Public services have improved considerably in recent years but, as we know, the public response to this is often to quickly ‘bank’ any improvements and then raise their expectations once again. Meeting – and managing – these expectations is only going to become more important as tighter budgets require services to focus on the priorities that really matter.

The winter edition of Understanding Society, the newsletter from Ipsos MORI’s Social Research Institute, considers some of the ways in which central and local government can respond to the challenge of continuing to meet public expectations when public finances face their tightest squeeze for decades.