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West End Extra - FORUM - OPINION in the WEST END EXTRA
Published:01 May 2009

City Hall: ‘By any standards Westminster is a significant economic player’

Good housekeeping wins

It’s a lie that if you cut spending you cut services, argues Westminster City Council leader Colin Barrow

THE Taxpayers’ Alliance can rightfully claim much of the credit for helping to spearhead the drive to highlight the waste and inefficiency that blights large parts of the public sector.
And with Westminster placing a premium on value for money we agree with them on many key policy areas.
However, they are increasingly doing harm to their cause by believing that any target is a good target and any publicity is good publicity, regardless of the arguments at hand.
In taking this line they give ammunition to those who argue that all politicians and public servants are overpaid and out of touch with the people they serve. Such an attitude simply spreads further cynicism among the electorate about the political system.
In recent weeks the TPA has set its sights on Westminster City Council, criticising us for the salary level of our former chief executive and our decision to introduce a scheme to trial motorbike parking charges in the borough.
Taxpayers, though, will not gain much if top executives in upper-tier authorities have their pay halved or if their compensation were to be divorced from delivery by the abolition of performance related pay.
Equally, taxpayers would not gain much if we stopped charging for services delivered only to special interest groups, however meritorious
The media would lose some easy headlines and so would the TPA, but the amount of public spending would still remain a national scandal.
What taxpayers desperately do need is a campaigning organisation to proclaim the following simple proposition – it is a lie that if you cut spending you cut services.
To make this case you need to focus on why council tax in Wandsworth and Westminster is half that in most other boroughs.
Both have inspection results that are not just comparable with those of their high tax neighbours but are actually demonstrably superior.
And you have to ask yourselves how it can be that Westminster has frozen council tax this year against the backdrop of falling income in today’s tough financial climate.
The answer is simple – by maintaining our famous ruthless focus on cost effectiveness we can cut bureaucracy and wastefulness rather than cutting front-line services.
Indeed, by any standards Westminster is a significant economic player, with an annual spend of nearly £1billion and a capital programme worth around £150million a year that over the next 12 months will fund, support and enhance economic development in the heart of London.
Good government, though, is not expensive government. The past decade has shown beyond doubt that top performing councils like Westminster are a better guardian of public money than national government.
This comes out of a recognition that every day we are spending other people’s money.
Governments do not have money. Nor do councils. The state’s money belongs to the taxpayer. We treat it with the same care as we would our own.
Ultimately, however, excessive public spending will only be reduced when voters choose decent politicians and good public servants and sweep out the timeservers and bureaucrats.
To do that people need to have the information to help them work out who are the good and who are the bad guys in the public sector. That is the TPA’s chosen mission and I salute them for that.
For our part we will continue to focus all of our efforts on delivering excellent services while driving costs down and stripping out inefficiencies.
The TPA would do well to recognise this fact and join us in our call for local authorities to follow our lead by raising standards of service while reducing costs. This is the “Westminster Way” – delivering more for less – a blueprint for councils across the UK.
• Conservative councillor Colin Barrow is leader of Westminster City Council.

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