NEWS
Autumn statement torpedoes public service budgets
CILIP members will be wondering how Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s au- tumn statement will affect them and the organisations they work for. In his speech the Chancellor said tax cuts and other giveaways were possible because of lower inflation and the UK economy turning a corner. However, the consensus among think-tanks is that the tax cuts come at the expense of public services. In its coverage of think-tank responses
to the Autumn Statement, the House of Commons Library highlighted comments made by Paul Johnson, director of the Insti tute for Fiscal Studies. Speaking at an IFS event on the day, Johnson said the taxes “are paid for by planned real cuts in public service spending” and that the Chancellor has “taken a modest improve- ment in the public finance forecasts and spent most of it”. The financial problems facing local authorities are already stark. At the end of November Nottingham City Council issued a Section 114 notice – effectively a bankruptcy notice – with a £23m overspend, saying: “A significant gap remains in the authority’s budget, due to issues affecting councils across the country, including an increased demand
for children’s and adults’ social care, rising homelessness presentations and the impact of inflation.” Bolton Council also announced plans to
cut £9m from its budget with a proposed £100,000 saving through reviewing “alter- native delivery” at two of the 10 libraries in the borough. The leader of Bolton Council, Cllr Nick Peel, said: “Like all councils, Bolton Council is facing significant financial chal- lenges and needs to make cuts.” The headline figures for the cuts are worrying but are potentially much worse for some sectors because some depart- ments are protected, leaving others with a heavier burden. In its assessment, The Res- olution Foundation said: “When combined with relative protections for the likes of health and defence, this leaves many public services facing implausible spending cuts in the future. Unprotected departments face reductions of 14 per cent in their real per-person day-to-day spending between 2022-23 and 2027-28. No-one who has used a British public service in the recent past will think these cuts can be delivered in the likes of the courts or local government.” The unprotected departments include
Department for Culture, Media and Sport and The Department for Levelling Up,
Jeremy Hunt.
Housing and Communities adding to existing anxiety across local authorities. In its response to the statement, the Local Government Association said: “Councils have worked hard to find efficiencies and reduce costs, but the easy savings have long since gone. It is wrong that our residents now face further cuts to services as well as the prospect of council tax rises next year, with councils having the difficult choice about raising bills to bring in desperately needed funding.”
Cyber attack set to cause disruption to BL services for months to come
THE British Library has warned customers that a cyber attack on its systems could leave some services out of action for months. The ransomware attack has affected many of its systems, forcing a number of services offline – including the library’s website. The attack has also left user data vulnerable, with reports suggesting that British Library customer data has been offered for sale on the dark web. A holding statement on the library’s homepage states: “Having confirmed that this was a ransomware attack, we now have evidence that indicates the attackers
December 2023
might have copied some user data, and additional data appears to have been pub- lished on the dark web. “We will continue to work with cyber- security specialists to examine what this mater ial is and we will be contacting our users to advise them of the practical steps they may need to take.”
The library does not believe any payment data, such as credit card de tails, have been compromised. How- ever, any users who have the same pass- word for the British Library services as for other online accounts are being ad-
vised to change them as a precaution. Despite the online disruption, the build-
ing in St Pancras remains open – although not all onsite services are running. The library has said that while it is working hard to restore its online function, there will be no quick fix. The statement reads: “The outage is affect-
ing our website, online systems and services, as well as some onsite services, however, our buildings are still open as usual. We antici- pate restoring more services in the next few weeks, but disruption to certain services is now expected to persist for several months.”
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