Flexible, Value for Money and Efficient is this the way forward for our public services?

There’s lots of talk in the media and among politicians about the cuts in public services that will have to make over the next few years here in Wales because the block grant will increase by considerably less than the substantial increases which have more than doubled the grant since 1999, following the Government's bank bailout. The big idea from the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) is efficiency saving which is hardly new or untried and won’t deliver the sort of savings that WAG and Local Government will have to make despite the spin to the contrary from Finance Minister Andrew Davies that it’s too early to talk about jobs and service losses.

Any reduction is the block grant is a concern with over 60% of the welsh workforce employed in the public sector any cuts will have a big impact on unemployment, but the questions that need to be asked are those about welsh public services and how effective WAG and Local Government has been in delivering its policies since devolution began back in 1999. It is this which will ultimately signal if WAG can make any sort of efficiency savings and adapt to life with a smaller pot of money and make Wales less reliant on the public sector for jobs it a big ask.

The signs are not good as last week Wales Audit Report into to the failure by WAG to fully implement its flagship Communities First programme despite improvement in communities and today’s report from Estyn showing no significant differences in WAG’s Raise programme to improve education standards of the poorest children despite £14million of investment are worrying.

If Wales is not to slip further behind we will have to hope that WAG Ministers are capable of being more flexible in its attitudes to public services and their delivery in the next decade than they have in the last 10 years.