Bonfire day for the Quangos! 192 abolished, 289 reformed

Mr_Mumble

Cabinet Office - List of changes (thanks Blacklight!)
(copy if cabinetoffice.gov.uk falls down again: Guardian - The Full list)
(copy in html rather than pdf: Telegraph - Quango reform: full list)

Guardian Politics Live Blog

Overall, 901 bodies will be reduced to 648. However, 40 are still under review. Among the most prominent organisations affected are:

• British Nuclear Fuels Limited will be abolished.
• The Competition Commission will merge with the competition functions of the Office of Fair Trading.
• Consumer Focus, the consumer rights group, will transfer to the Citizens Advice Bureau.
• Design Council and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta), will become charities.
• British Waterways will be abolished as a public corporation in England and Wales and a new waterways charitable trust will be created – similar to a National Trust.
• The Environment Agency will be substantially reformed with further announcements in the spending review.
• The Student Loans Company, responsible for delayed loan payments to thousands of students last year, is still under review and could be axed.
• The Youth Justice Board, set up by Jack Straw to oversee crime prevention and custody of under 18s, is to be abolished. The National Women's Commission is to be abolished and its functions transferred to the Government Equalities Office.
• The Security Industry Authority, which regulates the private security industry, will be abolished.

Telegraph - Quango cuts announced
Independent -192 quangos to be scrapped
Sky - 'Bonfire Of The Quangos' Revealed
BBC -Quango list shows 192 to be axed
FT Blog - Prepare for the bonfire of quangos

Radio 4 "Today" Francis Maude interview

Telegraph - OFT and Competition Commission to merge
FT - OFT faces merger in ‘quangos bonfire’ (Paywall)

Britain’s competition regime is to be revamped in a shake-up under which the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission will merge.

The restructuring of the competition bodies, to reduce costs and speed up investigations, will probably be one of the most contentious cuts to public bodies to be announced on Thursday in the government’s “bonfire of the quangos”.

The government’s plan to merge the OFT and the commission rolls back the long-standing two-tier competition system, reinforced by the Labour government, in favour of the single-body model favoured by many other industrialised countries.

The new body will probe mergers, market dominance and cartels, but it and other competition bodies will probably farm out many consumer functions to Citizens Advice and local trading standards officers.

Some speculation and commentary:
Mail - Up to 200 quangos will be culled today: 10,000 staff face the axe... but will they really go?
Guardian - Spending review: last-ditch plea to save quangos
FT Blog- Quangos brace for the Maude death knock
BBC - Politicians' love/hate relationship with quangos

& the old leaked list for anyone needing it :
Telegraph - Quango cuts: full list of bodies under review

Mr_Mumble

Cull of quangos scaled back after lobbying

Plans for a "bonfire of quangos" will today be scaled back by the Government after an intensive lobbying campaign.

Dozens of bodies are expected to win at least a temporary reprieve when the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude announces which quangos are to be scrapped this morning.

It is understood that less than 100 of the 742 quangos will be abolished outright. These will include some high-profile targets such as the Film Council and the Audit Commission, but most will be relatively unknown and uncontroversial.

:eek:

The Tory wets cave again?!

kabayiri

I was talking to a friend who works with people in the Audit Commission.

He was saying that many accountants there earn 80K per annum, and were expecting 2 years salary as redundancy terms!

If that level of compensation is true, it is hardly a cost saving measure in the short term. It might be better to take the older well off paid members of staff, and redeploy them into areas where they can be worked for more gain.

Pragmatism first, with an eye on costs, must be the motto.

chewmylegoff

kabayiri wrote: »

I was talking to a friend who works with people in the Audit Commission.

He was saying that many accountants there earn 80K per annum, and were expecting 2 years salary as redundancy terms!

If that level of compensation is true, it is hardly a cost saving measure in the short term. It might be better to take the older well off paid members of staff, and redeploy them into areas where they can be worked for more gain.

Pragmatism first, with an eye on costs, must be the motto.

it might be better, but since you cannot discriminate against people based on their age, so i doubt you can just say "you're 58, so you won't be getting this redundancy offer, you have to go and work at the home office / down the salt mines (i'd prefer the salt mines)". further, it's going to be pretty difficult to explain why it is that all of the low paid workers are being fired but the senior staff are all being TUPE transferred into some govt department.

anyway, i don't believe anyone is going to get 2 years' redundancy unless they are contractually obliged to it, which i rather doubt that anyone working at the audit commission is (unless they have been working there for 104 years since they turned 22).

and, finally, if someone is being paid £80k, their pension is probably 15% on top of that and there are other ancillary costs of employment (e.g. renting a building, paying for support staff in HR, admin, etc) so that the real cost of employment is more than the salary (would be speculating but it's going to be at least 1.5x salary). so if you don't pay someone £160k to go away now, they will cost you that much in less than 2 years. (although they do get £30k as a tax free lump sum which would have to factor into the govt's calculation).

Mr_Mumble

kabayiri wrote: »

I was talking to a friend who works with people in the Audit Commission.

He was saying that many accountants there earn 80K per annum, and were expecting 2 years salary as redundancy terms!

If that level of compensation is true, it is hardly a cost saving measure in the short term. It might be better to take the older well off paid members of staff, and redeploy them into areas where they can be worked for more gain.

Pragmatism first, with an eye on costs, must be the motto.

It looks like the government will accept a one-time hit to finances on redundancy pay. Redeploying seems the pragmatic approach but given the cuts in almost all government departments are you just shuffling deckchairs on the titanic here? (apologies to anyone touched by these cuts for the blunt analysis).

kabayiri

chewmylegoff wrote: »

anyway, i don't believe anyone is going to get 2 years' redundancy unless they are contractually obliged to it, which i rather doubt that anyone working at the audit commission is (unless they have been working there for 104 years since they turned 22).

Acknowledged. I don't have any evidence apart from a casual conversation. I will try and do some digging if I can.

I personally don't expect to see the 100 year working mark ....

chewmylegoff

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

It looks like the government will accept a one-time hit to finances on redundancy pay. Redeploying seems the pragmatic approach but given the cuts in almost all government departments are you just shuffling deckchairs on the titanic here? (apologies to anyone touched by these cuts for the blunt analysis).

yeah - would be a problem wouldn't it.

agenda for meeting with the treasury:

1) you have to cut your budget by 25%

2) here are 1,000 highly paid staff from some quangos we've abolished. they're on your payroll now. BYE!

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Why bother putting links up for people if they have to pay?

Or do people really subscribe to The Financial Times & its just me who is the odd one out?

dazeruk

chewmylegoff wrote: »

anyway, i don't believe anyone is going to get 2 years' redundancy unless they are contractually obliged to it, which i rather doubt that anyone working at the audit commission is (unless they have been working there for 104 years since they turned 22).

We had a e-mail from Gus O'Donnell regarding the Civil Service Compensation Scheme.

Main points are

1) A standard tariff of one month’s salary for every year of pensionable service, limited to 21 months pay for voluntary redundancy (instead of the 15 originally proposed) and 12 months pay for compulsory redundancy. The intention would be to encourage voluntary redundancy to the maximum extent possible so reducing the need for compulsory redundancies. There would also be a three month notice period for voluntary and compulsory redundancies.


2) In order to improve the position for lower paid civil servants, there would now be a floor of £23,000, in terms of the salary on which compensation would be based. In other words, anyone earning less than £23,000 (on a full-time equivalent basis) would be treated, for the purposes of calculating their redundancy payment, as if they were earning that figure.


3) Staff earning more than six times the Private Sector Median Average Earnings (currently £149, 820) would have their salary capped at this figure for the purposes of calculating their redundancy payment.


4) Staff who have reached minimum pension age may be able to have access to an unreduced pension if they depart on voluntary terms.

Mr_Mumble

1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »

Why bother putting links up for people if they have to pay?

Or do people really subscribe to The Financial Times & its just me who is the odd one out?

Oops, I thought the FT Blogs (I've renamed a couple that are from the blogs rather than FT site) were free to view, though they may require registration. The FT story about the OFT is paywalled, hence the excerpt, the FT did break this story but I've now included a link to the Telegraph rehash.

With The Times and FT now paywalling its not easy to give paupers what they want without breaking the TOS.

purch

the 742 quangos

:eek:

There are certain facts that I wish never to know !!!!