Simon Watson: Our public services should help people to help themselves

A SENIOR business executive I know was once asked what he meant by an "efficiency drive". He said: "Think of it like a Sunday drive, where four of you go out but only two of you come back."

For all the talk of efficiency savings and synergies at Westminster and Holyrood, it is very clear that public spending is going to need to be cut deeper than many first feared. The cost of financing UK government debt is rising on the world markets. In simple terms, this means we are going to need to cut more in order to finance the cost of our national debt.

Governments and institutions are creatures of habit. For 13 years, our default response to problems has been the announcement of public investment and the expansion of provision. This increase in expenditure has been mirrored by rising public demands and ever increasing expectations, which combine to create a "delivery gap". We are now well and truly at the end of the spending party.

The problem with the politics of public-sector spending is that it is essentially abstract. Whilst we might be led to believe there is a direct and immediate relationship between inward investment in public services and the quality of output or volume of delivery, this is not the case.

Over the past ten years, the UK and Scottish governments have invested record amounts in services, yet we have failed to make a significant dent in some of our biggest social problems. Whilst overall crime is down, substance misuse and antisocial behaviour are up. More children are on the protection register due to physical neglect, and child poverty is set to rise in 2010. All this is set against a backdrop of record investment and increases in individual wealth.

There have been successes, but these have largely been in high-volume, highly systemised areas, such as health and welfare delivery. With the benefit of hindsight, a lot of the money has done proportionately very little for those who arguably needed it the most.

At the heart of the problem may well be the approach we have taken to the development of public services. Many are "do-to" services – for example, day care centres where everyone gets the same, regardless of want or circumstance. That is to say they are delivered to someone as a passive consumer not an active participant. These services are characterised by the "professional knows best" culture, and they struggle with poor levels of individual engagement, which means people resist using them, which in turn makes them expensive to deliver.

For all our ambition, we have lacked investment in services that are "enable-to" in their nature and design; these are services – for example, personalised care budgets where people choose to use a range of community services – that require users to be a participant in the process, to take charge of their outcome and understand their responsibilities. These services are characterised by the fact they are often highly engaging and people-oriented, not output driven. They can also often be highly cost effective.

Letting communities solve their own problems means public services sharing responsibility and letting go of control. The answers to some of our most challenging problems can lie with the people who face them or the people who live alongside them. We already have voluntary phone relays for the elderly replacing call-centres, patients designing their own health support services and communities generating their own energy.

We know innovation can thrive during a downturn; many of the worlds leading companies were formed in recessions. We now need to bolster social innovation and think radically about how government can help more people help themselves.

• Simon Watson is vice-chairman of the Scottish Community Development Centre.