Lee Baker, editor, EfficiencyNetwork
Senior council officials don't seem to have bought the rhetoric. The Chancellor yesterday hailed the "radical simplifying of funding to local authorities, giving them greater choice over how to use their money".
But as council officials examine the fine print of the spending review, they are finding that the coalition Government has not gone as far on removing the restrictions on pots of money as they have urged. Councils want maximum flexibility to reduce multiple bidding processes, many which end abortively. Their dream is a future where funding cocktails will not need to be painstakingly assembled in order to deliver something like a new road link for a regeneration project.
The Department for Transport has been singled out as thwarting this dream. While the DfT has agreed to reduce the number of different funding streams, it still wants to have a say on how much of them are spent. The DfT's civil servants might soon be far fewer in number, but they still want to devote time to scrutinising councils' proposals for spending.
The DfT will invite bids for its new £560m sustainable transport fund. Ditto the £1.4bn regional growth fund, a third of which is earmarked for transport schemes unlocking economic growth. And it is down to the DfT, not local authorities, how to get better value out of the bus service operator grant, despite the cry from the Local Government Association and ADEPT to let councils decide how best to spend money on buses locally.
In more welcome news, there will be £6m funding for councils to develop more efficient ways of delivering highways services. Freedom to make savings is necessary but not sufficient to protect front line services; there needs to be investment, robust business cases and, then, widespread sharing of what's been achieved.
The Efficiency Network is the next step in Local Transport Today's campaign to bring our extensive network of professionals the essential business intelligence required to deliver more with less.
