If you are a political party in charge of a council that has just set a budget with savings of £95m, what would be the last thing you might be want to be seen doing a few weeks later?

How about giving a contract to consultants that could be worth £5.4m?

 And on top of that, awarding the contract to a company to help decide how best to achieve £18m savings from services you provide for some of the most vulnerable adults in society?

Savings, incidentally, that you already know are deeply unpopular with voters because you carried out a consultation about them in the Autumn. That is precisely the awkward position that the Conservative administration at County Hall is in. It has set in train a process it probably wishes it could halt until after May 2 but hasn't been able to.

 At its heart is the proposal to appoint what social services chiefs euphamistically describe as a "transformation and efficiency partner"  to advise on how best the £18m savings can be delivered. In other words, consultants from outside the authority and possibly the county who will  be drafted in to identify just what KCC needS to do.

No wonder there is a bit of a stink about it.

 The proposition was the subject of a report tabled to a backbench cross-party committee last week, which was asked to approve a recommendation that the Conservative cabinet go ahead with the appointment of an unnamed company.

There was a brief debate in the public part of the Social Care and Public Health committee before the chairman decided that some comments were straying into territory that might compromise the authority's financial interests.

What we do know is that  in that private debate, opposition to the plan came not from just the usual suspects but from several Conservatives who were, to put it mildly, somewhat concerned about the whole idea.Some asked why it was necessary to bring in outside consultants in the first place and why KCC seemingly lacks the capacity and expertise to deliver a key part of its budget.

Others were unhappy about the fact they felt they were being bounced into endorsing the idea without a proper evaluation or discussion; some were simply horrified that the adminstration was embarking on such a path with the election a few weeks away.

The result was that - highly unusually for this type of committee - a vote was taken, after a motion tabled by the opposition Labour representative Les Christie to recommend that the cabinet not proceed with the appointment. Even more unusually, the proposal was supported by several backbecnh Conservatives with the result that the chairman Cllr Chris Smith was  forced  to use his casting vote to ensure Labour's alternative proposal was defeated.

 What does this tell us? Well, self-evidently there is serious disquiet in the Tory ranks about it all.

 It also tells us that maybe KCC isn't quite sure itself how it will manage to deliver the £18m savings and probably did not at the time it announced them - after all, if it did, why would it now need consultants to do the work for it?

 It might also be said that perhaps KCC, in its rush to cut jobs to save money, did so with a rather misplaced enthusiasm and ended up losing people who took with them years of experience and knowledge.

What happens now? The Conservative cabinet member for adult social care Graham Gibbens is reflecting on the comments of his collegues and weighing up what to do. He is a decent and straight politician and won't be enjoying his present discomfiture.

Either way, KCC has a serious addiction issue so far as consultants are concerned, seemingly believing they are the solution to any number of different problems.

It could do with weaning itself off them.

Conservatives at County Hall are acutely sensitive to suggestions that grammar schools are increasingly dominated by children who have got there because they are somehow privileged.

The fact the county council has now acknowledged that the eleven plus is skewed towards those who can afford private coaching - and is trying to do something about it - reflects these sensitivities.

Now the authority has agreed to review its controversial decision to scrap discretionary transport subsidies for children who opt for a selective school - or a denominational school - above others nearer to where they live.

An estimated 4,200 families have lost out under the arrangements because their income means they do not any longer qualify.

Whether KCC would have done had it not been faced with one Conservative - Cllr Andrew Bowles, also the leader of Swale Council - breaking rank and publicly denouncing the policy is a moot point. 

I suspect the ruling administration would have faced down a similar Liberal Democrat call for a rethink but felt propelled to act knowing that Cllr Bowles might not be the only one to decide to speak out.

He made the point that other Conservatives have privately expressed, namely that ending transport support has adversely affected precisely the kind of children that Kent ought to be assisting when it comes to going to grammar schools.

A review, of course, is just that and there has been no commitment to a U-turn. The fact there will be an-party working group indicates that the Conservatives want to tie in the other parties to any changes that might be made.

And a review will help neutralise the opposition from contending that nothing is being done, even if it seems unlikely that it will report before the May election, which won't unduly worry the Conservatives.

The issue is complicated by the fact that KCC will also have to address the issue of whether it should bring back some kind of discretionary subsidy for children who choose a church school above others nearer to where they live.

And it is worth noting that in an environment where parents are sold the idea they can choose a school, some may question why discretionary support for transport costs should not available for those who choose a non-selective school above others nearer to where they live.

This anomaly was actually a factor when KCC originally determined that it would end most subsidies and it was suggested it could be legally challenged.

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Even the most fervent believers in transparency and accountability would have to question whether Kent County Council's annual budget meeting represents open democracy at its best. 

The gruelling day-long meeting was singularly lacking in political drama - with the one exception of the debate on grammar school transport - and enlightening debate and there was a distinct impression that county councillors were simply going through the motions.

There was an awful lot of Conservative councillors standing up to say what a good job KCC was doing and equally, a lot of opposition contributions saying they weren't.

Perhaps the format might also benefit from an all-party review.

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After hints that he might enjoy another run against the incumbent MP Helen Grant in Maidstone and Weald, it seems the former Liberal Democrat candidate Peter Carroll, who is now working for the Kent police commissioner Ann Barnes, is to give it a miss.

The constituency party will select its candidate this weekend from a shortlist of three - all men but Mr Carroll is not among them.

When is a council service not a frontline service but something else?

In the world of local government, the distinction is important because council chiefs never like to take decisions that adversely affect so-called frontline services, especially when it comes to funding.

(And it begs another: if the primary function of councils is to provide such services, why is it spending - and why has it spent - so much money on other apparently inessential stuff?)

One of the ways such a service is defined is to talk about it as separate from, or different to, council "back office" functions or "administrative services" - the services that do all the paperwork while those at the "front line" get on with the more important work.

Whether such a definition is valid is open to question.

Kent County Council has made great play of the fact that its latest budget proposals, incorporating £94m of savings, will not hit these services. On one level, the council's claim is reasonable.

But the problem is that it is actually quite difficult to tell exactly what impact these savings will have just at precisely this moment; even the most innocuous looking saving can end up having repercussions that not even the council's financial gurus had thought of.

And if you cut administrative jobs out of the equation, where does the burden then fall? Kent County Council's answer - and that of others - is to say that it is carrying out a programme of transformational activity in which services will be delivered differently and service users won't notice.

About one third of KCC's planned savings - £28m -  are to come from just such activity although it's hard to get beyond the headline figure to the detail of exactly how in the welter of budget information KCC issues about its spending plans.

The Conservative administration has also underlined how savings will be secured through a greater emphasis on preventative work, especially in adult and children's social care.

That seems perfectly sensible but it is not hard to find evidence of the scale of the challenge: an original intention to save £4m in the budget for looked after children has not proved achievable because of the continuing high demand for services.

And some believe that the austerity drive, welfare cuts and the on-going recession will only create more call on some services, particularly around care, not less.

Even KCC itself admits in its budget book, the government's relentless belt-tightening is really putting the squeeze on it: "The cumulative effect is that local government is working within an increasingly uncertain and challenging public service landscape."

"If the economy continues to show a slow recovery, the indicative position for 2014/115 and 2015/16 could get worse and we could face additional spending demands and/or further reduced income necessitating greater savings."

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Despite giving the public some eight weeks to comment on its original budget savings of £60m, KCC is not embarking on a repeat exercise even though the savings have increased by more than half.

It says that as none of the new savings require an "equality impact assessment" there is no need for a full consultation. There is said to be some nervousness at County Hall that this may be challengeable but they have their collective fingers crossed.

Instead, views are being invited on the new budget up until the end of the month, a matter of a week and a bit.

But where you can feed in your views is hard to find. In fact, there doesn't appear to be anywhere on its website where you can unless I have missed something.

Answers anyone?

THERE were echoes of 'Fawlty Towers' at Kent County Council's budget briefing for the media this week.

KCC unveils budget plans for 2013-14>>>

Instead of trying to avoid mentioning the war, however, politicians were falling over themselves not to mention the word "cuts."

Instead, the buzz word was "transformation" - or variations on that - as we were reassured that lopping £60m off its budget for 2013-14 could be achieved without adversely affecting frontline services.

So, can KCC square the circle and do more with less - at the same time as facing up to a rising demand for some of its services?

It seems confident that it can (begging the inevitable question of why it hasn't done so before) but the devil is in the detail.

There has, understandably, been much interest in the proposal to strip more than £18m out of its budget for adult social care. KCC emphasises that this represents 5.3% of its overall spend of £255.6m.

KCC's view is that - stand by for a bit of jargon - "we can create a sustainable service through transformation, with greater emphasis on better procurement, increased prevention and improved partnership with the NHS". All of this will be "better outcomes for Kent residents at a lower cost."

What will this mean in practice? KCC didn't exactly come up with precise details and it seems there is a good reason: it doesn't yet know itself how the transformation will work and to what extent changes will have a positive or negative impact.

You have to read its own Equalities Impact Assessment to discover this and the 25-page document makes for an interesting read.

These assessments are important because they are used to judge whether the impact of any policy change could discriminate unfairly against both users of a service - taking into account factors like age or disability - and those providing that service.

On the question of whether changes will have a positive or negative impact, the report on adult social care states: "Full assessment can not be made at this time as the nature of the change is yet to be determined." 

Later, it records that after process of "initial screening" of future commissioning "we are unable to determine whether certain characteristics will be impacted more than others."

It later concludes that a full impact assessment will be required as "an adverse impact has been identified that will need to undertake further analysis, consultation and action" and that "there is potential for adverse impact on particular groups and we have found scope to improve the proposal."

This is not to say that KCC won't come back with detailed proposals that will indeed lead to a better service.

But it does indicate that it will be a pretty tall order to come up with a budget that fulfills the authority's aim of doing more with less - especially in the face of the rising demand for care caused by the increasing number of elderly people. 

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Back in January, Age Concern warned that spending on care for adults had fallen by half a billion pounds. An analysis of councils' budgets showed they were spending £7.3bn on such services when £7.8bn was needed.

It said that the government would need to spend £1bn more this year "just to stop things getting worse."

It also concluded that while it was difficult to track how cuts were  being made in all cases "evidence shows these cannot be made solely through efficiencies."

Two things stand out from the budget for Kent and both are issues that could, in time, store up difficulties for the government from Conservatives in the county.

George Osborne confirmed directly and in the strongest terms yet that the idea of a new airport was now firmly on the table and would be a key part of the government's consultation on aviation capacity.

MPs were told: "I also believe this country must confront the lack of airport capacity in the South East of England – we cannot cut ourselves off from the fastest growing cities in the world."

It would have been interesting to see the reaction of Kent backbenchers in the Commons but we didn't - it is hard to imagine they were doing anything but grimace.

It is clear the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have, if not completely won round, are becoming much more enthused and interested in the idea, particularly in view of the possibilities the scheme holds for regeneration.

Kent's Conservative MPs are united in their opposition and only this week several signed an open cross-party letter to the Daily Telegraph underlining their concerns about the consequences.

The politics of this are intriguing. What Kent backbenchers are undoubtedly anxious about is the potentially awkward timing. Government consultation gets underway shortly and will last, according to the Chancellor, until the summer.

Thereafter, it is unclear. The proposal could, of course, be killed off completely.

But if isn't - and knowing how long it can take for major infrastructure projects to move forward - the issue could be left hanging in the air. What will worry Kent Conservative MPs is, if the uncertainty is prolonged and the government prevaricates, they could be going into the next election not knowing where they stand.

If the government ultimately decide to press ahead with the idea, they could have to be campaigning against a key commitment.

It is, of course, some way off but if Boris Johnson wins the mayoral election in May, it is unlikely that he will let go of the idea and it is widely thought that he has the ear of the Treasury and the Chancellor.

The related issue is the government's determination to push ahead with planning reforms that many fear will result in a developers' charter, making it much harder for councils and others to resist development because of a new 'powerful' presumption in favour of sustainable development.

Out in the shires, the unease has been marked among Conservatives - and others - who fear the reforms represent a real threat to the Garden of England and will lead to vast swathes of green fields being concreted over.

One of Kent's most effective PR campaigns, masterminded by the late KCC leader Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, was to resist the Labour government's plans to increase house-building in Kent under John Prescott's grand schemes for a huge expansion in house-building numbers.

Kent countryside was described as being "non negotiable" and it was very effective, too. One of the first things the coalition did was scrap these house-building targets and promise that local councils would determine what they wanted to see built.

Now it seems another front has opened in a battle over the Garden of England many thought they had won.  

He couldn't quite bring himself to utter the words 'Thames estuary' or 'Boris Island'.

But George Osborne has done enough in his budget statement to ensure that the idea of a new hub airport in the south east has not been completely grounded. Indeed, there are some who believe he has engineered a situation that will encourage proponents of such schemes rather than deter them.

The telling phrase he used was that the government intended to 'explore all the options.' Had he wanted to sound the death knell for either Boris Island or Lord Foster's £50bn vision, he could have said so - just like he did by ruling out any further consideration of Heathrow.

A flat denial could have ended the persistent speculation and would have given some solace to the county's MPs who are deeply hostile to the idea and fear that the government is not helping their re-election prospects.

Several have suggested that George Osborne is merely trying to help his friend Boris as he seeks to secure another term as Mayor of London.

Others have gone further with theories that should Boris return to the House of Commons as an MP, he will be joining forces with Osborne when he takes a tilt at the leadership.

That might be a motive but I am not wholly convinced. If you polled Londoners on the issues they have most concerns about, I'm not sure you'd find aviation high on that list (except in west London). Tube fares perhaps.

I suspect the government doesn't really know whether it wants to see a new airport off the north Kent coast.

But it's worth reading the National Infrastructure Plan published by the Treasury.

It notes how, since 2005, the performance trends on airports in relation to capacity, access and availibility - as well as service quality and reliability - have all gone down. For other transport modes, they have either stayed the same or improved.

That is not an argument for Boris Island or Lord Foster's scheme but as Mr Osborne said, the UK risks falling behind countries like China and Brazil who are building infrastructure schemes at a lick.

Precisely the kind of point that Boris has been making.

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There was a meeting of KCC's personnel committee on Monday at the highly unusual hour of 5.30pm. I cannot tell you what was discussed as there was no advance agendas or papers - as there normally would under Access to Information rules - as it was an "emergency" meeting, meaning such rules can be bypassed.

Still, let's speculate about what might have been discussed behind closed doors. If recent events are a guide, some might think the councillors summonsed to attend were discussing the way the authority might be run in future and the option of doing without a managing director.

We may have to wait a little while for this to be confirmed but it may not be long. Meanwhile, KCC's managing director Katherine Kerswell "is and remains" in her post even though not many people have seen her around County Hall in recent weeks.

At least we get shorter Budget speeches from George Osborne. His second opus was timed at just under the hour.

Previous chancellors George Brown and Alistair Darling have often gone well over 60 minutes, with endless repetition of already announced announcements.

Thankfully, we heard nothing of prudence, but the growth word was mentioned umpteen times.

There was not a lot for Kent. When he was unveiling massive investment in science, it would have been a golden opportunity to mention the Pfizer situation and apply some financial medicine.

Then there was the decision on 11 enterprise zones, all bar one - London ( a coup for Boris) in the North, Midlands and West. Another opporunity to give hope to East Kent but another missed opportunity. However, there was a glimmer of hope from his announcement that there will be a further 10 zones.

He said it would be up to local enterprise partnerships to make a good case. That has really thrown down the gauntlet to the Kent, Essex and East Sussex LEP. They need to push hard on the Pfizer taskforce's recommendation for a Research, Innovation and Technology Zone (RITZ). So while it was disappointing not to hear George putting on the Ritz, there is still plenty to play for.

As for the cut in fuel duty and scrapping of the escalator, it's a help but don't expect much whooping behind the steering wheels as motorists and haulage companies still need a mortgage to fill up their tanks. Was it a budget for growth?

With the public sector slashing jobs, and the private sector cautious about increasing their workforce, there is no great optimism that job creation will expand and unemployment fall. If there is growth, it will be extremely modest.

But at least it was a more positive Osborne Budget than the last one. It will not do anything to ease the excruciating financial pain faced in the coming months by most families, especially those on middle incomes, but at least it did not make things worse.

For that, we should be a little grateful.

Given that it has been described as KCC's greatest financial challenge in a generation, there was a curiously low key mood about at County Hall as councillors passed a budget that will see savings of £95m and some 1,500 posts disappearing over the next three to four years.

(Passions did briefly flare right at the end of a seven-hour meeting when the Lib Dems dropped a hand grenade into proceedings and proposed that members forfeit their free lunches on full council days - more on that in a bit.)

True, the opposition parties did their bit by unsuccessfully tabling a series of amendments which, in the main, seemed to revolve around taking money from the £5m KCC has set aside for its Big Society fund and diverting it into other services but the Conservatives swatted away these with inevitable ease.

My sense is that we've not really seen how some of the budget proposals will impact on services over the year. We know some, such as the proposed increase in the fee for schoolchildrens' Freedom Pass and the ending of concessionary peak time bus fares for the elderly.

But there are no figures as yet for how many jobs will go this year and scant detail on some of the income generation plans that are set out in the budget papers.  For example, over the next two years, KCC says it will bring in £740,000 extra income from schools and academies. How? We're not told. Talk to most academies in Kent and they will tell you one of the reasons they have opted out is precisely to avoid spending money with KCC.

It also sounds like there are a worrying number of 'reviews' of some services in the pipeline, which could bring further cuts. And although it was hinted at, KCC is clearly concerned that rising inflation will place some of its spending under pressure - such as rising fuel prices. Incidentally, I have hunted high and low in the budget papers for how much money KCC intends to spend on 'international affairs' in 2011-12 and can find no reference to it. Perhaps it's nothing.

The devil, as always, is in the detail. I'm just not convinced we've had all the detail yet.

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I suppose I ought not to have been surprised that the one issue that did spark some rather ill-tempered exchanges during the budget was the thorny issue of whether our 84 elected representatives should continue to have a free lunch on full council days.

But it was rather telling that emotions were running high over the bid by the Lib Dem plan for members to contribute to the costs of providing these lunches, which over the year apparently cost the taxpayer some £12,000. Such was the sensitivity of this debate that the county solicitor Geoff Wild was prevailed upon to say whether it was consistent with the council's rules on debating matters that affect them directly. Really, I'm not making this up.

A highlight of the debate was Cllr Dan Daley regaling the meeting with how he had enjoyed a lunch of boeuf bourgignon and a coffee in the County Hall restaurant at a modest £6.50.

Council leader Paul Carter was particularly irate at what he saw as a bit of opportunistic gesture politics, accusing the Lib Dems of sinking to the lows of the Daily Telegraph (although he did admit that some of the lunches had been 'a bit grandiose').

"This is the only time we come together as a group and the Lib Dems want us to bring our own sandwiches and pork pies," he fumed.

Other Conservatives chipped in with support, saying how important the chairman's lunches were for socialising, with Cllr Susan Carey accusing the Lib Dems of tabling a "mean-minded" amendment.

The Lib Dems may have a point but were rather fatally under-mined when they were reminded that many of them had been spotted at such lunches over the year themselves.

Still, a bizarre and frankly surreal end to proceedings and anyone looking in via the webcast must have been left wondering what on earth was going on. 

I will look forward to seeing who avails themselves of the free lunch on offer at the next full council meeting.

There was such a blizzard of figures and statistics at KCC's press conference to launch its budget that it was tricky to determine just what the full implications of the ruling administration's spending plans actually might be. (There wasn't an awful lot of time to read through the 218-page book on the budget amid the Powerpoint presentations and videos).

The key messages were that KCC is to become a leaner and more "entrepeneurial" organisation that would be resolutely "driving out efficiency savings" - a phrase that always conjures up an image of profligate bureaucrats being shepherded across a bridge and harried relentlessly to cut costs.

The other top line being pushed by KCC was that it was delivering a budget that, despite being cut by £95m, safeguarded core frontline services.

Indeed, council leader Paul Carter challenged anyone to discover whether there were any services that the council currently provides but wouldn't be from April, when the new financial year gets underway.

Quite how much 'leaner' KCC intends to get was a little hard to pin down as it emerged during the press conference that it doesn't yet know how many jobs will go and how many posts will be axed as part of the 1,500 expected to disappear between now and 2014.

There was also a lot of rhetoric about the council delivering services in new and different and 'innovative' ways (interestingly, there's £5m being set aside for a 'Big Society' bank) but frankly, there wasn't a huge amount of detail offered on this either so it's hard to make a judgement at this point.

I suppose a lot depends on how residents feel the impact of KCC's savings package. Take the issue of the Freedom Pass, for example. It is not being cut (it was apparently considered) but the administration fee is doubling to £100.

True, there are safeguards for those on free school meals who will continue to pay £50 and looked after children will pay nothing but I imagine there will be quite a lot of parents with more than one child who will baulk at having to write a cheque for £200-£300 in the current climate. I don't dissent from KCC's view that the pass has been a great success (possibly too successful) but some may see the hike as rather opportunistic - it's not as if the process of administering the fee has changed to become more burdensome on the authority.

And those who rely on rural buses to get them out and about may find they no longer run if KCC proceeds with a plan to withdraw £629,000 from "socially necessary but uneconomic bus routes that provide the least added value."

A cut? I suppose that given that KCC will continue to subsidise other bus routes, then no - but a saving that will reduce services, nevertheless.

As ever, the devil is in the detail. Here are a few other ways in which KCC will be saving money that I've spotted:

£200,000 less on members’ allowances
£123,000 cut on budget for 'Around Kent' magazine
£100,000 less on public consultation
£300,000 less on £2m book fund for libraries
£231,000 less spent on maintaining public footpaths
£280,000 less on waste recycling centres

and

£2.25million saving on "reviewing terms and conditions of employment." 

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If some of the rhetoric about the budget announcement had a familiar ring to it, it may be because similar language was used when KCC made its budget announcement last year.

A press release issued then described how "the council has focused upon ensuring the organisation is lean, flexible and ready to respond to the future financial restraint" and "it is notable that the proposals published today have little impact on frontline services, with savings focusing upon further efficiencies and innovative approaches to delivery." 

Still, good to see a commitment to recycling.

Business is not normally supportive of a Chancellor’s statement. Especially when Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling were doing the job.

But now George Osborne is in the hot seat, they have changed their tune.

While much of the public will worry about benefit cuts, while public sector workers will fear that their job will be among the 500,000 on death row for the next four years, business was pretty upbeat.

All the usual suspects like the CBI, FSB and EEF were surprisingly supportive of the overall spending cuts strategy.

I guess that in their own business, they know how important it is to be prudent. In the early years of Gordon Brown‘s tenure as Chancellor in 11 Downing Street, there was a lot of talk of prudence. He seemed to speak the language of business.

But a boom seemed to give him licence to spend, and prudence was left abandoned at the church door as the global financial crisis coincided with a spending binge.

That combination of events, however you explain them, led to the present £109bn deficit, the largest, so the present Chancellor says, in Europe. The UK was on the brink of bankruptcy, he claimed.

But the £80-plus billion pound cuts will not make a lot of difference to the overall level of spending which continues to rise over the next few years to around £700bn.

As Mr Osborne said, the debt “supertanker” takes a long while to turn around. And interest payments, currently running at a staggering £120m a day, will continue to be onerous.

But at least with the CSR, the UK has signalled it is doing something about a problem that every household faces from time to time. As Mr Micawber said to David Copperfield: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and sixpence, result misery.”

And we have had plenty of misery. There is lots more to come. But at least George Osborne leavened bad news with good, although the nasties could still be in the small print.

He pleased business, protected key infrastructure projects like Crossrail, bashed the banks a little, boosted apprenticeships, protected education and health, and not been too hard on the elderly.

That he has robbed middle England to bear much of the pain will be hard to take. Whether they sympathise with Mr Micawber’s dictum will determine whether Mr Osborne remains in Number 11 after the next general election.