Death by a thousand cuts!

WHOOAAA! Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Tresury, has told Cabinet colleagues to get ready to find 40% budget savings from their departments. This is in order that the Government can spread the overall 25% cuts unevenly across the whole portfolio of its activities and protect some departments like health.

There's a big picture question about what this means for Britain but sticking to my "wee windae" remit and with no disrespect to public sector colleagues (I was one once): for organisations in the third sector, like WRVS, we will have to wait and see what this means for third sector services and practices. Simply put there's a fork in the road here and its a choice of either a) embrace the third sector way of doing things (and I include the full range of community groups, social enterprises etc in that) and turn the crisis into a massive opportunity for an expansion of the third sector justified by its demonstrable people-centred ethos, added value and efficiency b) retrench, retrench, retrench: take public services back in-house, preserve state provision as the core preferred method and show external providers the door. There are pros and cons to either approach, of course, but with some arguing that we're now looking at a paradigm shift in the way we support vulnerable people (older and otherwise) in the UK, I suggest this is going to push us further towards a sea change rather than simply meaning an extended period of tinkering with the mixed model of 'a bit of this and a bit of that' which characterises the current landscape.

Want a bell weather? Watch what local government is saying: LGA, COSLA, WLGA