The government has announced departmental budgets for 2020-21 as it attempts to bolster its message that a decade of austerity is coming to an end. Here is some reaction from public sector workers to the chancellor’s spending review.
Education
Rachael Warwick, headteacher
Warwick is the executive headteacher of the Ridgeway Education Trust, a small multi-academy trust in Oxfordshire that includes a girls’ secondary, a boys’ secondary and a primary school. Although money has been tight for a while, she says the funding situation has been particularly tough in schools for the last 12 to 18 months. All possible efficiency savings have been made. “The word crisis is absolutely accurate. We are down to the bone,” she says.
The schools in her care have not had to close early to save money, as some have been forced to do, but for the first time they are asking parents for voluntary contributions to help plug the gaps. “We are at a point now where to preserve the quality of education, we do ask the parents if they are able to support us in making whatever donation they feel able and comfortable to make.”
She welcomed the government’s new funding for schools in England – which the chancellor, Sajid Javid, said amounted to an extra £7.1bn over three years – but says those schools where headteachers are already planning redundancies to stay afloat will be forced to press ahead with job cuts. It will also be some time before cuts to teaching assistants, pastoral care and mental health support at schools across England will be reversed.
“As a profession we welcome this news with cautious optimism. It absolutely needs to happen,” Warwick says. SW
Health
Sue Crossland, doctor
Dr Sue Crossland, 50, has been an NHS doctor for 19 years. She is a specialist in acute medicine in Yorkshire and next month will become president of the Society for Acute Medicine.
She welcomed the extra £6.2bn the NHS in England will get next year. “It’s a step in the right direction. But is austerity over in the NHS? I doubt it. There’s still a way to go before the NHS is going to be less of a worry.”
The long cash squeeze the NHS experienced after 2010 has affected the frontline in many ways, she added, with consultants not being replaced when they retire, staff receiving low or no pay rises, and NHS trusts not being able to keep wards open all year round because they cannot pay the staff.
Over the last five years the government has diverted £4.3bn earmarked for capital projects in the NHS into the service’s revenue budget, to help pay its day-to-day running costs. “That has left many hospitals short of funds to carry out repairs, refurbish wards and buy new kit. So the extra £1.8bn for capital projects is welcome, because too much of the NHS’s infrastructure has been neglected,” says Crossland.
For Crossland the top priority in spending the £6.2bn has to be staffing. “We need to retain existing personnel and recruit new staff, but Brexit might make that difficult, especially with European nurses. The £210m to improve staff training will help, especially with staff morale at an all-time low.”
Will the £6.2bn be enough? “The NHS would always take as much money as you could give it. But after years of austerity funding in the NHS, this extra money will help.” DC
Local government
Paulette Hamilton, councillor
“We need this money but it is just a drop in the ocean,” says Paulette Hamilton, a councillor who oversees adult social care services at Birmingham city council, the UK’s biggest local authority. The £1.5bn announced in the spending review for social care in England will keep some councils’ services afloat for a few months, she says, but it will not fix the long-term problems facing services for older and disabled residents.
It is not the first time a government has offered a sticking plaster to social care, rather than a sustainable funding strategy, says Hamilton. There is still no sign of the long-delayed green paper on social care. Yet again, she says, ministers have failed to “set out a direction of travel for social care that shows they are taking social care seriously. Government says it is passionate about social care, but this doesn’t add up.”
In common with all councils, Birmingham faces a rapidly expanding ageing population, an increase in residents with dementia, and more working-age adults needing support with complex disabilities. The number of over-65s in the city is expected to rise by 38% by 2025. Despite the demand, resources have been shrinking, with £690m cut from its budget since 2010. This year it has to find an additional £46m. Because the council has legal obligations to deliver social care, other services, such as libraries and children’s centres, have been squeezed to pay for it.
“Social care has got to be a national issue and government has to say what the direction of travel should be so these services could be funded properly. This sticking plaster will have come off in 18 months and we will be here again,” says Hamilton. The spending review looks little more than a pre-election stunt, she adds. “I don’t think there has been any long-term thinking. I don’t think the government give a fig about social care.” PB
