Don’t councils understand that prevention is cheaper than fixing

Most councils are doing their best with inadequate funding that will not cover the basics. As a country we keep voting politicians in to keep taxes low and then wonder why public services fail

@TheGreatIndoors I hope in the future none of your family or friends (bet with a vicious personality like yours, you don't have any) work for the local government.
God help if you need to get social services to help you. Or you want to use the library.

Why don't you go back into the hole you have crawled out from.

I work for the LA and this sort of thing drives me bonkers. Cutbacks mean the drivers of the street sweeping machine are often used for driving the small tipper trucks emptying dog waste bins and public litter bins, sorting flytipping at recycling sites. The visual things that people complain about not being done. There’s no push to properly utilise man hours though. They can be finished a bin route by 1pm some days and then rather than flip them around and get x, y, z maintenance jobs done on a rolling basis you have three blokes for every bin lorry hanging around whinging that it’s not job and done. They are paid till five.

My council is tied in to expensive leasing and maintenance costs of the sweeper trucks as well so it makes it even more painful that they are not being used. Someone had to drive one round a yard recently as the tracker hadn’t moved for six months they thought it might be broken. It was not.

I work alongside direct employees and don’t agree with your judgment.

I bet you're natural 'charm' has made you an excellent sprinter.

Yes Councils know this.
But this is the cumulative effect of austerity.
Less money to spend and critically less staff to organise and deliver the work. You cannot cut reactive work, so you have to cut or reduce your forward planning.
Budgets are often linked to policy which is why you might see spending on something you think is perverse.
Infrastructure projects often require a bidding cycle and you are usually competing for that money against other councils.
There's been a gradual pruning of roles and flattening out of structures and in many areas services are very thinly spread.

@TheGreatIndoors what a horrible judgemently post.

😂

I am a contractor and work in both public and private sector.

Hillarious · Today 09:43

+ + It's because the councils have no overall plans and are run by clueless but very greedy idiots. They are not audited properly by central govt. They use funds earmarked by govt for useless building schemes/cycle lanes/stuff nobody wants or uses and then plead poverty. + +

A misunderstanding of local government here.

It seems to have been written by a Daily Mail work experience person...

People who work for the council are mostly of moderate intellect at best. Often spend most of their time on tea breaks or flexi leave and would never survive in the private sector given it takes them 28 days to respond to an email.

I think what happens when things are in good order is that you can cut back a lot for quite some time and live off of the fact things are in decent nick.

Then, of course, one day, you realise its gone too far and you've created a monster and no way to turn. You've got used to spending minimum, budgets have been flexed to that, but you have a right mess to sort.

I'm convinced that's what happened with potholes.

Cameron said don't increase council tax above x%
Councils managed that by cutting back on maintenance services as salaries and materials increased and got away with it whilst the infrastructure was living on past maintenance
Then, wham, we are facing bust budgets because of inflation and everything let go has become a mess. They've nowhere to turn because of decisions made before - some of which to be fair weren't their choice!

@Fluffyhoglets i would invite anyone criticising to actually look through the budgets - the statutory spending makes up something like 90% of expenditure which leaves very little left for non statutory. Most spending for an authority I worked in was on children’s and adult social care, look at the cost of a child with complex needs in care. It’s astronomical and a huge proportion of budgets. You can’t cut that spending.

People really don't understand the dire situation councils are in and buy the right wing line that there's plenty of money it's just being spent where it shouldn't.
Social care is a huge expense and it's statutory so has to be done. As is providing homeless temp accommodation.
Other non-statutory stuff is done as cheaply as possible as spending more or spending to prevent isn't always possible.
Hopefully it will improve.
The last govt gave money for certain things but then if it was something councils needed often they had to contribute some themselves to get any of the funding. Or it has rules attached.

There just isn’t enough money to do that. You understand that one in five councils expect to be functionally bankrupt by next year?

Also if you don’t spend the money from a “pot” you can’t carry it forward or keep it in reserve. You have to spend it. Otherwise you will be deemed to be over funded and lose the budget the following year. That leads to lots of waste, because you’re spending smaller amounts of money for the sake of it and don’t have the ability to build a sinking fund.

This infuriates me. Not quite the same, but I used to work for a housing association and the amount of money they would waste on repairing an ancient boiler time and time again, for example, instead of simply paying to have a new one installed (talking tens of thousands for one person's boiler in one memorable case when a new boiler would have cost 4k max) used to make me despair.

I work in local authority - the budgets are SO frustrating. You can get a pot of money from central gov for a particular scheme, but it must be spent on that scheme. Even if you have change from that pot, it can’t be diverted to another service area. That’s a big issue. There is sometimes a lack of joined up thinking.

FWIW if I want a new pen I have to approach the office manager and put a good case forward…!

My DH is involved in the local council (over and above his full time job). He does it as his way to give back to our community. He is often physically 'out there' removing dead leaves, cutting back, litter-picking, etc. His observations are:

• There isn't enough money. Resources are really over-stretched and huge amounts of money goes on adult social care rather than infrastructure.
• The council regularly is ripped off by contractors when it should buy services more cheaply which then leads to over-stretched resources being more over-stretched. (Obviously they go through procurement processes but if those awarding contracts don't recognise that it shouldn't cost £50k to tarmac a small layby but suppliers elevate their prices and come in at the same price point then it will always cost £50k to tarmac a layby that's the length of 2 cars. (Maybe I should go and do that work myself for £50k minus costs!))
• Some council workers are ineffective and don't plan ahead (but that's true in most companies, professions, walks of life
• Few people contribute to their communities and if more of us did it then we'd all benefit.

In 2020, the nearest large town had some Covid funding. They used it to widen a cycle lane on the ring road. No one used the cycle lane, because the town centre is pedestrianised. All it achieved was to cause traffic jams on the ring road. It was swiftly and quietly removed shortly afterwards and the money essentially wasted.

Here, it’s not a question of deciding what to prioritise. It’s a question of doing a job badly and then having to do it again very soon afterwards. That can’t be cost effective. If you patch a pothole and it fails within a week or so, so you have to do it again, that’s not saving any money.

Having a plan for clearing clogged ditches and rifes would prevent much of the flooding that takes place here. That was proven last year, when the council eventually had to spend the money to avoid major roads being regularly flooded.

Surely you can fight the fire that’s burning, then make proper plans, so that you don’t have to rush around putting out fires every year.

You said it better than me!

Same problem here. Clear the drains and a big problem solved. But my council, although bankrupt, can find the money to paint rainbows on the road.

DH has just retired from the highway management team.
At one time there were 15 people to work out where any problems were.
The area was split into sections now 1 person is in charge of 3 sections.
The day he finished there were only 5 and he is not being replaced.
The actual maintenance teams has gone from 10 down to 3.
Road gully cleaning was always held twice a year now it's every 18 months.