'Mission creep' makes it hard to keep costs down

BY the time you read this, Wiltshire Council will have set its budget for the coming year.
Among what it calls ‘strategic savings’ are cuts in grants to the arts and to charities such as the Burnbake Trust, and a review of bus subsidies - which we’ve always been told are funded out of parking charges, so where will that money go instead?
Then there’s the closure of the school music service which, the council blithely assures us, “won’t affect children”. Tell that to the teachers.
Plus, of course, we’re going to be charged for garden waste collections – though I suspect a lot of people will not pay, and will either fly-tip, light bonfires, or drive to the dump (reduced opening hours!) more often, so that eventually the collection service will become uneconomic to run and will then be axed due to ‘lack of demand’.
There’s no denying that the government is making life tough for local authorities, even tame Tory ones, and that difficult decisions have to be made. Compared with some places, we’re getting off comparatively lightly.
But rather than getting rid of, or making life impossible for, people who are actually doing useful things, why don’t our leaders start by examining whether their increased public health promotion role actually achieves anything?
A few weeks ago I highlighted the utter pointlessness of Wiltshire’s deputy leader John Thomson issuing a press release urging drivers to slow down in bad weather. I’m not sure whether any newspaper bothered to print it.
Now we’re being consulted (didn’t you know?) about a countywide Alcohol Strategy which, among other things, aims to “promote a sensible drinking culture”.
Praiseworthy, but is it likely to put even one bunch of lads off their Friday night Jagerbombs or deter a single middle-class couple from polishing off that bottle of Merlot in the comfort of their own living room? I sincerely think not.
The council has an important role to play as the licensing authority, but this public health stuff strikes me as a kind of ‘mission creep’ where there’s always scope and justification for another well-intentioned initiative, however costly and however futile.