Trying not to tell granny(ies) about egg sucking but:
Since the last Labour Government the Tories felt forced to cut spending whilst ‘masking’ how badly by constantly telling us they’ve spent more than ever before. However, I believe if you are to cut spending and maintain service standards you don’t just hack off a chunk of budget and expect management (with a vested interest) to reduce spending.
I have contracted with both the MoD and NHS and can say one thing with ease, they are both experts at saving money without spending a penny less. It’s an insane method of allocation of money to personnel even when vacant and using budgets as the metric for the savings. So if you had a budget of £1m then the next year it was £850k you’ve saved your trust £150k or 15%. However, your spend may well have been £790k in reality with accountants accruing spend into the year that really could have belonged in future budgets. Anyhoo
The way forward isn’t to cut or increase budgeting as in previous years, there needs to be a complete reform of practices required to run, administer and manage front line services. Some tweaking around delivery of services and where that delivery can be best done but there’s a lot that can be done just in sorting out the BS. For example, one NHS trust had 5 Management Accountants, each one having an assistant and each assistant having transactional administrators, sometimes 2 sometimes 3. By combining the transactional services, they saved 5 people at the lowest level, however, they hired a ‘Hub Administration Manager’ and Deputy, total saving 2 Band 2 (I think) roles or about 24k per year. If they did the same with the MAs and Assistants who were much better paid, whilst standardising the systems and reporting they used, they could have saved 2 MAs (Band 6 or higher) and 3, maybe 4 Assistants. No need for management so that’s around 250k in salary. No drop in service level but those proposing savings were (can you guess?) the Management Accountants for each of the budgets they managed.
Likewise, in the MoD the project I was involved with came in on budget (£250M on budget, on time, under spec) but in the final year had to show savings of 30% of HR costs. The military who were on project while it was busy were all getting redeployed to other projects, those vacancies were all carried and advertised right up until the point where savings had to be made at which point we cancelled every single one and made 38% savings without spending a penny less. Again, that’s locally controlled budgets not centrally reported actual spending.
I really don’t find it a challenge to expect that every single trust spent far too long saving money without actually thinking too hard about it right up to the point where there was no time or opportunity to actually investigate real life savings or better practices. Only when the time was reached where it became clear that this cutting wasn’t ending and savings were actually meaning real redundancies and losses in service could management look for ways to do stuff better but they couldn’t afford the changes.
Internally the Civil Service has managed its own inefficiencies far too well for far too long and, thanks in part to the ‘old boy network’ and the inability to recruit the more radical minds changes in funding will not provide solutions. Give them more and they will re-recruit some losses they didn’t want to make, cut some more and they can’t afford to revolutionise.
Apologies for typing, Arthritis is hitting my hands heavy this week….
I'm Autistic, if I say something you find offensive, please let me know, I can guarantee it was unintentional.
I'll try to give my honest opinion but am always open to learning.
Mark