Dorset cuts crisis: Full Q&A with Angus Campbell and David Jenkins

MP: it's been a year since the big public sector cuts were announced, how would you describe that year has been for you in terms of cuts and having to make hard decisions.

AC: Well we knew it would be hard decision and we were aware we had to start saving before that particular point in time and clearly we've put an awful lot of work into it, people talk about areas where we are still looking for money this year but they were very heavily front ended cuts and we have made the bulk of them. It really is an accolade to the way the staff and everyone has worked at trying to make this work correctly.

MP: In a meeting last month Paul Kent said that this is the largest sum that the council has had to save in living memory, would you agree with that?

AC: yes I would have to in my living memory and local Government. If you look at the non-schools budget area you're looking at what we're looking for over the next three years - we're talking about 20 per cent of the non-schools revenue, that's a huge amount. People sometimes don't recognise the difference between revenue and capital, but actually it means next year is this much more and this much more and when we get to year three it will need to be £57million year on year into the future with the other problems will have to do on top of that. There has been a seismic shift in the way that Local Government is funded.

DJ: I would add that the level of the cuts and the timescale was certainly unprecedented. Like the leader I am proud in the way that officers and members have worked to bring this about. What we need to remember is that we are coping not only with a reduction in Government grant but at the same time an increase in service demands in a number of areas particularly services for the elderly. The age of our population is rising, their needs are rising so what they are coping with is the gap between reducing grant and increasing demands. To address that this year we are on course to have taken £28million out of our budget in one year and staffing levels are on course to reduce full time staff by 500 in one year. And that is being done I think with some pain but effectively and well.

500 excluding schools, at the moment. At the end of September we were employing 432 full time equivalent posts fewer than at this time last year. That's excluding schools and excluding the waste partnership. That number will continue to increase during the course of the year but we are on course to have reduced our staffing by 500 full-time equivalent which is the number we've broadly held to for the past financial year.

MP: You say that was done with some pain, but how hard was that for you personally?

AC: clearly, this is one of those things where people are always looking for cuts in the back office, whatever that means, but clearly if you start removing people in the scale that we have then you are going to get fewer people to do the jobs they were put there to do and it puts pressure on the other people as well. We have to innovate and work together and this is just the beginning really of a big change. It was very dramatic because of the front loading of the costs. My firm belief is across the public sector that we have to work together for the future so we can make public money be used more efficiently. We do a lot of talking about that but we need to get to a place where we put our money where our mouth is if that's the right way of putting it. The PCTs, national health and there's a lot of change going on but we've been working with them a long time so for instance adult care money is spent more efficiently across the board and we will have to get into a position where we can use that for intervention so that people's lives are better because they don't end up in acute care and this is jolly costly for their families and themselves and their wellbeing but also for the government and the tax payer.

DJ: can I say that clearly nobody enjoys doing this but it has to be done as fairly and dispassionately as we can. Just to make the point we talked about 500 job losses but I want to emphasis that is not 500 redundancies because we have been managing a recruitment freeze. So far there have only been 167 redundancies in January to September, which is when they started. Of those only 40 are compulsory so I said earlier we are proud of the way we are managing this, I'm very sorry that there have been any casualties at all but the number of casualties through compulsory redundancies are a lot lot less than they would have been if we hadn't been managing this so carefully.

MP: Losing that many staff, is there any examples of departments that have drastically changed or have you just had to make do? Have any services you run from here had to close down?

AC: We haven't closed any services down, we've made some fairly large in roads into cuts into some services. The problem is that this is an ongoing issue, looking at the budget for next year and then the year after. The reason we haven't approached some areas is because they are areas of great difficulty. We don't know the exact details of where we go from here but it is going to be difficult and we do need to work with other areas of local government across Dorset and I believe it is my conviction to make sure the finance is spread and that the jobs get done. It's something that people are being encouraged to do a year ago under the Total Place initiative which was really basically working across the board mixing the finances and trying to make it more efficient.

AC: We have ensured that the reductions have hit central departments and teams more than front line teams so for example in the county council which has achieved the greatest reduction in budget and posts is my own office which is as it should be. Conversely we have protected that portion of our budget that goes to the voluntary sector because we didn't want them to be adversely hit. There have been some consequences on the voluntary sector and there will be more but proportionally a lot less then we'd imposed on our own staff.

AC: No-one can be unaffected because of the scale, it's just trying to ease the burden in some areas and other areas carry a more major part.

MP: With the 500 losses is there a clear saving you made from those roles: AC: It's very difficult to make a specific but clearly the major cost in running any organisation is the cost of employing people and generally speaking when you are making these savings it's bound to impact on the number of people.

DJ: We are on course this year to have taken £28million out of our budget, a significant part of that is staffing cost.

MP: Is it right that the funding gap has been identified by the budget working group?

DJ: The latest figures are that over a three year period, of which the current is the first year, we need to make savings of £57.5million, including the financial year we are in. This year we have set about achieving £31million savings. We have a savings programme agreed over a three year period which is targeted to achieve £46million of the £57.5million. The three year savings is set to achieve £46million of that. So there's £11million to find over that three year period, to that we need to add £3million of overspends this year because of the pressures on our demand led budgets, particularly for the elderly. Take that £11million and that £3million that gives us a two year budget savings target not yet identified of £14million which falls for £7.5million next year and £6.5million next year. We have in place at the moment a series of meetings across our budget working group which consists of leading members of the county council who are meeting with senior officers to come up with proposals about how we achieve that £7.5million and £6.5million on top of our existing savings programmes and those recommendations will come forward to overview committees, cabinet and the county council as a whole and ultimately the 45 elected members of the county council in a full meeting will decide, but lots of preparation work is underway to achieve that.

AC: And it does have to be achieved because we have to have a balanced budget, it has to be found. The argument can be about where you find it, but it has to be found.