After five years as chief executive of a North East metropolitan borough, Andrew Kerr is now head of one of the new unitaries in the South West and is relishing the challenges to bring down overheads, as he tells Michael Burton

Unusually among chief executives, Andrew Kerr is relatively optimistic about the financial future for his authority. But then, he has a major advantage. His council, Wiltshire, became a unitary county last year, and is still digesting the savings made from rationalising five councils into one.

As he says: ‘Wiltshire became a unitary at the right time, and we’re still in the process of making the gains from savings. In the first year, we made a good job of transferring to the unitary. This is phase two, when we take real advantage of it.’ He regards the loss of £2.3m in revenue and £1.4m in capital spend this financial year out of some £800m total revenue ‘as no great surprise for which we’d planned’. He adds: ‘We’re well prepared. We won’t cut frontline services. We’ve managed to absorb this into the savings made from becoming a unitary.’

The council will have made £18m savings by moving to the unitary in a two-year period, plus £9m this year. Some savings were obvious, such as from the £340m procurement spent each year, or merging the PR departments and saving £500,000 a year on print and design.The fire service is in discussion about using the council’s back-office support.

‘Our aim is to make 5% savings, plus 3% each year. We’re looking at management costs and at our tiers. It’s not rocket science. It’s just good management. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been preparing for this.’

Over the next four years, some £120m will be taken out of the budget. But, as he says: ‘We need to prepare for it and to that we need an idea of what the spending round will be for the next four years.’

He believes the Government can also help councils. ‘It could give us the freedom to borrow and pay back, mixing capital with revenue, so long as we’re prudent about debt. After all, every business has a mortgage.’

Andrew has managed to make the transition from heading up a North East metropolitan council, North Tyneside MBC where he spent five years, to leading a unitary in the leafy South West, being appointed last February at Wiltshire.

He was previously at Birmingham City Council, as director of performance and also of leisure. He was also an Audit Commission inspector, head of lifelong learning at Caerphilly CBC, and head of local government services for the Sports Council in Wales.

Andrew also believes the fiscal environment means councils must rethink their role. ‘Local government must get out of the idea that it must do everything,’ he says. ‘We need to make the case for it to be more of a commissioner, and that it will become smaller. We must accept it will be different.

He says savings have also accompanied improved efficiency, such as the fact that the new council ‘fills more potholes in a month than it did in a year as a county’, or that it is downsizing 90 offices to four, generating sales income of some £85m over the next 10 years. ‘We hope to make enough savings to satisfy the Government, plus more on top.’

Enabling Big Society is also a key target, but ‘we need to ensure there is a community infrastructure. There’s usually a big gap between those who say they want to run things and those who actually do.’ He believes the council’s role is to help it happen. Examples of such support include £5,000 to a group providing training in organic gardening, the produce being sold in a local market, and the money providing water and disabled access; a rent-free building for local groups to meet; funding for fridges and shelves for a community shop; and support for volunteers to monitor traffic speed in their towns and villages.

To that end, it has even produced a brochure – Wiltshire delivers Big Society – and promises to help communities become ‘self-reliant, reducing the public service resources needed’,

It adds: ‘The era of the council and other public agencies simply providing services alone and “to” the public with no reference to communities is over.’ The council has 18 area boards, their meetings frequently attracting 100 people, and some 15,000 have signed up to be involved and kept informed of what is happening in their local areas. The meetings are also attended by the police, fire and rescue, NHS, the military – a major presence in Wiltshire – town and parish councils and housing associations.

More than 1,000 local issues have been aired, and at least half resolved, while £750,000 has been allocated to support 2,567 community projects. Typical issues discussed have been gypsy sites, budget-prioritising, waste and recycling services, and deciding priorities over road maintenance.

The council is also involved with the Wiltshire Assembly, made up of 150 organisations from the public, private and voluntary sectors, and a Public Service Board which allocates resources to deliver the assembly’s priorities. As Andrew says: ‘Our brand now is Wiltshire itself.’