PluggedIn – Managing expectations in times of austerity
Author: Alex Tomson, in the MJ |
Perceptions are relative. If expectations are high, delivery has to be high otherwise you will be deemed a failure. But if expectations are low, you can get away with a less than stellar performance.
And inconveniently expectations are not static, and therein lies a problem for both central and local government and for Roy Hodgson.
When the World Cup draw was made expectations for England were low. But all too predictably, we have allowed ourselves to ignore the numerous difficulties (facing two countries above us in the world rankings) and the hope that this time it really would be different has steadily built. Hmmm.
Something similar might be happening in public services. Poll after poll has shown that people understood that the financial hole the country found itself in 2010 would necessitate cuts in state spending.
They might not be happy about it but their expectations were set. However those expectations may now be on the rise – I recently saw some local authority research which showed that their residents believed austerity was over, and that cuts to public services were a thing of the past.
If this is a widespread view, there are big questions about how the political parties approach the next election and what they can promise – because the fact is that there is plenty more austerity to come, regardless of who wins.
And even if local government wins the argument that it has borne more than its fair share of the pain to date, it is hard to believe it will escape further cuts altogether. So councils too may be facing rising expectations with declining resources.
Part of the answer will be contracting services with external partners (of whatever flavour). Many commentators (including ourselves) have spoken about the skills needed to successfully commission and procure those contracts, but that’s not the whole story.
Rather less discussed is how to successfully manage those contracts – to ‘hold their feet to the fire’ as one s151 officer put it to me. But it is absolutely essential if delivery has any chance of matching expectations. To coin a phrase, a contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on if no-one is enforcing it.
By the time you read this, my expectation is that (secretly relieved) England players will be on their way home. For politicians both national and local, re-equating expectations and delivery may take more than 270 minutes of pain.