Barnet's 'easyCouncil' finds it hard to cut with £1.5m spent, £1.4m saved

from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/26/barnet-no-frills-council-overspends



Residents playing bingo on Barnet's Prospect House estate.
Photograph: Graeme Robertson



London borough of Barnet's 'no-frills' council spends more than it saves in botched efficiency drive

It was billed as Britain's first "easyCouncil", a flagship for the government's town hall spending cuts and a model of no-frills prudence. But it has emerged that the London borough of Barnet is spending more trying to find efficiencies than it is actually saving.

The Conservative-controlled north London council has committed to spending £1.5m this financial year on a much-hyped reform programme to help close a yawning budget gap, but it is on course to recoup just £1.4m in savings in the year.

The council's funding shortfall is set to hit £15m next year, and the borough has tried to innovate through its "One Barnet" programme. This includes paying to develop a system of "life coaches" to persuade residents to reduce dependence on the state, appointing business consultants to help town hall officials and even opening a library in a branch of Starbucks in a pilot which could result in the closure of some library buildings.

The programme is budgeted to deliver savings of £13m a year by 2014, about a third of the total cuts planned by the council. It had been projected to save £3m by the end of the financial year, but Lynne Hillan, council leader, has now admitted the savings will be less than half of that.

News of the shortfall emerges days after Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, named Barnet as a pilot for the government's "community budget" system to hand councils control of all spending in their area free of conditions from Whitehall.

Pickles claimed the move would "help better protect frontline services and help the most vulnerable", but there are fears that if Barnet's experiment fails residents will suffer deeper cuts in services.

Even if the projected savings from the One Barnet programme are achieved, it is planning to cut £18m from adult social services, £9m from children's services, £4m from environmental services and £6m from its central costs.

Alison Moore, leader of the opposition Labour group in the borough, said: "Barnet claim that easyCouncil is all about a relentless drive for efficiency, so it is absurd that in the first year, they've spent more money than they've saved.

"This bodes ill for their ability to use community budgets efficiently, or to effectively direct government funding."

Caroline Flint, shadow communities secretary, said the loss showed "speed kills" and that rushing into cuts could end up costing more.

"We are in favour of innovation in local government, but what seems to have gone wrong in Barnet is they pushed ahead without thinking through the consequences for local people," she said. "There are echoes of this nationwide with ill-thought out plans that are designed to save money, but could actually cost the taxpayer more."

Hillan insisted tonight the big savings would follow in the second and third years. "The One Barnet programme took longer to establish than planned because we took the decision to develop an in-house team of officers," she said. "I've no doubt this will give us the most efficient process and the greatest long-term savings."