It could have been worse. If the Treasury hadn’t found £27bn ahead of the Autumn Statement, the immediate outcome could have been far worse for local councils. Overall funding to local councils is forecast to fall by ‘just’ 6.7 per cent, which is something considering the cuts to the departments of communities (30 per cent), business (17 per cent) and transport (37 per cent). George Osborne was being touted as the lucky Chancellor thanks to a public finances windfall that allowed him to perform a U-turn on his most unpopular policies. However, the figure for local councils assumes Osborne’s luck holds and, given the seismic changes to local authority funding, many councils could be praying for a miracle. By the end of the parliamentary term, the settlement grant will be phased out and councils will be reliant on 100 per cent business rates retention to survive. Clearly this is a double-edged sword for trading standards services that have been cut to the bone, but which are essential to creating favourable conditions to attract business. Trading standards is now an even more essential component of the so-called long-term economic plan. However, after Prime Minister, David Cameron, wrote to his Oxfordshire constituency council complaining about cuts, I’m not convinced they actually realise it. Osborne’s supporters will say he has made his own luck and, if that is the case, long may it continue – but it all feels like back-ofan- envelope economics to me. In addition to more on the Autumn Statement in this edition of TS Today, we are asking for your thoughts on what a trading standards officer of the future should look like – especially relevant considering the changing landscape and continuing cuts to the service. CTSI’s annual Tobacco Control Survey has just been published, and it is the first time the survey has included results from reduced ignition propensity (RIP) testing. Trading standards officers and the National Measurement and Regulation Office (NMRO) have also undertaken an investigation into the accuracy of milk measurement, which you can read more about in this edition.