Tight budgets still threaten the public sector, demand still grows for our services. We are sick of saying ‘we need to do more with less’, but, sadly, it is still true.
As a cabinet member with the finance portfolio in a London borough with high levels of people in need, it is a daily challenge to do anything more than balance the books.
In ‘The Republic’, Plato said: “Our need will be the real creator.” Ancient Greece may not have much in common with today’s Lewisham, but austerity funding has certainly been a driver of invention.
We are trying to be smarter, to make more use of our data, collective knowledge and partnerships, to deliver better results and build resilience in our communities.
We’ve championed the use of cutting-edge technology. We partnered with Microsoft to host an innovative hackathon, getting the best brains in the sector to simplify council employment processes.
We have used the same approach to overhaul our registrars service, making thousands of pounds in efficiencies.
Would we have done this with higher levels of funding? The answer is probably yes, eventually, but we would have looked to procure a solution from a provider rather than benefit from free consultancy given as part of the social value contribution of the contract.
We were delighted when Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan announced school meal funding for primary children in London, but worried that, if families didn’t sign up for free school meals, our funding would drop.
So, we used our low-income family tracker and school census data to identify and write to eligible families. We spent £800 on postage and generated £1,500 in additional funding for every £1 spent.
The innovation was to auto-enrol families, allowing them to opt out, rather than hoping they would opt in. As a result, Lewisham schools now receive an extra £1.2 million in pupil premium funding.
Austerity funding has targeted a laser beam on contract spend and we have had to be determined to extract as much value as we can from every Lewisham pound we pay out.
Our procurement policy has a non-negotiable focus on social value, embedding job creation, training, skills development and community infrastructure into every contract.
This has resulted in the largest local and regional spend in the country.
Numbers don’t lie – in 2023, we were delighted that this focus secured £18 million in wages for local residents, saw 824 residents employed through contracts, and £74 million spent in the Lewisham supply chain.
Austerity has been bad for local government. It has driven us to the wall – but with our backs up against that wall, we have had to use fresh thinking to survive.
We have had to evolve quickly just to keep our basic provision going. We are now in a position where, with proper funding, we could deliver real, positive change for our communities, and do it more efficiently and effectively than ever before.
Now give us the funds!