Don’t councils understand that prevention is cheaper than fixing

Oh lord yes, parish…district…county…unitary…mayoral authorities. Yeah, us officers can move seamlessly between all that because of course I’ve chosen to organise it that way. Yes Mrs Boggins from Middlethrop I can see that you are very angry about not being listened to when you put your comments on that consultation response. However a) we are the county council and your bins are collected by the District b) that consultation was about streetlights in Bigglestown and c) the government says we have to put up 20 streetlights but we haven’t the money to pay the leccy bill so they’re only going to be lit for 20 minutes a day, don’t be worrying about Bigglestown getting something flashy that you’re not.

Big clusterfuck in Birmingham = all councils everywhere are staffed/run by idiots in all departments across the board. Right. What a dinger!

How do things get better? Shall we try recruiting experienced and effective officers and equipping them with the resources to do it. I wonder how we might go about that…mmm…don’t let them know we don’t actually have any discretionary spend, devalue pay and conditions and once we’ve got them in kick the thick lazy bastards about a bit. That’ll crack it.

Also lets set out our objectives, raise public expectation and then change the goal posts each time their’s a change in the minister’s seat.

I really wish Civics was taught in schools. People have so little understanding about the limits of local government reach. Like we can just move money between budgets, that we choose to do emergency patches instead of doing maintenance, how permissions work, things that we are absolutely not allowed to do even tho you’ve clearly told me ‘it’s just common sense’.

80% of the work is set by central government and the 20% is the stuff you want but the money for that is needed to prop up the central government demand which is always 30-40% below the budget required. And I’m not even including social care and education in that, their figures are spiralling down so fast I can’t keep up with it.

That every five years a new lot pop up who promised you that ‘I’ll fix it, I’m Mr Businessman. I’ll be the Councillor that shows those thick, lazy officers how it’s done!’ Then cut all your half way through projects, set you onto some other thing that is under resourced and cobbled together while you try and stay on top of your stat duties.

It’s different to the private sector, regulations all over the bloody shop. Democracy is imperfect, laborious, slow, infuriating (pick another option why dontcha).

Plus all the flexi-time = less time crap, that we prefer to WFH when often would rather be in even though our offices have black mould all up the blinds, that we are overpaid, we are lazy, we are thick, we have ‘gold plated pensions’, (that generation is lumbering out of the door, good luck to the old bastards live your retirement for me, send photos). That ‘I pay your wages’ when less than 20p pa of your council tax covers my whole department.

Not sure how this thread can go for so long without a single mention of Birminghams spectacular (and well warned of in advance) bonfire of the fivers this past decade ?

Having been involved with local
consultations regarding road schemes I can assure you that most of the suggestions from members of the public are totally bonkers impractical.
Suggestions we had about improving an inner ring road for a large town included

• Build a big flyover from one side of the town to the other
• put the whole ring road on a bridge
• build a tunnel from one side to the other
• make the ring road one way clockwise
• make the ring road one way anticlockwise

No.they don't!

Why don’t you become a councillor and show them where they’ve been going wrong?
I’m sure with your towering intellect you could manage to sort it all out on a couple of hours a week.

Budgets are carefully controlled

They aren't though, are they. They're engineered or manipulated, at best.

https://ifs.org.uk/publications/how-have-english-councils-funding-and-spending-changed-2010-2024

have a read of this and perhaps it will make sense why, when councils have seen a decrease in 46% of revenues from central government and had to increase council tax year on year to make up the shortfall - but are capped at 5% increase each year - why services are poor

Public consultations are the pits. We hate having to do them. So much unfunded work when we should be getting on with actual work. We know it changes nothing. Central government insists we do them, even on things they have already told us we have to do, we do not have control over that. Not our choice.

Publishing the results of audits just means we are told what they want to tell us. Our local council holds public consultations on what seems like a monthly basis, then completely ignores what the public tells it, and does what it wants regardless. I can't be more specific on an anonymous forum sorry.

The results of the mismanagement of resources are plain to see all over the country, so there's no need to demand "evidence". 14 years of Tory-led central government is all anyone needs to know, surely.

As gor

The Local Government funding model from central government is broken, like it is for NHS, Schools and other public services. The cost of looking after our elderly and vulnerable has sky rocketed with no additional funding from government to support it. That's why non-statutory services are being cut, staff reduced to the basic minimum so that any extra funds can be filtered through to Adult and Childrens Social Care.

I agree that the top layer of management in Councils are too highly paid for what they do, but the issue is nobody worth their salt would take on those roles if they weren't competitive with the private sector.

The majority of people who work in Councils are absolutely dedicated to the communities they live and work in and as a consequence, are resigned to a lower remuneration than in other sectors. They may get a good pension when they retire but they contribute a lot out of often meagre salaries in order to have it.

Some Councils are 'rubbish' at managing themselves but blame the leadership, not the people who are doing their best for their citizens.

Ah yes. Recruitment freeze. It’s been 15 years now. Expect in social care/education who can recruit but too few people want the work so they just hang there on the website mouldering away. Those of us that have the freeze still have stat duties tho and when we can’t recruit guess what? Yes! We sub to the private sector! Yay! Efficiencies! The private sector are soooooo good at delivery!

I’m acting up at the mo (rolling 3 months secondments even tho the guy left a year ago, recruitment freeze ya know). I’ve been backfilled with a SLA to a private firm who are doing 3 days worth of that work a week for the bargain price of 8K a month. Guess who’s still doing the other two days (in between tea breaks and flexi time, don’t worry, I’ve got my priorities in order).

PS 25 years in the private sector before public. Don’t give me that old bollocks.

Spot on

Even if that were true, which it's not, the logic conclusion here is that public sector works should have salaries which match those of their private sector equivalents to attract the brains. As a local govt officer I'd love that!

What an unpleasant post.

Bit that money wouldn't have been in the budget to clear drains. It would have been for something very specific so they couldn't just say , let's not paint the rainbows and we can spend it on the drains. If it was for painting rainbows then it wouldn't have been available for any other purpose.

Are you sure this wasn't done with Active Travel Fund money?

Case in point - food waste, which all councils were told by central govt they had to roll out. That work (procurement, estate management, refuse vehicles, staffing, premises etc) is happening now with no indication of what funding will be provided - still. It's almost certain the funding won't cover the cost. This is one of the many challenges (not to mention other stat duties that funding and revenue doesn't cover). Couple that with the fact that much of the work on flooding / drainage falls under upper tier authorities who also have huge funding issues around social care... it's a perfect storm.

If you ever failed to vote in the 1980s or in the 2010s or voted Tory, you are part of the problem.

If you ever supported outsourcing to Capita, Serco or other providers under a badly devised contract, you are part of the problem.

That's not how it works though. Money can't just be taken from wherever to fix something. Budgets are carefully controlled and aren't really interchangeable.

Councils have a legal duty to run a balanced budget. If they can't afford to do the work they can't do the work. Short of putting up council tax, etc their hands are tied

I worked in Estates management for large City Council.

It literally had no budget for maintenance, only emergencies.

Places were stripped by chancers, if left empty. Shitshow.

That's why it's so bad that visitor centres in Wales are getting shut (Coed-y-Brenin, Nant-y-Arian & Ynyslas). The buildings & trails will be decimated.

An ounce of prevention is better rhan a pound of cure.

Thanks mate. Appreciate your insight. Am amazed that my moderate intellect at best is sufficient even to work out how to show my appreciation.