Saving the pennies

A basic expectation in rich countries is law and order. Yet the UK is cutting police funding every year.

The Bedfordshire police force are so up against it that they are asking to be spared further cuts. They have already made cuts of £35 million and are expected to cut another £12.5 million. Suggestions about how to do this include not investigating thefts from cars as the car will be insured - it's your own fault as you shouldn't be leaving things on view. Another possibility is only bothering to investigate shoplifting of goods worth at least £100.

Another basic service developed countries offer is health care - even the USA has a public health service.

Yet our health service, like our police, is being starved of funds. Again, there are some bright ideas. One that is being tried is to pay host families to put up patients in their spare room. At £50 a night there have been a lot of applicants, and it would certainly save a chunk of cash for the NHS. The company, CareRooms, says the hosts will be trained, though it is unclear exactly what they will be trained to do or how post-operative complications will be managed.

What about local services?

Northamptonshire county council has had to ban all new expenditure. The council will continue to fund any current contracts but otherwise they will only fund services they are legally required to provide. No council has had to do this in the last twenty years, and yet already there are warning signs that at least four more councils are in danger of following Northamptonshire into the morass:

• Surrey - £100 million shortfall
• Lancashire - £97 million shortfall
• Somerset - £15 million overspend this year, following overspends in the previous two years (it is now closing two thirds of its children's centres)
• Norfolk - has overspent its budget for the past three years

In fact, in the next three years an entire tenth of all councils are at risk of running out of money. The government has cut funding in half in the last eight years, meanwhile the number of people needing care keeps going up - 14% in the past six years. Social care now takes 55% of council spending (it was 45% in 2011). Note that that means the actual money being spent is going down - which explains why social care is in such a parlous state.

It is tempting to poke fun at the cost-saving ideas above, but councils are currently cutting services everywhere they can - reduced bin collections, reduced food safety checks, reduced services for the young, bus subsidies cut by 50%, 10% of libraries closed, housing budgets halved (leading to homeless households increasing by 34%). It will only get worse - the government is slashing funding by another £5 billion next year.

Of course, we really do need to sort out Britain's finances. Mr Hammond's target is a balanced budget and he has now achieved it three years ahead of schedule. With the Brexit effect already chilling economic activity in the UK, and worse to come, we are not going to have a lot of spare cash to throw around.

However, while the government tells councils to pinch pennies they themselves squander millions of pounds on poorly costed infrastructure projects. Projects like HS2 and the Hinckley Point nuclear power station. Meanwhile homes, roads, social care, the NHS and the police are cut savagely.

Mrs May is like a householder who puts down parquet in the best room but scorns to mend the holes in the roof.