The Decade of Austerity

For the last couple of days I have been away at the County Council Network' annual conference.  It was extremely useful.  In particular, I picked up quite a few ideas about Adult Social Care that I will look at in more detail and discuss with officers at Cambridgeshire.

There was, of course, lots and lots of debate about budgets and "austerity".  It is absolutely clear that the financial issues that Councils face are here until at least 2020. The phrase "the decade of austerity" was used a number of times.

It was also stressed that one of the ways that Councils needed to deal with this was through saving money by working closer with the rest of the public sector and especially that County Councils need to work hand-in-glove with Districts to cut costs. It' a message that I welcome, one of the benefits of being a "dual-hatted" Councillor is that you can use the role to develop mutual understanding of issues to make that joint working happen.

This joint working is already happening in Cambridgeshire; it needs to be better, but it is happening.  Arguably, the best example is the 2020 vision for Wisbech.