Unintended consequences, shows how the imposition of centrally driven financial efficiency savings targets, combined with the drive towards greater competition and contestability, is eroding the effectiveness of local public services as commissioners of public services focus on short term costs rather than longer term outcomes for service users. This undermines the government's stated policy of building strong local communities and economies, and impacts particularly severely on smaller and medium sized providers whose work supports some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
Unintended consequences: How the efficiency agenda erodes local public services and a new public ben 
