Will the response to the spending review add up?

Published: 28 October, 2010

• VERY soon Camden Council will unveil its response to the govern­ment’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).

We do not know what the council will propose, but there is one certainty. It will claim that it has minimised the effect that budget cuts will have on front-line services. 

Should we believe these claims? Camden has a history of claiming the quality of services that it provides for its residents is first-class. 

For instance, it has stated again and again that it is a “leading council” in the provision of library services. However, there has been a continuous series of complaints about that service and they have been increasing in frequency and ferocity. The experience of Camden’s library users and its council’s statements appear to relate to two different boroughs.

Each time a council spokesperson failed to address the substance of a complaint about falling levels of service and simply dismissed it, a little credibility was lost. The cumulative effect of these has been devastating. The poor Camden resident now believes that he or she must carefully search behind council statements for its real intensions. Many now think that simply inverting the apparent meaning is the way to do this. Having largely squandered its credibility, the council is in a poor position to persuade Camden residents that its response to the CSR is the best that can be obtained and that it is not simply a mindless, knee-jerk reaction. 

It needs the acquiescence of the borough’s residents (outright support is highly unlikely) to push its programmes forward and somehow it has to earn back credibility. 

The only way that the council can do this, in the time available, is to be completely honest about its proposals. 

After many years, it has to give up its use of the outmoded manipulative techniques of New Labour. Everybody is wise to and weary of dodgy dossiers.

The Osborne CSR covers the period until 2015, that is, the period until the next general election. From a national politician’s perspective, the end of the world (not re-elected) may occur then, so there is no point in worrying about anything after that point. 

All that is necessary is to suggest everyone will live happily ever after. 

In the real world, slash and burn between 2011 and 2015 will lead to mis­ery thereafter. Camden Council has the difficult job of minim­ising that misery for its residents. It has to reduce expenditure while the size of the borough’s population is rapidly increasing. 

In the very short period between 2010 and 2015, the Office for National Statistics says the Camden population will increase from 253,900 to 276,700, that is, by 9 per cent. 

This alone makes maintaining service levels difficult to achieve. Worse, the population is expected to continue increasing well beyond 2015 (by 2029 the Camden population will have risen to 320,700). Worse still, a large proportion of the people making up the increases are expected to be refugees and others with high levels of need. Camden will have to explain very carefully how its plans will accommodate these long-term population changes, while achieving the required reduction in expenditure by 2015.

In these circumstances, there is not doubt that the rumoured library closure programme can be accurately described as a mindless, knee-jerk reaction. Once closed, libraries never reopen.

ALAN TEMPLETON
Chair, Camden Public Libraries Users Group