Local councils need a ‘Spotify revolution’

For over 40 years, local government has been told to do more with less and even less – it cannot continue, writes Chris Naylor

The cost of living crisis brings further strain to exhausted local services (PA)

No one can look at what’s happening right now to public services and think that the answer is to keep doing what we’ve been doing before.

For those of us who have known this for some time, things have gotten so bad it’s almost good – because realisation is growing that we must grasp the nettle of full transformation.

For over 40 years, local government has been told to do more with less and even less, and this week’s autumn Budget is likely to brutally reinforce this message. Through efficiency drives, outsourcing, inspection, regulation, and more recently through austerity and Covid, council services have stretched past the point of elasticity and started to snap, with the most vulnerable bearing the brunt.