There are opportunities in the spending round

This week’s spending round took place after weeks of struggle within Whitehall, with ministers arguing their cases through the pages of the newspapers. The results will affect local government and other public service providers for 2015-16 at least. In reality, the 2013 review will set the tone for the next one, which will inevitably take place in the early autumn of 2015.

Councils were always going to face further deep cuts. The protected services, notably the NHS, schools, international development, parts of defence and much of the welfare budget, pre-empt between a half and two-thirds of all public expenditure. Local government is its own worst enemy: by managing deep cuts without drama, the Treasury feels confident to continue to impose disproportionate reductions on town halls.

If councils took a greater responsibility for health and care services there would be sharper accountability

The years 2014-15 and 2015-16 will see a continuation of reductions in council spending power, albeit with some blurring of the edges between local government and other programmes. The heath/social care boundary has already become porous and it is likely that part of the NHS’s protected budget will find its way into the delivery of a more uniform ‘health and social care’ service.

Recent scandals within the NHS and its regulator should send a message to ministers and their Labour shadows. If local government took a greater responsibility for the full range of health, public health and social care services there would be sharper accountability. Councillors and senior officers could be given a much-advanced role in ensuring that hospitals and GPs perform effectively.

This is not to say there have not been occasional problems with local government’s social care provision. But the sheer scale of cover-ups and maladministration in parts of the heath service suggest better local oversight is required. Whitehall and inspectors are too distant to provide the kind of oversight councils could.

The spending review will be mostly viewed in terms of the continuing squeeze it puts on local government. But there are opportunities. Breaking down boundaries between the spending of different parts of the state at the local level could lead to major efficiencies and improvements. Councils should use future reviews to push for the localisation of all public spending.

Tony Travers, director, Greater London Group, London School of Economics