As a by-product of deficit reduction, the biggest round of cuts since the Second World War is also intended to leave the UK with a smaller state apparatus and disencumber the private sector from excessive bureaucracy. In short, it is intended to create the kind of environment in which half a million unemployed ex-public sector workers can find jobs in business.

However, with many companies heavily reliant on public sector contracts for income, the damage these cuts will do is likely to leave parts of the private sector hurting just as badly.

Steven Law, president of insolvency trade body R3, says that nearly 150,000 small businesses will be put at risk of failure as a result of the changes, with insolvencies for 2011 expected to be in excess of 27,000.

"Our members predict that 2011 will be a difficult year for small businesses and factors such as loss of public sector work will see company insolvency numbers start to rise," he warns.

Likewise, Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke worries that, on top of the general decline in print spend, the CSR will put marketing departments under even more pressure to rubber-stamp decisions to go "web only".

Cut to the bone
BPIF corporate affairs director Andy Brown says: "It’s difficult to put a positive spin on this. I think these cuts have gone further than they thought possible in what they call back office – and the ‘back office’ often concerns marketing."

The real intersect between the public sector and print is in the in-plants used by councils and other bodies. These exist on the premise of producing print economically, but with lower volumes of work, they may not be commercially viable.

Association of Print and Communication Managers (APCOM) president Anthony Evans says: "Although print rooms were set up as a means for organisations to save money, the temptation to outsource is quite attractive."

He adds that councils, for example, will be looking to make savings by choosing monochrome print over colour or by delivering the information through digital channels. That said, councils  have a responsibility to make all key information accessible to all – and that means they will need to make it available in print.

But there is another option open to in-plants – take on commercial print work. "If you’ve got the capacity, you’ll want to fill it," says Evans.

Brown concurs: "In-plants might want to fight back. Some of them won’t survive this and some may well become wholly owned subsidiaries. In England, the councils have fewer constraints. They have almost unlimited powers to trade, provided they can prove it furthers the work of the authority."

There are other sides to the CSR impact on print. The government’s focus on apprenticeships has seen funding for other types of training suffer. Train to Gain has been scrapped, while funding for Level 2 and Level 3 qualifications for 25-year-olds and over has been severely pruned.

Brown said that the government "nailed its colours to the mast" on apprenticeships, so the demise of Train to Gain was widely expected. Indeed, within print, there has never been a great deal of enthusiasm for the scheme.

However, whatever its broader impact, the CSR is first and foremost a rescue package intended to help salvage the UK economy, which faces public debt interest repayments of around £43bn a year. And despite the extremity of the chancellor’s measures, the four-year plan will trim that by just £5bn.

Everybody hurts
Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England broadly welcomed Osborne’s plans, but added that he may consider bolstering the current £200bn of quantitative easing in order to "smooth the adjustment process".

Nicholas Mockett, partner at Moorgate Capital, says: "Getting things done as quickly as possible is probably the right thing to do. We’re all going to hurt. It’s going to be painful for everybody. It’s a bit like borrowing under your credit cards to pay off your mortgage. You’re better off moving to a smaller house.

"There was no choice but to get these efficiencies sorted out. The public sector was over the top. But I think it’s very optimistic to think that the private sector can absorb this many people."

However, Mockett adds that, despite all the conjecture over the alternatives, it’s almost impossible to really know what the right path to take is. "The problem with managing the economy is that you can’t do a controlled experiment with it. You can’t manage half the country one way and the other the in a different way. It’s not the Daz doorstep challenge," he says.