A cap on public sector redundancy pay-offs? A liberal bureaucrat writes...

The news that the Conservatives intend to legislate for a £95,000 cap on public sector redundancy pay-offs is a somewhat depressing way to start the New Year. That's not because I had any hopes of receiving such a thing myself - no, I'm fully hoping to fulfil my role for many years yet, but because it appears so contradictory to much of what is supposedly desirable.

Firstly, such a proposal flies in the face of the concept of localism. Shouldn't it be the case that a local authority, led by councillors who are directly elected, and deciding that a particular course of action offers best value to the electorate, should have the right to act accordingly, without arbitrary hinderance from central government? After all, if councillors are wasting my money, I can, and should, seek to replace them via the ballot box.

It also seems to contradict the expressed wish of the Conservatives to professionalise public sector institutions, attracting the best of private sector talent to enter public service. You are, already, probably asking them to take a sizeable pay cut - you'd already attacked public sector pay scales, and by now making it easier and cheaper to fire them once they've taken the leap, you chip away further at one of the more obvious attractions - stability of tenure.

It also risks reducing innovation in the delivery of public services. Why take on a new challenge, perhaps uprooting your family to do so, if there is a risk that it might not work out, causing you to lose your job? Senior public servants often discover that, after a change of administration, they may not suit the style of the incoming leadership yet be perfectly capable at what they were asked to do. Are you sure that punishing someone for being unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time is fair or honourable?

It's also imprecise. Does the cap include pension contributions, lost bonuses and all the other paraphernalia of performance related pay. If so, might that remove from local government to reward on the basis of proven long-term achievement - for example, if you want to incentivise someone to ensure that target X is met in three years, are you saying that, should you decide that they need to go before that date, for reasons beyond your mutual control, they will forego that which they have earned?

And, finally, it is likely to impact on flexibility. Sometimes, it is better for all concerned to offer a package to bring a relationship to an end. If, on the other hand, the package offered is too restricted, why co-operate if the compensation on offer doesn't cover lost earnings, relocation costs, potential reputation damage? No, better to see out your contract and control your own future, especially given the costs of any legal process from the perspective of the employer.

Don't get me wrong, I can see the short term, political attraction of such a policy. Public sector workers are an easy target - overpaid, underworked, over-pensioned busybodies who get in the way of our day to day lives. The problem is, they're still needed, every time someone says, "There ought to be a law against it!", or, "The Government must act!", or when someone litters the street or requires someone to look after granny.

And if you want to attract the sort of people who can run those services better, find innovative ways or doing more with less or even, if you're the Government, run things without making you unpopular in the process, you really need to be a little more realistic, and offer slightly less blanket criticism and deprecation.

I'm a firm believer in a well-run, efficient and effective public sector. If you provide people with the right incentives, you can do more with less, generating the sort of goodwill that radical reformers need in order to re-engineer government to face the challenges of the coming decades. Sadly, I don't think that many politicians get it, and fear that those who do have vacated the field in search of more fruitful areas of campaigning. I just hope that we don't find ourselves regretting that one day...

Ed Balls - still working on that credibility thing, I see...

A cup of tea, that will help...

I see that the Shadow Chancellor has written another piece for the Guardian explaining why George Osborne's austerity is bad but Labour's will be so much nicer - the axe will look pretty, as I understand it.

So far, however, the actuality of what Labour might do to reduce the deficit to nil has been, to put it kindly, noticeable only by its lack of content, with the honourable exception of Rachel Reeves, who has proposed a range of changes to the social security system which are not really of the kind that will get Labour activists dancing in the streets. So, with just four months to go before polling day, what has Ed come up with?

This choice is not about whether to get the deficit down. All the main parties are committed to balancing the books in the next parliament – whatever the smears from David Cameron. But only Labour has a plan which is tough and deliverable, balanced and fair. We will cut the deficit every year, and get the current budget into surplus – and national debt falling – as soon as possible in the next parliament. But we will take a different approach to the Tories. We will reverse the £3bn a year tax cut the Tories and Lib Dems have given the top 1% of earners, and put saving our NHS at the heart of Labour’s first budget with our plan to raise an extra £2.5bn a year. We will also scrap the winter fuel allowance for the richest pensioners and cap child benefit rises at 1%. Our review of every pound spent by government is finding savings that can be made in order to better protect frontline services, including £250m in policing and over half a billion in local government. And in the coming weeks my shadow cabinet colleagues will set out further details of the savings they have identified and the reforms they will make.

So, what do we now know? The top rate of tax will, presumably, be increased to 50%. Will it raise £3 billion a year? Well, that rather depends on your stance on the Laffer curve, I guess. But let's say that it does what Ed claims. However, Ed will raise, and spend, a chunk more money on the NHS - he is somewhat silent on how he'll raise the funds, presumably via the mansion tax.

The winter fuel allowance will be scrapped for wealthy pensioners, some of the benefits of doing so  to be eaten up by the bureaucracy of means-testing, I guess. Child benefit will be cut in real terms, taking money away from the poor - I'm not expecting to see that on a Labour leaflet any time soon.

Oh, and that classic, finding savings - shorthand for cutting spending - on policing and local government. And all of this to be done by a bunch of people who, for the most part, failed utterly to do so when they were last in government.

I'm particularly looking forward to Andy Burnham's proposals for reform of the NHS... involving no top-down reorganisations or restructuring...

If you were holding out the hope that an incoming Labour Government would end austerity...

Party members have endorsed the tough fiscal position Ed Miliband and I have set out. We will balance the books, deliver a surplus on the current budget and get the national debt falling as soon as possible in the next parliament.

You can't get plainer than that. With those comments from Ed Balls, the course of the next five years is set. An incoming Labour administration will eliminate the government deficit - £105.8 billion in 2013/14, lest we forget - and run a surplus by the end of the next Parliament, possibly sooner.

Given the optimism priced into the prediction by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that the deficit will be eliminated by 2018/19, based on current plans, it is clear that Labour are going to have to either raise more income, or cut spending further.

Ed Balls has, perhaps, given a clue as to which of those options he prefers when he goes on to say;

But we will get the deficit down more fairly.

Well... yes. But Rachel Reeves has been laying down some of what she means by this as Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions...

A Labour government will introduce a Basic Skills Test to assess all new claimants for Job Seekers Allowance within six weeks of claiming benefits.

Those who don’t have the skills they need for a job will have to take up training alongside their jobsearch or lose their benefits.

Labour’s Basic Skills Test will give the long-term unemployed a better chance of finding a job and will help us to earn our way out of the cost-of-living crisis.

She had already said;

If you increase what you give to some people then presumably you have to reduce it for others. We are not in an environment where there is more money around. It is a difficult thing to achieve.

and;

Nobody should be under any illusions that they are going to be able to live a life on benefits under a Labour government. If you can work you should be working, and under our compulsory jobs guarantee if you refuse that job you forgo your benefits, and that is really important.

It is not an either/or question. We would be tougher [than the Conservatives]. If they don't take it [the offer of a job] they will forfeit their benefit.

So, fairer might not be what you hoped for. There will be compulsion, and there will be those who are worse off after reform of the welfare system, if Ms Reeves is to be believed.

There will also be additional costs to the public sector arising from the insistence that those bidding for government contracts pay the living wage to their employees - although, in fairness, that may well be mitigated by a fall in the amount of benefits paid out to bolster low wages and an increase in tax revenues.

And, of course, the OBR forecasts include the expectation that departmental budgets will be cut further - the expectations for local government and the NHS are already looking gloomy at best - so an incoming Labour Chancellor will need to wave an axe with more enthusiasm than his supporters might think seemly.

So, not much to look forward to for the next five years, is my prediction. And yes, the books may be balanced, but we're all going to have to accept that we'll experience more austerity, and have to take rather more responsibility for what goes on around us. And that goes for politicians and voters alike...

Good news from Network Rail for Suffolk rail passengers

Regular readers will be aware that I am seldom deliriously happy about our train service. Apart from the fact that Creeting St Peter doesn't have a railway station (and I would have been perfectly happy to have High Speed 2 serve the village - albeit quietly as a preference), I have first had to deal with National Express East Anglia - the least said, the better - and now Abellio Greater Anglia, who have at least tried.

The real problem, however, is the aged infrastructure and rolling stock, which has done more to obstruct the smooth running of rail services than the weather has. The overhead cables date back to the electrification of the line beyond Ipswich in the 1980's, the rolling stock is just as old, and the inability of the Department of Transport to run a franchise bidding process has prevented serious investment. However, the news that Network Rail is planning to spend £2.2 billion over five years on rail infrastructure in our region can only be a good thing.

So, what does the money get us?

• an upgrade of Bow Junction, near Liverpool Street, to allow more trains to pass through
• replacement of ageing tracks around Colchester and extending platform six to improve services
• safety improvements at level crossings
• a new rail operating centre in Romford to control the entire railway in the Anglia region, covering parts of London, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire

Elsewhere in the region, Network Rail will;

• rebuild Ely Junction North, relieving congestion between Norwich and Cambridge on the West Anglia line
• replace a vital rail junction at Pitsea, reducing the number of days the section of track needs closing for route improvement work every year
• work with Transport for London to bring longer trains to the Overground and electrify the Gospel Oak to Barking line, creating more space for passenger and freight services

This all looks like good stuff, and might enable Abellio Greater Anglia to continue their improvements to our services, now more reliable and on time more often than they were under National Express East Anglia.

So, what else would be nice?

• Electrification of the line between Felixstowe and Peterborough/Cambridge
• More rolling stock for the Ipswich to Cambridge and Ipswich to Lowestoft routes

I suspect that we'll have to wait for a new, longer franchise before we get those though...

UKIP support Suffolk Tories and vote to cut children's services

Being childless myself, I am fortunate in that the inadequacies of Suffolk County Council when it comes to education don't directly affect me. On the other hand, when your local authority ranks 146th (out of 152) at primary level and 137th at secondary level, you have to wonder whether cutting expenditure on Children and Young People services is really that good an idea.

For a 6% cut in real terms is what our local Conservatives have come up with for the coming year, which can hardly augur well. Of course, it does mean that the council tax precept is frozen once again, which is fine for Suffolk council taxpayers in terms of their wallets, but not necessarily great for those of us who see education as an investment. But, to add insult to injury, it appears that the Conservatives intend to add the "Pickles bribe" to the reserves rather than to protect services. 

And whilst the Conservatives probably send their children to private schools, or are too old for it to matter any more, you do have to wonder why UKIP were so happy to support the Conservative budget for 2014/15. After all, as our nearby UKIP councillor was so proud to claim how pleased he was to be fighting for our country again, having underperforming schools is something he might want to oppose.

But, for those people who were so keen to vote UKIP to pull Suffolk out of Europe send a message, the idea that, as UKIP councillor for Oulton, Reg Silvester, said; 

the UKIP group as a whole supported the budget, and he felt the administration had done a good job.

what exactly was the point of voting for them when, if more cuts and unaccountability were wanted, one could just have voted Conservative instead?

I'm guessing that Stephen Searle won't be putting out a leaflet telling local residents what he has done (and now I come to think about it, what has he done?), as school cutbacks are hardly likely to be popular. And, if his colleague is to be believed, so much for the idea that they are independently minded and unwhipped.

It just goes to show, perhaps, that by voting UKIP you simply get do-nothings with a different coloured rosette. At least I know what their Conservative counterparts stand for...

George, debt, the deficit and despair...

I'm a mathematician by training. I respect numbers. And when I hear intelligent people confuse 'deficit' and 'debt', I shudder a little inwardly. I find myself thinking, "Perhaps that's why so many apparently well-off people struggle with their personal finances?". But when I see politicians, people who want to run the country, make the same mistake, in writing, I am even more troubled. Stumbling over the words 'debt' and deficit' when speaking happens - I get that.

This afternoon, my Twitter feed included this;

.@George_Osborne is in cloud cuckoo land. He's talking about a surplus when the deficit has increase on his watch! #clueless #cpc13
— Deborah Sacks (@deborahsacks) September 30, 2013

Deborah, or Debbie, as I called her when we were at university together, was a friend, and I follow her out of a vague sense of interest in how she's got on. She was bright, a Labour activist but not a tribal one, and was the lucky beneficiary of one of my more distracted moments as a Returning Officer - it's a long story but revolves around the fact that I calculated an STV surplus transfer incorrectly. Now, she's the Labour PPC for South Norfolk, one of neighbouring constituencies.

I politely pointed out that the debt has increased, whereas the deficit has fallen year-on-year, and studiously didn't point out that calling someone clueless whilst making such a glaring error oneself is hardly confidence inspiring. I also suggested that balancing the books had some merit, inspiring the reply;

.@honladymark Quite agree balancing the books "has merit". Just sounds a bit silly coming from a man who is failing so completely to do it!
— Deborah Sacks (@deborahsacks) September 30, 2013

I have to admit that I'm quite pleased that he hasn't succeeded yet, as the cuts introduced so far would have been a mere aperitif compared to what we've seen so far. However, being an inquisitive soul, I asked how she would balance the books - how much more tax, how many more cuts?...

@honladymark No it's about building a strong economy with more people working and paying tax. Not cutting the public sector out of ideology.
— Deborah Sacks (@deborahsacks) September 30, 2013

It's just a slogan, as opposed to some actual ideas, the sort of oppositionism for its own sake that gives politicians a bad name, and it makes me just a little more depressed about the future of this country than I might already have been.

There is a legitimate debate to be had in this country about the role of government, what sort of society we live in and how to finance those activities that would go towards building it. But if our politicians are going to regurgitate clever soundbites written by others, rather than express their own thoughts, and we, the public, are going to eschew the notion of gathering data and making an objective choice based on that data, we get the body politic we deserve.

It increasingly seems that, in the search for the illusive swing voters in the key seats, the spin doctors have forgotten why most people go into politics in the first place. It isn't to be 'on message', it is to change things for the better. Regardless of political philosophy, most people in the political sphere want to do that. The machine politics drives that individuality out of too many people, making them just another grey voice in a grey, sensible suit.

It's not for me, I'm afraid...

Five Conservative priorities for Suffolk - education not important to them, apparently

Alright, I did allow Colin Noble to get to me just a touch over the whole manifesto thing. After all, attacking your opponent is designed to draw attention away from your own failings, so it's natural that he should take such an approach. I didn't need to respond though, even if it did end quite well, with our manifesto pledges getting rather more coverage than they might otherwise have attracted.

Colin still doesn't like our manifesto, a point he feels necessary to broadcast, although I do wonder under what circumstances he would say anything different. We'll put it down to his ideas about political campaigning and coalition building...

I am puzzled about their five key pledges though. None of them have anything to do with education, which is intriguing and disappointing in turn.

Intriguing, because the county does spend 46% of its budget on children and young people, most of which presumably goes on schools. Disappointing because the county's performance relative to the rest of England and Wales is desperately poor...

148th out of 151 at primary school level

141st out of 151 at secondary school level

Those are the latest figures for Suffolk, demonstrating what the impact of cutting council tax in real terms year on year is. And if spending is not an issue, as I'm sure the Conservatives will argue, then it seems like a failure of leadership might be to blame.

Given that Suffolk is a rather nice place to live, without many of the problems that impact on teacher recruitment in heavily urban areas, or social issues, language barriers etc. it is hard to suggest that Suffolk has any particularly unique problems. Yes, the middle schools are unusual, but they only exist in part of the county anyway, and achievement in them would have to be catastrophically bad to have caused such poor performance. And if they are the problem, why is the decline only recent?

Under such circumstances, you would expect the county administration to want to do everything in its power to improve things - it would be a major priority. But not, it seems, one of the five key issues for Suffolk Conservatives.

Of course, given that the decline has taken place entirely on their watch, you can understand why they wouldn't want to draw your attention to it. So, when your Conservative candidate arrives on your doorstep, wherever you are in Suffolk, do ask them what they're going to do, and why they don't see your children's education as a priority.

Ros in the Lords: Second Reading, Public Services (Social Value) Bill

I am fearfully behind with Ros's contributions, and here's one from 27 January last year...

The Public Services (Social Value) Bill was intended to encourage government procurement from smaller, local providers, as this would encourage a wider range of potential providers, countering the trend towards fewer, larger vendors and service providers. Ros's experience in local government, as well as the information that we picked up when touring the country during her Party Presidency, led us both to wonder whether opening up contracts might offer better long term value...

Baroness Scott of Needham Market (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Newby both for picking up the mantle of this Bill and for the work he does on the All-Party Group on Social Enterprise. It is of course a fact that all providers are able to think about social value; it is also a fact that most of them do not, which is where there is a real gap and a need for social enterprises. There is a lot of talk about social enterprise, mutuals and not-for-profit at the moment, but it is interesting how many misconceptions there are about the sector. People think that somehow it is an offshoot of the voluntary sector; that social enterprise is something new; that social enterprises are necessarily small; and that they do not have profit-making as an objective. Of course these things can be true, but not necessarily.

I was a board member of the Lloyd's Register, a not-for-profit distribution organisation which works in the field of safety. At 250 years old it certainly is not new, and with over 5,000 employees it certainly is not small. Last year, I went to talk to the head of Hackney Community Transport, which was originally a small dial-a-ride service and is now a multimillion pound business and operates some commercial services as well. Both demonstrate the key identifiers of social enterprise, its public good and its not-for-distribution profit, but both have also demonstrated that social objectives can be good, sound commercial business.

However, those two examples are exceptional in the field. Most social enterprises are small and operate locally, and in this is both their strength and their weakness - a strength because they offer tailored services, based on a real understanding of the needs of service users; but a weakness because, as we have heard, they find it very hard to get a foothold in the market for public services, which is dominated by large enterprises. There is a wealth of evidence from around the country that small social enterprises-as well as small businesses-face often insurmountable hurdles in the public procurement process, so this Bill is designed to address that most significant problem faced by the sector.

I have to be honest enough to admit to some misgivings about this approach. I do not much like duties and requirements being piled on to local government by central government. We have had far too much of that in the past. The previous Government introduced a general well-being power to local government, and the coalition has gone further by introducing the power of general competence. We also have the Sustainable Communities Act, which is relevant in this area, as is the right to challenge introduced in the Localism Act. Local authorities have the powers required by this Bill and some use them, as we have heard, but many more do not. Given this legislative framework and the wealth of evidence about how beneficial this sector is, we need to think about why this is simply not happening. It may be because some are blinkered, as my noble friend Lord Newby said, but it also comes down to two other things: money and capacity.

Local authorities have been finding savings year on year for some time and face a very stringent settlement this year. Rightly, their priority is the protection of front-line services so they strip away back-office functions, which include the staff who work on procurement and managing contracts. With fewer people working in that area, public authorities find it easier to manage fewer, larger, more straightforward contracts rather than a plethora of smaller suppliers offering services that really have to be thought about. This is not just an issue for social enterprises; it is a major problem for small local businesses. It is even happening now in the voluntary sector; I have been watching as around the country small local voluntary agencies have been losing local authority contracts to large suppliers.

There is another problem for local authorities. When you outsource something, you have to keep the risk in-house. If the service goes wrong, the risk remains with the local authority. That explains the risk aversion that we tend to see in local authorities that the noble Lord, Lord Wei, so trenchantly referred to.

The attitude of public procurement authorities is understandable, though short-sighted. I am afraid of going down the route of compulsory competitive tendering. I have watched that process for the past 30 years, and at the beginning large savings and efficiencies were indeed made and the regime was judged a success. Over time, though, as the smaller in-house suppliers disappeared, competition in the market lessened to the extent that in some areas - waste and local buses are two that spring to mind - there is now very little competition left in the market. That is bad for the public purse and for public services, and we must not go the same way in the social enterprise and voluntary sector.

The Bill, and government support for it, would go a long way towards sending a message to public bodies that they can adopt a different approach that values local services with the added public value that they can bring. It is a sad fact that local service providers still look very much to Whitehall departments for direction.

There are problems with measuring social value - it is not straightforward - and that is another area where the Government can help. As well as initiatives that are needed to improve the social enterprise sector, such as the creation of the School for Social Entrepreneurs or the academy proposals being developed by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, we also need to work with the public sector to learn most effectively how we can evaluate and assess social value so that these factors can be taken into account by the decision-makers.

We also need to learn how to think about and measure the benefits of social enterprise that are much more difficult to measure: the improved productivity that comes along when people are motivated by working to their own objectives and feel a direct sense of responsibility to service users, and the community benefits that come from people working who are active and engaged in their own service delivery.

Words of support are all very well but there comes a time when action has to be taken. Passing this Bill will not of itself make things happen, but it will be an important first step. If social enterprises, SMEs and local charities benefit from this approach and thrive, the larger commercial organisations will also begin to think more seriously about social value, and then we all win.

Social enterprise is unusual. It does not matter what your political philosophy is; there is something in it for you. It is about enterprise, social value and communities, and it is often good for the environment. I am sure that we can all join together to support not just this Bill but other measures to help this sector to grow.

Another precept, another dilemma...

It is, I'm told, quite easy to be liberal with somebody else's money. It is, I can confirm, rather harder when it's your money and that of your neighbours.

This week, it was time to set the precept for Creeting St Peter Parish Council, and once again, our calculations are complicated by the interventions of higher tiers of local government. With the County handling us a nature reserve, which will have long-term effects, and the District raising bin emptying charges - more than 1% on the precept alone - my responsibility as the "finance guy" means that I tend to pay close attention to the numbers.

This year, I took a rather longer view of the numbers, which meant accepting an overspend next year, whilst aiming to break even sooner rather than later. I need to think about how to pay for the nature reserve when the County slush funds run out, make provision for the replacement of our new playground in 2033 (or thereabouts) and set our finances up on a sustainable basis.

For all of those reasons, I felt it necessary to recommend a 6.2% rise in the precept for 2013/14. We will be able to reduce our costs somewhat - the generous grant from our County councillor to cover the cost of meters for our nine streetlights is likely to reduce our electricity bill by 40% from 2014/15 - 4% of our current precept - but the scope for further savings is limited unless we reduce staffing costs - 60% of our precept - an option that would be better avoided.

My colleagues have taken a slightly different view, and we agreed a 5% increase instead. That's fair enough, I think, and we''ll see where we are this time next year...

Published elsewhere: is the golden age of government largesse over?

Here's another piece that I've written for Liberal Democrat Voice...

It is true that things were always better at sometime in the past. Or at least, it feels like that, especially as you get older. But perhaps it is. In the period since World War II, government, at national, state and local level, has provided more and more in the way of support to indivdiuals, organisations and communities, mostly for reasons widely supported to be of public good, sometimes for more cynical reasons, occasionally because it can. In a growing economy, such interventions are sustainable.

However, Robert Black, the former Auditor General for Scotland, in a lecture at the David Hume Institute last night, questioned whether or not the current range of free public services can remain so. And, whilst his examples were taken from Scottish government programmes, the point he makes is one that the rest of us need to consider very carefully. Responding to Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont's suggestion that their support for free university tuition, a freeze on council tax and free NHS prescriptions could be in doubt, Black said;

The move being made by the Labour Party in Scotland to at least start asking questions is a good thing. We need to do more of that but we need to do it as a society. I mean can we really afford all the services that are free at the point of delivery?

Of course, politicians agree with that. Well, mostly in private, but they do. The question is, how do you create a safe space in which politicians engage with the wider society to argue over what, and how?

To take two of his examples, the cost of the concessionary travel scheme in Scotland in expected to reach £500 million in the next decade. Is sacrificing that to maintain free, or subsidised nursing care for the elderly a reasonable exchange? Did increasing police numbers in Scotland from 6,900 in 1949 to 17,000, despite the use of technology, make people safer, or even feel safer? What has changed to justify the increase?

In his lecture, Robert Black went on to argue that, instead of focussing on passing more and more legislation, government should spend more time on budget scrutiny. The notion that Parliament might focus on how things work and what they cost, and how one might make existing structures work better, rather than replacing them with new ones, is not very 'sexy', nor does it leave an obvious legacy for the Minister, but it does have the potential advantage of stability and of organic, evolutionary change in the way public services are run.

As Liberal Democrats, we need to be part of that debate too, and whilst it is tempting to take the same stance that Labour have taken in opposition at Westminster - not this cut, not in that way, not now - if we are to protect the vulnerable, create opportunity and encourage freedom, we need to think about our priorities for a decent, inclusive society are and how we pay for them over the long term, and then start making that case in public. 

* Mark Valladares worries about balancing the books at his Parish Council in Creeting St Peter, Suffolk. He has a nasty feeling about anything much beyond that.

Creeting St Peter: doing more, doing it better...

It has been nearly three years since I became a Parish Councillor and, it must be said, much has happened since then.

What was a rather small, insignificant piece of the architecture of local government in one of England's quieter counties, responsible for grass cutting and nine street lights, has rather expanded.

Last year, we absorbed the Community Council, inheriting its project to provide a new playground, as well as the funds raised, and set to work securing the site. Meanwhile, we discovered that we owned a small piece of woodland called 'Plot 89' next to the A14. Finally, following the County Council's divestment of Local Nature Reserves, we successfully bid to take over Fen Alder Carr, on the edge of the Parish, extorting £5,000 from the County for its upkeep in future years.

So, for the time being, we find ourselves with £20,000 in the bank, and an awful lot more responsibility.

And with that comes a need for a more professional approach towards our work as councillors. As portfolio holder for finance, I now have to balance two earmarked funds, income from our village lottery and a precept up 13% from last year, ensuring that we have enough money to maintain our new facilities, whilst keeping the precept within reasonable levels. It isn't always easy, especially given that being a Parish Councillor is only one of my many responsibilities.

So, we have risk analysis, financial management guidance, internal and external auditors, and all the paraphernalia of proper fiscal discipline. Occasionally, it does feel like 'awfully hard work', but nonetheless it gives the impression of responsible governance.

We are, unexpectedly, rather bigger and rather more active, than I might have expected when I was first co-opted to the Council in 2009. And yet, this organic growth has made us rather more relevant and involved in the life of our village, our Parish and our community. And that can't be a bad thing, can it?

Another council tax freeze makes for a worried Parish Councillor

Last year's council tax freeze was very good politics, even if it wasn't necessarily very good for local government finances. Any council freezing its precept was given additional funding equivalent to a 2.5% increase. I say 'any', although my fellow parish councillors will note that we weren't included in that offer.

I suspect that the long-term implication - that if the 'bribe' stopped, or was stagnant in cash terms, then precepts would need to be increased rather more than inflation - did not go unnoticed. So, here it is again this year. What this means, effectively, is that local authorities who have taken the money will have seen their precept fall by about 8% in real terms over two years.

One solution to the medium-term problem is to divest local services, or to charge more for them. And that's where my problems start...

Last year, the amount charged to my Parish Council by Mid Suffolk District Council for cutting the grass on the village green went up by 13%. It had been subsidised in the past, we were told, so we swallowed hard, made cuts elsewhere, and lived with it. This year, they have decided to charge us for emptying the dog waste and litter bins. It isn't a huge amount, about 1.4% of our total budget, but it will need to be found.

We also pay for street lighting, and the cost of electricity is going up... fast. We need to budget for that too. We are being asked to take on the Local Nature Reserve, as Mid Suffolk District Council have pulled out. Add in salaries, maintenance and insurance, and before you know it, you're talking about a precept increase in excess of 5%.

Our reserves are somewhat lower than I would like, a view shared by our Parish Clerk, so I'd like us to run a budget surplus to bring that up to par, and we have no funds to cover replacement street lights which, eventually, we will need.

Meanwhile, Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District Council, armed with their bribe from George and Eric, will set a 0% council tax increase, which will make the 8% that I fear will be necessary for Creeting St Peter rather unpalatable. And even then, I can look forward to a future of squeezes from above and from the past...

Thoughts from the Train: please do not feed, taunt or abuse the Civil Servant...

It is a tough time to be a civil servant right now. A two-year pay freeze for many of us, pensions under threat, redundancy terms to be slashed, tens of thousands of jobs to be axed, who'd want to join an organisation under such circumstances? Making a case for civil servants is, I admit, a bit like trying to defend anthrax, but perhaps one should explain why some of my colleagues are so unhappy.

On pensions, there was a covenant of sorts. The benefit that the pension represented was factored into our rates of pay, a point made during every pay negotiation by management. Now, all of a sudden, the pension is a burden on the State. Yes, it probably is, but you can understand the level of disgruntlement this might generate. Besides, it wasn't civil servants who reduced the retirement age to sixty, it was politicians trying to reduce payroll numbers in the late-eighties.

As far as redundancy terms are concerned, there is no doubt that their generosity has acted as a disincentive to weeding out the lazy, the inefficient and the downright disruptive. Instead, enhanced retirement packages, natural wastage and the non-filling of vacancies have been the preferred tools used to cut numbers. For an increasingly twitchy Civil Service, who have already struck for three days this year in opposition to proposed changes to the redundancy terms, and are bracing themselves for job losses, such proposals look like provocation.

The hope, of course, is that the private sector will create enough new jobs to more than offset those lost in the public one. However, many Civil Service jobs have, over four decades, been transferred to areas of relatively high unemployment, away from London and the South East. If you're working in Scotland or the North East, for example, the promise of private sector opportunities might not be as convincing as it might be in, say, South London.

And because we're emerging tentatively from recession, levels of natural wastage are likely, in historic terms, to be relatively low. Enhanced pension incentives don't really stack up, whilst leaving vacancies unfilled is not going to do the trick. All of which makes redundancy a looming cloud on the horizon for civil servants.

So, when you read of threats of industrial unrest in the public sector, remember what the average civil servant is thinking. You probably know at least one. You're probably even related to one. And like animals in a zoo, civil servants have feelings too...