Council is broke

seven-day-weekend

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2014/01/08/spending-is-stopped-at-troubled-wolverhampton-city-council/

Are other Councils in such dire straits? What are the repercussions? Is there a solution? Discussion welcomed.

(Words of one syllable please as I am not an economics wizard and I think it is the first thread I have ever started on this part of the forum. )

Generali

Well the 18 Execs earn well north of £2 million between them. There's a clear saving to be made there.

http://www.wolverhampton.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=2086&p=0

The problem with consistently overspending is that at some point the money will run out. The fault doesn't really lie with the local Government of Wolverhampton I suspect as with the huge amounts of pork that Labour constituents were handed under the Labour Government. The local councils planned for that flow of cash to continue indefinitely.

purch

West Somerset Council talks to avert 'financial ruin'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-20479419

....there's a lot of it about.

noodle_doodle

Just do what private business does. Go bankrupt, start a phoenix council, employ the old staff on TUPE, debts gone!

spacey2012

Generali wrote: »

Well the 18 Execs earn well north of £2 million between them. There's a clear saving to be made there.

http://www.wolverhampton.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=2086&p=0

The problem with consistently overspending is that at some point the money will run out. The fault doesn't really lie with the local Government of Wolverhampton I suspect as with the huge amounts of pork that Labour constituents were handed under the Labour Government. The local councils planned for that flow of cash to continue indefinitely.

Yep and like all council Execs, they are figure heads, hand shakers, they do nothing other than be "the face" of councils, they also have a raft of hangers on that PR their image .
Executive pay at public services is a national scandal.

vivatifosi

Well, I don't want to make this party political. However I'm really surprised at how slow Wolverhampton seems to be at making cuts. Well run councils have known about such issues and have been responding to them for years. Have they been doing this already?

Library services are being cut the country over. I know, I work in one. However, there are a number of options that councils can and do take to maintain a service. They aren't all popular with the public, but pragmatically, most people get it. Some of the options for reducing library costs are:

* Shutting facilities (often smaller community libraries)
* Reducing opening hours
* Increased use of volunteers
* Co-location with or within other council/public facilities
* Reducing services offered
* Reducing spend on materials (books, pcs, etc)
* Changing staff contracts (council as a whole, not just libraries)
* Increased use of online offerings that reduce need for physical library visit
* Revenue generation: eg coffee shops

Most well run councils are doing this already. Not just in libraries but across their portfolio. It sounds to me as though Wolverhampton could learn some lessons just by looking at the other authorities around them.

michaels

Anyone know what sort of borrowings councils in the UK have along with other liabilities like pensions - are we looking at a Detroit type situation?

Generali

purch wrote: »

West Somerset Council talks to avert 'financial ruin'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-20479419

....there's a lot of it about.

The budget isn't huge either, especially when you strip out things like Housing Benefit which is paid back from Central Government.

http://www.westsomersetonline.gov.uk/getattachment/Council---Democracy/Council-Budgets---Spending/Budget-Book-2013-14.pdf.aspx

The obvious thing I guess is no pay rises for a few years to let inflation take care of the problem.

spacey2012

The argument they put forward on executive pay is "they bring in more than they cost".
Well if this is the case why not recruit 10,000 of them and make a profit .

Generali

michaels wrote: »

Anyone know what sort of borrowings councils in the UK have along with other liabilities like pensions - are we looking at a Detroit type situation?

I don't think Councils can take on debts and their pensions are meant to be fully funded. I don't think there's a huge quantity of liabilities hiding away somewhere unless the actuaries have got it wrong.

The problem with local councils IME is that they're simply not very efficient: they don't do enough with the money they get.

spacey2012

The local street cleaners had two cleaning and 8 office staff "organising the work"
Which involves pushing a cart around the same streets as yesterday, the week before, the year before and the decade before and picking up any litter on the street.
This apparently required 8 people to organise and two to do the work.
Then they sacked one of those that did the work to save money leaving one street cleaner with one barrow yet still employed the 8 staff to manage what this one guy does.

This is why they have no money.