Hull-based consultancy David Burnby Associates has been left exposed by public sector cuts
A business like David Burnby Associates was wide open to taking a kicking when the public sector cuts began, and it wasn't just individual contracts which started disappearing. It was entire organisations which for years had provided the Hull-based consultancy with work.
"We've lost the regional development agencies, and then the government regional offices which provided a lot of our clients," says Burnby, who has been expecting Wednesday's gloomy GDP news and predicts worse to come. "Local improvement advisers don't do consultancy any more and the primary care trusts and NHS in general are in, well, chaos. The good times definitely ain't rolling and I can't see that it's going to be any better next year."
His network of trainers, lawyers and experts in partnerships between the public, private and voluntary sectors had seven good years after Burnby left the regional directorship of Common Purpose in Yorkshire and the Humber to set up on his own in 2002. Regeneration was given plenty of money in the north, from local government, Whitehall and Europe, and the skills he offered fitted with New Labour's efforts to rethink delivery of services.
"Ironically, we have been all about the sort of things which the coalition government is now promoting – efficiency, fresh ways of doing things in the public service, and concentrating on outcomes and not just delivery. But one of the kneejerk ways in which the public sector is now defining efficiency seems to be cutting down on outside consultants. I am afraid that may turn into a vicious circle."
The collapse of orders has come at a time when large numbers of senior managers in the north's public sector have taken early retirement but still want to put their skill and experience to work. Burnby defines the result as "20,000 'hobby consultants' coming into our market as competitors, still on the inside track with the organisations they've left, and able to undercut us because they've got redundancy and pensions. Our trough's not just got smaller; there are lot more people feeding from it."
The low cost of a base in Hull should help him and the colleagues he sub-contracts to keep afloat, along with a working wife – although the voluntary sector resource centre she runs is also under severe financial pressure – and children in their twenties who have left home and got jobs. His nous has also helped to win a glut of orders for March, when, as he knew from experience, government bodies look to spend up unused budgets to avoid further cuts next year. But April looks contrastingly sparse.
"I'm inevitably part of the bad news on GDP," he says, "not only through contraction in my own business, as a seller, but as a buyer, through travelling less, buying less fuel and cutting back on spending all round. We've got to hunker down. Luckily the business is small and flexible and capable of doing that, so I'm confident that we'll get through."
"These things are cyclical, and better times will come if we can hang on," he says running through details of his first-ever consultancy on the Isle of Wight, which he last saw as a child with a bucket and spade. "But I sometimes feel that my generation is blessed."
Now 57, he walked into a motor mechanic apprenticeship at 16, then a potentially lifetime job with Jaguar before changing to voluntary sector administration. "It isn't looking like that for our young ones," he says. "I had a career at their age; they've got jobs. I had a mortgage; they rent and can't imagine raising the sort of money you need for a deposit. The government talks about a private sector recovery sorting it all out, but I'm afraid that's a flight of fancy."