What would you Cut in your Council?

MegaMiniMouse

Health And Safety...

How much do those convoys of stationary warning vehicles cost when somebody is cutting the grass on a central reservation?

How much all those pointless miles of night-time motorway cones?

How many hours do those night-time motorway workers get paid for, when very often they have finished before 2-3am?

MMM

BleepinHell

DansMum wrote: »

Cut our Chief Execs wage which is £242000 pa

That would save the lollipop ladies/men/persons who are out

Exactly. Ours earns more than the PM. The top earners will not see any cuts.Why would they reduce their own pay or increase their workload when they can shut a Library or Swimming baths here and there and blame the Tories?

Cleaver

BleepinHell wrote: »

Exactly. Ours earns more than the PM.

Can anyone pinpoint the exact time and date when we started using the Prime Minister's salary as the ulltimate yardstick of what people should earn?

If I had a pound for every "they earn more than the Prime Minsiter" comment I've heard I'd be earning more than the Prime Minsiter.

Cleaver

jamsandwhich wrote: »

To me, that amount of expenditure is far too excessive however you look at it as it must have run into thousands - I have no idea of the true cost of it but it far outweighs twenty years of service no matter how dedicated and good at your job you are. A council cannot pay out that amount of money every time someone works for twenty years - it just cannot be maintained.

Maybe investigating the true cost would be advised before deciding it isn't the right thing to do? I'm actually inclinded to agree with you - if a council is renting a swanky venue and paying for dinner for a whole department that does seem very excessive. Which council is it and do you have a link to a story / report on it?

jamsandwhich wrote: »

I would imagine that the cost would run into paying for a teaching assistant for a year, or actually pay the people who volunteer (or pay the librarry servant for her extra hours instead) to do jobs or even increase the wage of a low paid employee?

I think Heyman has made the excellent point that most of these types of thing are just tinkering with the edges. A library here, a diveristy coordinator there, a £250k chief exec over there, keeping or getting rid of these things doesn't make much difference really, they are just token aspects that the public sees as big things.

jamsandwhich

Cleaver wrote: »

Maybe investigating the true cost would be advised before deciding it isn't the right thing to do? I'm actually inclinded to agree with you - if a council is renting a swanky venue and paying for dinner for a whole department that does seem very excessive. Which council is it and do you have a link to a story / report on it?



I think Heyman has made the excellent point that most of these types of thing are just tinkering with the edges. A library here, a diveristy coordinator there, a £250k chief exec over there, keeping or getting rid of these things doesn't make much difference really, they are just token aspects that the public sees as big things.

I don't have a link - I am just in the know from personal (no, I wasn't there and don't work for the council but know people who do) experience so do have an idea of the cost but only from totting it up - not exactly rocket science is it??!

I have a friend who works for a different council to the one I reside in and she is appalled because one of her department of eight is going to be made redundant and it may be her - she has said on nights out time again that some of them have two hour lunches and then browse the internet or do their knitting because there is so little work to do to keep them all busy and it is especially the more established members of the department.

It is just the tip of the iceberg though isn't it with all of these cuts, I just feel that a lot of them are being made with the wrong intentions.

Loughton_Monkey

Any County, like Essex for example, is spending the most horrific amount of money that beggars belief. £850 million or so every year.

Despite the huge amount of statements/accounts and glossy 'keeping you informed' organs, you cannot tell (in ways that mean anything to anyone) where it actually goes. To learn that 43.5% goes on "Adults, Health, and Community Wellbeing" means a lot doesn't it?

Any successful commercial company is usually quite well aware of true 'costings' for each of their tangible end products. OK, this is sensitive in the commercial arena. In the Public arena, we are the shareholders and we should know this information.

As a very basic start, given that a huge proportion of the costs are salaries, we should have full disclosure of all staff and salaries. Not by name, but by job title.

Stage 2 should be a list of core council 'functions'. Emptying bins. Road Repairs. Libraries. Planning Applications......... possibly up to 500 of them. Doesn't matter.

Then comes the 'Interesting' part. Every jobholder should be forced to allocate 100% of their time across the functions they 'believe' they are involved in.

Stuff like this is basic 'Janet & John' type information, but is extremely powerful in flushing out all the pockets of ludicrous costs, rampant inefficiency, and it tells us all 'where to look'.

For example, we all tend to get emotive about the closure of a library, or swimming pool etc. Councils tend to do this willy-nilly rather than tackle anything more difficult. But maybe the public would go with it a bit more if they had the information. As an example, imagine that a specific library was costing X, and it was established that only "Y" people ever used it (once a year, or once a wekk). It would be interested to know at what cost per visiting person the general ratepayers were willing to pay.

If you learned that it costs £50 a year for each of the small proportion of local residents who use it, is that OK? What about £300. What about £1,500. What about £8,350?

I think it would focus our minds, and (along the way) do the obvious and get rid of all the 'Spirituality and Ethics Consultants'.

diable

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Cut it all.

Make the councillors put it all out to tender, get better services for lower cost, problem solved.

In Scotland?

ILW

Heyman wrote: »

Oh you all make it sound so easy! In reality, it's a very tough proposition as Manchester City Council have just been discovering.

The problem with this kind of proposition is that the cut/keep ratio is always going to be disproportionate. You think that by sacking the entire Equalities department or giving Ken the Lollipop Man the boot that you're going to be saving wads of cash but you're really just dealing with the tip of the iceberg.

Manchester Council have to save £109m over the next 4 years!

http://insidethem60.journallocal.co.uk/2011/02/08/where-the-manchester-axe-is-falling-the-cuts-in-detail/

So a £25 million a year saving. What is their total expenditure per year?

PasturesNew

jamsandwhich wrote: »

public loos

Our council cut some public loos, costing £4k, the other year - and then paid £25k for some poxy willow men sculpture, that the birds then robbed for nesting materials until the heads had gone, then they didn't have money for maintenance, artist washed her hands of it and they then paid to have the willow men removed.

The other genius idea was p1ssoirs, rising loos, for the drunks late at night. Roll on a couple of years and I think they've removed those too.

PasturesNew

I'd remove anybody producing daft leaflets that nobody reads - and all those people who are "terribly busy" just busy being busy, but not actually doing anything (except probably working in thinktanks to produce leaflets.

And also, everybody in Cleaver's list.

And anybody branding/re-branding services and producing stupid mission statemens, which then need a leaflet with an image of smiling people on it. The leaflets in these cases tell us what a good job they're doing for us, without actually telling us what it is they're doing. "initiatives" ... !!!!!!.