Making greater use of resources, working more efficiently and effectively, and focusing on the things which really matter to our communities and member authorities... These will be the key ingredients to a challenging year ahead for the LGA Group, says John Ransford

‘Doing more for less’ has become the mantra by which the public sector deals with the substantial financial challenges facing our economy and society

Just as councils are preparing to make tough decisions about vital public services, the LGA Group wants to make sure we are focusing on what matters most, and doing more for less during this challenging time.

Councils have, rightly, challenged us in recent years to up our game, deliver better value for money, and be more integrated across the group. Over the last year, we have worked hard to rise to this challenge, and with some real success.

As the national voice of local government, the LGA has worked to change government policy and has secured millions of pounds for local government. We have persuaded the Government to change its approach to inspection and regulation, delay the Personal Care at Home Bill – which was set to cost councils £670m a year – and shaped thinking on a power of general competence.

We have won extra cash to help councils create vital school places, fill in potholes and create jobs locally in response to the recession.

Across the LGA Group central bodies – the Improvement and Development Agency, Local Government Employers, Local Authority Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services, Local Partnerships and the Leadership Centre for Local Government – which work together with the LGA to support, promote and improve local government, we have added real national value to the activities of councils. We defended and supported councils’ use of investigatory powers to catch serious offenders. We backed councils to tackle areas of weakness identified in the Comprehensive Area Assessment – for example, strategic housing and safeguarding children. We led the way on identifying how local and central public agencies can work together more effectively to deliver better value for money through the Total Place pilots, and then made sure the learning from these was shared across the sector.

We have achieved this while reducing subscription income by 10% and freezing topslice for the last five years, by operating in a more coherent manner – joining up our political structures, agreeing a set of shared priorities and sharing services and expertise to reduce our costs.

Our progress in providing a joined-up offer which adds national value to local authorities has been considerable, but we can and must do better in the future, and at a faster pace. We must use the money we get from local government through subscriptions and topslice to help councils and neighbourhoods get maximum benefit from the Government’s fundamental shift of power from Westminster.

We can do that by harnessing specialist expertise in short supply for the benefit of all, doing work once that would otherwise need to be done many times across local government, and providing support where normal market mechanisms aren’t available. We can do this even more efficiently and effectively if we focus on the things that matter most to councils, and where we can have the greatest impact, and then organise ourselves to deliver without being bound by existing organisational structures.

That is why we have agreed with the CLG secretary of state to remove the legal structures which separate the organisations within the LGA Group, in return for a significant reduction in funding and agreement on the outcomes we will deliver. The outcomes we will seek to achieve, such as a smaller, less-costly, more local state, increased productivity and a single system of self-regulation, not expensive silo improvement – will ensure local government really can ‘do more for less’, and is the only hope for ensuring scarce resources are used flexibly at the local level to the benefit of communities.

And the LGA Group is committed to helping local government do it.

John Ransford is chief executive of the Local Government Association