Is this the beginning of the end of local government as we know it?

Social services is bearing the brunt of this change, with plans to offload meals on wheels, day centres and home help provision already under way.
Allocating individual budgets to social care clients is bound to speed this process, as people begin to buy-in the help they need from the private sector.
On the transportation front, a £2 billion highways PFI will see responsibility for improving the entire city road network handed to Amey for a 25-year period.
It cannot be long, surely, before the council takes the plunge by deciding to contract out rubbish collection and street cleaning.
And what about all those back office functions, the payroll clerks and administrative back-up staff?
It's taken a long time to get there, but local government is not that far now from the vision set out by Michael Heseltine when he was Environment Secretary in the early 1980s. Heseltine forecast a time when councils like Birmingham would meet in executive form only four times a year in a manner similar to boards of directors - their task simply to keep an eye on the performance of local authority services contracted out to private firms.
One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the top-heavy staffing levels carried by virtually all councils.
Birmingham continues to employ about 41,000 non-schools staff, even though city council services are continually being handed to outside operators.
With a 10 per cent vacancy turnover each year it ought to be possible to trim the size of the workforce and save money by doing so.
The city council's business transformation programme, which is supposed to produce £1 billion through efficiency savings, is based in part on cutting jobs although politicians have, perhaps understandably, never spelt out exactly how many posts will go.
If the austerity years promised by a Conservative government come to pass - and even a re-elected Labour party will have to slash public spending - councils like Birmingham may find themselves shedding jobs at a far faster rate than they anticipated.