An opportunity being missed – Government spending cuts and inefficiencies

In the last day or so, there have been a number of articles about spending cuts in the NHS, Defence and local government in the UK – one article by the Guardian was entitled No Credible Plan for £20 bn NHS savings, warns MPs and in small print “Target would require ‘unprecedented’ efficiency gains to maintain quality of care, says health select committee”. The Telegraph on the other hand wrote an article entitled MoD ‘wasting £ billion a year‘ – and a cursory glance of news sites has plenty of articles about the recently announced reduction in local government budgets.

These massive inefficiencies are hardly new news nor has been the news about budget reductions. What is sad though is that there is now a tremendous opportunity to look at how sustainability and cleantech can actually help deal with this. There is a great chance to demonstrate how efficiencies can be achieved through more sustainable services and products but I sometimes wonder if the message is getting through. And sadly with the public sector, the methods for procurement are so bad that there is very little opportunity for innovation or solutions from start up businesses. In our limited experience in trying to get through procurement, every single tender asks for services that were around five years ago and barely reflect technological change, or provide the opportunity for new market entrants to provide solutions (if for no other reason than they have not been around for three years).

It is a disappointing situation – like us, I am sure that there are many other start up businesses that can provide the solutions needed to help the public sector meet its cost reduction targets without diminishing the underlying service needs – but there is very little chance of that happening until there is a radical rethink about public sector procurement. It may sound logical, but perhaps the answer is a government-sponsored incubator of sorts that allows start up, innovative solutions to be piloted in suitable government locations…