Suffolk eyes up £140M savings with service review

17 January 2007
 
Highways budgets would be devolved to the neighbourhood level as part of proposals to secure improved council services in Suffolk, while saving £140M over five years.
The Pathfinder bid is the response of seven Suffolk councils – all except Ipswich, which is bidding to become a unitary – to the local government White Paper’s call for bids for new models of working in two-tier areas.
The authorities see joining-up services as imperative, given the fact that this July’s Comprehensive Spending Review is expected to tightly control local government spending in coming years, while continuing to set challenging efficiency targets.
Highways maintenance responsibilities and budgets would be devolved to ‘joint locality structures’ based on the boundary of the current districts and boroughs.
A Suffolk County Council spokesman said the detailed arrangements would be developed if the Department for Communities and Local Government approved the bid, which is due to be submitted later this month.
But the new arrangements would involve ‘simplifying things’ by not requiring two sets of council teams to go out on the roads to undertake different jobs.
Local communities would be able to prioritise work that was important to them. Savings would be generated because highways area offices would not need to respond to residents’ complaints or organise reactive maintenance. The bid would not involve the ‘cost and difficulty’ of the reorganisation being pursued by others, he added.
Eight counties and six city/district councils are preparing bids to take on unitary status, while others are still weighing up their options.

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