In local government councillors and the local voters will have to decide which services will no longer be provided, expectations will have to be lowered not only in what the local authority can afford to provide but in the local authorities ability to shape and influence the prosperity and quality of life of local people.
To date the discussion has focused on the extent to which local authorities can afford to provide services like libraries, museums and swimming pools. Whether local authorities can continue to maintain local parks, make grants available to theatres, fund artist and musicians to go into schools, provide financial assistance to dance and drama groups or money to provide sporting opportunities for people with a learning disability. In the current financial climate can local authorities justify financial support to carnivals and festivals organised by ethnic minority groups or to fund welfare rights and advice groups. All these services could be considered non essential things you do if you have the money.
Taken in isolation it is hard to justify spending in these areas in view the competing demands from schools and child protection services, from services to support the increasing numbers of elderly people with dementia or the needs of people with severe learning disabilities and their families who provide the largest share of their care.
But these services don’t operate in isolation they are part of the way local authorities address the big issues of long unemployment ,homelessness, juvenile crime, drug and alcohol abuse. They are the means by which local authorities have been promoting social inclusion and community cohesion they are part of the strategy to reduces health inequalities.
It is not hard to see that that public swimming pools, leisure/ sports centres playing fields and parks are part of encouraging a healthy life style and form part of a strategy for addressing health inequalities. Less obvious is the impact of libraries if you still view them as simply lending books. Today’s libraries do so much more. A library in the middle of a housing estate is a community centre where single mums and their toddlers meet and are introduced to books and live classical music, it’s a venue for welfare rights sessions and local councillors’ surgeries, it’s a place for pop concerts in a safe alcohol free environment a hipper version of the church youth club. Libraries offer free access to the internet because not ever one has a computer at home, which is also why many libraries offer home work clubs
In Lanacshire it was the library staff that got together with staff from children’s services to offer after school activities for gypsy and travellers children. The trust and good will generated providing a way in for other agencies including health and housing. When Lancashire suddenly acquired a Polish community it was library staff who first were first to engage as people came in to use the internet to keep in touch with family and friends back in Poland. It was library staff who answered questions and signed posted people to other services that could help. It was library staff who got together with the museum staff and put together a local history box of old photographs and house hold items to take round old people homes because the long term member stays intact and suddenly people come alive as the memories flood back.
These actives support people who otherwise would be at risk of being socially excluded.
Social inclusion, community cohesion and health inequality these are very big issues. Are we going to tolerate differences in life expectancy which mean that in some parts of the same local authority people die ten years younger than in other parts? Are we going to live with increasing numbers of disaffected young people coming into conflict with other members of their community? Are we going to accept riots, social unrest and disturbances as inevitable consequences of communities which are mixed in faith or race?
How will local authorities address these issues if they are no long able to provide these services? Who will tackle the wicked issues if local authorities don’t.
Blair McPherson was until recently the Director of Community services at Lancashire county council. www.blairmcpherson.co.uk