Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

lemonjelly

tomterm8 wrote: »

It's not really worth lobbying local councilors, because ultimately they have very little choice. The conservative government has decided to cut 25% of the budget of most councils over the next few years. Councils are going to struggle to meet their statutory duties in any case.

It is the conservatives Big Society in action...

I know. We've got to try though...:o

vivatifosi

tomterm8 wrote: »

It's not really worth lobbying local councilors, because ultimately they have very little choice. The conservative government has decided to cut 25% of the budget of most councils over the next few years. Councils are going to struggle to meet their statutory duties in any case.

It is the conservatives Big Society in action...

We should at least be pushing for shared facilities. Why does my local district council need a different chief exec to my local county one? Why can't they share offices? Why do they need different HR teams? Why can't there be more pooling of support staff among the different teams within a local authority? Why does the chief exec earn more than the PM? To be fair, such discussions are going on in a lot of LAs, but they should be going on in all of them. This type of saving should be made first or I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of such institutions will be structurally unchanged while losing a lot of vital frontline staff.

michaels

<off topic for this thread> I thought it was an average 25% cut from a baseline real terms increase of the centrally funded component of councils budgets (is it still called the rate support grant?) which only makes up a proportion of councils overall income? Most private sector organisations expect departments to make efficiency savings every year.</OT>

tomterm8 wrote: »

It's not really worth lobbying local councilors, because ultimately they have very little choice. The conservative government has decided to cut 25% of the budget of most councils over the next few years. Councils are going to struggle to meet their statutory duties in any case.

It is the conservatives Big Society in action...

lostinrates

vivatifosi wrote: »

We should at least be pushing for shared facilities. Why does my local district council need a different chief exec to my local county one? Why can't they share offices? Why do they need different HR teams? Why can't there be more pooling of support staff among the different teams within a local authority? Why does the chief exec earn more than the PM? To be fair, such discussions are going on in a lot of LAs, but they should be going on in all of them. This type of saving should be made first or I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of such institutions will be structurally unchanged while losing a lot of vital frontline staff.

with my rubbish problem here I went through 4 layers of ''manager'' in the waste dept of our 1/4 of the country. That is a serious management overload...especially to not get a job done. Even stupid little me could see how to resolve the problem in week 2. Then my neighbours taxes paid for all of them to come to my house a few times to look at my bin and my drive and agree that I had a bin and a drive. when I was getting nowhere management layer at the bottom suggested I grass'em up to the local rag. Great managment and problem solving skills there.

I think I might be in a grumpy mood today

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

with my rubbish problem here I went through 4 layers of ''manager'' in the waste dept of our 1/4 of the country. That is a serious management overload...especially to not get a job done. Even stupid little me could see how to resolve the problem in week 2. Then my neighbours taxes paid for all of them to come to my house a few times to look at my bin and my drive and agree that I had a bin and a drive. when I was getting nowhere management layer at the bottom suggested I grass'em up to the local rag. Great managment and problem solving skills there.

I think I might be in a grumpy mood today

You're right. It's all "busy people" .... being "busy" ... but achieving nothing. Nobody takes ownership of the query and resolves it; they just play pass the parcel. In a lot of IT Helpdesk systems you can set the number of times a problem can be sent to a different department to stop people being sent round in circles because it ends up in somebody's lap and they're not allowed to move it on, they have to resolve it.

lostinrates

vivatifosi wrote: »

We should at least be pushing for shared facilities. Why does my local district council need a different chief exec to my local county one? Why can't they share offices? Why do they need different HR teams? Why can't there be more pooling of support staff among the different teams within a local authority? Why does the chief exec earn more than the PM? To be fair, such discussions are going on in a lot of LAs, but they should be going on in all of them. This type of saving should be made first or I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of such institutions will be structurally unchanged while losing a lot of vital frontline staff.

and another thing: (red angry smilie, or pink embarassed one?)

A bigger area under management might well help people realise where they have it good. I've never heard such a lot of whinging about the state of roads as in this area and I think these roads are pretty damn good by rural terms. It is RIDICULOUS that money is spent cutting our verges twice since I've been here while at the same time I'm being touted a grant to leave a verge on the other side of he hedge....ridiculous. Cut verges in suburbs/towns/village centres by all means (although that was my job as a kid at home, cutting by vege and the neighbours either side...if we all do a little it doesn't take long for a quick top) but to cut here is a waste of money.

tomterm8

michaels wrote: »

<off topic for this thread> I thought it was an average 25% cut from a baseline real terms increase of the centrally funded component of councils budgets (is it still called the rate support grant?) which only makes up a proportion of councils overall income? Most private sector organisations expect departments to make efficiency savings every year.</OT>

Last time I looked, the central government funds make roughly 2/3 of the budget for most councils (I haven't looked recently, but I guess it is probably the same), and the central government has also capped all council tax increases, so there is no flexibility of action.

I am not sure why you think councils don't already make efficiency savings, or haven't been considering the actions mentioned already on the thread.

Yearly efficiency savings, and cutting your budget by a quarter while putting more statutory duties onto councils are different things.

If I were a councilor, at my local council (kent), faced with approximately a 15-20% pension deficit (I haven't looked at the figures, but a year or so ago it was 33% so I am assuming the improvement in FTSE has made a lot of difference), a reduction in funds from central government, increased social care for the elderly, and a centrally mandated freeze on council tax...

I would send charity funding which is non statutory to /dev/null.

I would also do the other measures mentioned in this thread.

But charity support would have to be the first thing I would touch, because it is one of the few things that make an immediate difference to the budget without having additional costs like redundancy pay. And it is not a statutory duty in most cases. Cutting verges is.

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

I am not sure why you think councils don't already make efficiency savings, or haven't been considering the actions mentioned already on the thread

What makes us think that?Perhaps this:

the other measures mentioned in this thread.

Maybe the efficiency measures of the past have not been..efficient?

michaels

OK - all useful points - 2/3rds of budget cut 25% from baseline and remaining budget frozen I guess equals abut a 15% cut? How about the wage freeze, does that not help with the figures?

I also agree that there seems to be a tendency to increase statutory services and of course savings elsewhere (like NHS losing real terms increases) must also push more services on to councils.

Re the central govt proportion - I understand that it to an extent shifts money from more to less affluent areas so an across the board cut will impact much more on a council where this makes up 85% of its revenue than one where it is only 45% and no doubt such factors probably also map fairly closely to a political map...

tomterm8 wrote: »

Last time I looked, the central government funds make roughly 2/3 of the budget for most councils (I haven't looked recently, but I guess it is probably the same), and the central government has also capped all council tax increases, so there is no flexibility of action.

I am not sure why you think councils don't already make efficiency savings, or haven't been considering the actions mentioned already on the thread.

Yearly efficiency savings, and cutting your budget by a quarter while putting more statutory duties onto councils are different things.

If I were a councilor, at my local council (kent), faced with approximately a 15-20% pension deficit (I haven't looked at the figures, but a year or so ago it was 33% so I am assuming the improvement in FTSE has made a lot of difference), a reduction in funds from central government, increased social care for the elderly, and a centrally mandated freeze on council tax...

I would send charity funding which is non statutory to /dev/null.

I would also do the other measures mentioned in this thread.

But charity support would have to be the first thing I would touch, because it is one of the few things that make an immediate difference to the budget without having additional costs like redundancy pay. And it is not a statutory duty in most cases. Cutting verges is.

tomterm8

lostinrates wrote: »

What makes us think that?Perhaps this:





Maybe the efficiency measures of the past have not been..efficient?

Or maybe the efficiency measures of the past have been based around some the funding settlements previous governments have made?

A lot of the efficiency measures people have suggested in this thread look good.

So lets take a look at the efficiency method you suggested... cutting verges less often. Now, under the thatcherite reforms, that were continued under major and blair, most of this kind of work was outsourced.

Generally, the contacts that were made were long term, and at the time were good value for money. That is, they cost less money to do the same amount of work the council used to do.

But, as part of the agreements, the quantity of grass verges will have been set, and so will the number of times they are to be cut, and breaking the agreement will incur substantial penalty costs.

So... councils will consider reducing the number of times verges are cut... but after considering it, they will realize they can't really save any money by doing it for several years.

michaels wrote: »

OK - all useful points - 2/3rds of budget cut 25% from baseline and remaining budget frozen I guess equals abut a 15% cut? How about the wage freeze, does that not help with the figures?
...

Re the central govt proportion - I understand that it to an extent shifts money from more to less affluent areas so an across the board cut will impact much more on a council where this makes up 85% of its revenue than one where it is only 45% and no doubt such factors probably also map fairly closely to a political map...

With your first point, don't forget that quite a large chunk of council income derives from investments, which themselves have not done that well. While the wage freeze may help a little, it really doesn't make anywhere as much of a difference in local government as central government, because so many council services are outsourced. The PPI agreements generally have built in increases above inflation.

I think some labour supporters have argued that the proprotion of cuts are unfair... personally, I don't agree. The government has mitigated it to some extent by changing local authority formulas, and by requiring government organizations to migrate to poorer parts of the country. Cuts are generally regressive unless they can be targeted at "waste" (and even in that case, the "waste" is generally people too, who live in the poorer area), but I don't think the tories are going out of their way to target them politically to harm the poorest regions.