, like Dearden-Phillips , argue that although momentum has been checked the direction of travel towards the virtual council will continue: “Interestingly, my hunch is that, once the dust settles the new leadership will embark on a path that isn’t much different from the New Strategic Direction set out by Andrea Hill. It will have a different name. It will be slower, more consultative and done with less pzazz. But the essentials of it – divestment of council services, the build-up of community capability and a new role for the council as commissioner rather than provider will, over time, prevail.” Public sector cuts Public services policy Local government Patrick Butler guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 28, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.