Looking ahead to the next four years

As the Government spells out its spending plans, the Leader of Devon County Council, Cllr John Hart looks ahead to the next four years.

Here he writes: “I won’t be alone in predicting that the next four years could be the toughest local government has ever faced.

“But we won 38 of 62 seats in May and I believe Devon’s Conservatives have a continuing mandate to take tough decisions.

“When we took control with a landslide victory in 2009, we got straight on with the business of cutting costs and making the authority more efficient and more businesslike.

“That early start stood us in good stead once the Coalition Government took over and started putting the public finances right.

“By the time the national spending cuts started to take effect, we had already put in place a significant restructure which reduced our senior management by almost half and flattened out the rest of the management while we implemented a jobs freeze across the organisation.

“This saw almost 3,000 people leave our employment without being replaced, but with no major redundancies.

“Our new structure of People, Place and Corporate Services is more flexible and adaptable and enables staff to work across the authority as one council.

“All this helped us reduce our net spending from £600 million to £500 million over the last four years.

“We now face cutting at least another £100 million from our budget over the next four years.

“Obviously that’s going to be much more difficult to achieve because of the spending reductions we’ve already made.

“We’ve done our utmost to safeguard all our services. But the reality now is that some non-statutory services may not survive. It’s become a cliché but it’s true – salami slicing is no longer an option.

“Every autumn since I’ve been leader, I’ve gone out to meet people in their local communities with a Tough Choices roadshow.

“We’ve asked what services they most want to protect and those they would be prepared to see reduced.

“Unsuprisingly, the top three areas people wanted protected were community care services for older people and those with physical disabilities, keeping vulnerable children safe and residential and nursing care for older people.

“More interestingly, perhaps, they said we should shave our home to school transport costs, reduce support for tourism promotion and turn off more street lights at night.

“And, in such a rural county as Devon, people also surprisingly suggested we reduce our support for local transport.

“But all that’s not going to save us another £100 million. So, amongst other savings, we have ambitious plans to reduce our property holdings by a third.

“We’ll do that by making more efficient use of the office space in our key centres and sell off or surrender leases on other property.

“We will no doubt enter into more money-saving partnerships, like the merger of our trading standards and pensions’ administration with Somerset’s and our joint venture with Babcock to deliver education support services.

“These will be key priorities for my administration over the next four years along with vital measures to boost the economy of our county.

“So I want to see superfast broadband quickly rolled out to our rural businesses and homes and the completion of the £110 million South Devon Link Road project which will give a real boost to the economy in the south of the county, creating over 8,000 jobs.

“We will work with our local LEP and our partner district councils to continue the development of the East of Exeter Growth Point, incorporating the new town of Cranbrook.

“And I will also continue to campaign for greater resilience for the transport network in the South West with improvements for both our road and rail systems.

”This will all be delivered as we take on the extra responsibilities for public health. And that’s a real challenge in a county like Devon where the proportion of older age groups NOW won’t be reflected across England until 2027.

“That’s why we were keen to take part in the dementia-friendly communities’ pilot, why we’re developing specialist dementia care homes and why we signed up to the Targeted Families support programme.

“All in all these are very challenging times but that’s why we’re elected and why we’re determined to do the best for our communities.”