The emergency budget of the 22^nd June included a commitment to reduce cash funding to all departments but Health and Overseas Aid by 25% over the next four years.

This reduction in public spending is in addition to the freeze in pay and benefits for public sector workers also announced.

By any stretch of the imagination this is a big cut and must be likely to change the way that public services are delivered and the things that the public purse provides.

 The number crunching is to follow – the outcome of the Spending Review is to be announced in October. Until then we can only speculate as to what might change. And that is exactly what I am about to do!

Whether we like it or not public spending has become increasingly important to many rural areas. It comes in the form of employment, capital investment and grants (such as regeneration programmes). Money from the public purse provides much of our infrastructure and supports many of the services that we have come used to taking for granted.

Thinking with reference to the area where I live, the state is responsible for schools (large and small), universities, libraries, the health centre, the roads, bridges, the public right of way network, canals, parts of the bus service, pavements & street lights, refuse collection and management, road signs, social housing, parks, leisure centres & swimming pools, many community buildings and roadside drains.

It pays the wages of 30% of people employed in my local authority district and contributes to the unearned income of many others – in terms of pensions and benefits.

The state is a major buyer of goods and services (not least mine) – it is a consumer of energy, building materials, property, furniture, design, marketing, insurance, cleaning, legal, accountancy, painting & decorating, maintenance and ICT services. It is a major commissioner of building work and purchaser of vehicles. Taking into account the money that it spends in addition to the wages that it pays the public sector could realistically be responsible for as much as half of the local economy.

So what might the impact be of a significant reduction in spending?

It seems probable that the way some services are delivered will have to change. We are likely to lose some service outlets such as small village schools, libraries and perhaps depots and offices. The public estate is likely to reduce – we will see sell offs of publicly owned assets (such as the sale of farms planned by Somerset County Council). New uses will need to be found for buildings which become surplus to requirement. Property owners may lose valuable public sector tenants.

It seems inevitable that there will be job losses. The state cannot need as many people to spend 25% less money. It will also have to find new ways of delivering services – doing more for less. This is likely to include the increased use of ICT for the delivery of services to individuals (healthcare, social care, learning and training etc) as well as for interactions between citizen and state. This will also put pressure on existing posts. Discretionary spending and access to time limited “programme” funding is likely to be extensively curtailed. This will reduce the need for the related project officers and administrator posts which have become standard across many public sector organisations.

The use of non-departmental public bodies and local partnerships will probably be curtailed. Some organisations will be abolished, others forced to merge. It is difficult to see for example that the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Rural Payments Agency will be all allowed to continue with three sets of management and administration.

These reductions will take money out of the local economy in the form of wages (and related spending) and purchases from the supply chain. Will the private sector be able to take up the slack? We will see, but there must be a very real prospect that if it does it will not do so in exactly the same way or the same place. There will inevitably be some economic displacement and it seems probable that an element of spending will be lost to some small rural economies for good.

 What other changes might we see?

 I think it probable that physical access to the state (and the services that it provides) will be further reduced for many rural communities. Rural villages will lose schools, rural towns will lose libraries. We will see fewer “customer contact centres”. Councils may look to local communities to take on complete financial and operational responsibility for initiatives such as the Community Broadplaces network in Shropshire or more prosaically for public toilets, recycling points and car parks.

Public amenities which we have become used to may be under threat – how many Local Authorities will be able to keep up their parks, manage their Country Parks and maintain their Countryside Services teams? What of municipal swimming pools and leisure centres? Some are going to go – at least from state ownership.

Things are going to become a bit scruffier. The roads are not going to get mended or the bulbs in street lights changed quite so often. Public buildings won’t be as well looked after, nor will public spaces.

There will be less help available to businesses and less facilitation. Business support services will be reduced, how many economic development, tourism or coastal officers will survive? Planning departments will find it harder to engage in material pre application discussions and communities will get less help engaging with their local council.

We will have to do more for ourselves. And perhaps this, at least, will be no bad thing. It must be possible that local people could take over some of what the state is currently responsible for. Communities could manage their own parks, maintain their own loos and manage their local car parks. People currently employed by the state could form new social enterprises and “sell” services directly to their consumers. Businesses could form networks and offer “peer to peer” support to each other and new entrants.

This won’t replace the village school or the local library however, and it won’t make up for wages and spending lost to the local economy.

Some things are definitely going to change – we will all have to wait a bit longer to find out what, and where.