In the recent Spending Review, the Chancellor outlined his plans to remove the deficit. As growth in GDP has not resulted in additional tax almost all is to be delivered through government spending reductions. One thing for certain: Austerity is the new normal.
This was the theme for the recent CIPFA central government conference. Paul Johnson, Director of Institute of Fiscal Studies, reminded over 200 delegates that the next set of cuts will be harder to achieve than those already implemented.
Sir Amyas Morse, Comptroller & Auditor General cautioned the need to carefully consider four pervasive issues identified that can block improvements and lead to poor services to citizens: Conflicting priorities, ignoring inconvenient facts, out of sight out of mind and not learning from mistakes (set out in NAO’s “Art of spending public money wisely.”)
100% of survey respondents rated it as excellent or good making it the highest of any CIPFA conference.
Here’s to making next year’s even better.
View and download the presentations from the conference here