Pat Watters: We can only be of service if we embrace change and take risks

LOCAL government is entering unknown territory, both politically and managerially.

There's a huge amount going on but the situation is changed fundamentally by a squeeze on resources which will be long term and massive; the economic downturn; a very difficult and tense political environment with vigorously contested elections for Westminster, Holyrood and local government in the next three years.

We've not experienced this before and the question is: do we in local government manage these circumstances or do they drive us in directions we do not control?

Our objective, despite the problems, must be to get through this period with better focused, more effective services that continue to support the most needy people in our communities.

On improving local services, even with a funding cut of 10-15 per cent over three years, we still will be spending 11 billion of public money.

The public will rightly expect us to concentrate on how we use that money to improve services rather than concentrate on what we can no longer do.

So in areas such as older people's care we have started a joint review of services at ministerial level to ensure we deal with the potential loss of resources and with the demographic change in the population.

Although services will change we want to deliver better outcomes for an ageing population.

Delegates at our conference which starts today might be surprised that I am prepared to see some elements of the situation we are facing as opportunities.

We have to be careful how we express this because, by saying that necessity is the mother of invention and that we will tackle things now that we have not previously addressed, we could simply look complacent.

However, managed correctly our joint work on this very difficult situation can fuse our partnership with government and other partners and make it even stronger than the start we've made in relatively better times.

The need to drive down costs and the recognition that this is necessary across the public sector can allow us to discuss new approaches, new ways of delivering, and taking risks with these which were genuinely not sensible when we had greater resources.

Our consistent request to all governments that we had fewer priorities and stick to them becomes a necessity not a wish in the current climate.

And if anybody believed that certain services delivered in the way they are now to the level they are now at the current cost base were sacred cows, the new financial circumstances blow this out the water.

There should not be any area of policy or service that is unquestioned because the effects of protecting one area will simply transfer the need to change and save to all the other areas without such protection.

So the change has been established, the challenge is clear and we in local government across Scotland stand by ready to take the opportunity of further improving the lives of those in our communities, no matter how difficult that challenge is.

Boom or bust, local government is always here and always constant. Some people might suggest that, because local government is driven by locally elected councillors, we can be weak, expensive and resistant to change.

Local government always has been innovative, strong, efficient and at the forefront of embracing and pushing for change.

These are exactly the values that we need to get through the next five years and we hold them because we are politically and democratically accountable to our communities, not despite it.

• Councillor Pat Watters is president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla).