Healing the Wounds | How can the public sector recover from the pain of austerity?

Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have pledged a cash injection for some public services – a reputed £1.8bn for NHS hospitals and a further 20,000 bobbies on the beat – but the wounds of deep austerity cuts will take many years to heal.

Whatever your political persuasion, whatever the rights and wrongs, the 2010 austerity programme embarked upon in response to the 2008 financial crisis by the coalition government, gathered momentum and led to unparalleled change within public services.

The infamous note left by the outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, for the new incumbents which read: “I'm afraid there is no money” was a postscript to a situation which prompted central and local government to find ever-more inventive ways of saving cash.

With human resources being a significant overhead, it is perhaps not surprising that the axe was the first to fall there. But at what cost? Local authorities have been pushed into becoming the facilitators of services rather than the delivery.