To wonder why civil service haters don't understand that cutting 10,000 jobs is going to hurt everyone

Where is that coming from? No way any of that passes through all the checks our expenses go through. I'm barely allowed enough to buy a meal deal when I'm on official business and our allowance per mile driving has been the same since about 2002. We have to stay in budget hotels and buy our own coffee!
Ministers and their aides might get away with crap like that but my section of the Civil Service never would. I once put in a receipt for lunch and had to remove the 10p for the carrier bag because it wasn't covered.

So the claimant could get around £900-£1000 free cash every month, plus the other free stuff (prescriptions aren't free in Scotland; they are free at the point of use, PAID FOR BY TAXPAYERS). The country is still £30k better off, and if the CS is a skilled worker, they will find other work so won't need to scrimp by on benefits. It's a win.

Not necessarily people deliberately swinging the lead and not being efficient, but if you've not worked in a more dynamic organisation with a "can do" attitude, it's easy to fall into lazy ways and not think about how something can be done more efficiently, especially if everyone around you is "plodding". New starters just emulate what everyone else is doing. As I say, probably not deliberate that they're inefficient, just not seen how more efficient, faster moving organisations can work.

This kind of post makes me wish the entire Civil service would down tools for a month so the impact could be seen.

Not sure how it’s going to hurt anyone.

Civil service are leeching off the public.

Apparently, British diplomats abroad are spending £2k a time on government credit cards in local shoe shops and £2k a time on premium coffee pods.

Civil service is a scourge on public finances.

Where do I say I was her manager? I wasn't! I was a very lowly 19 year old Administrative Assistant 😆

@Arraminta
So you are basing your views of the civil service on an experience over 30 years ago.
If you were her manager still no reason why you couldn't have done something about it though
The civil service I left after 30 years was very different to the one I started in

Well, probably because it was about 33 years ago? She was nearing retirement and I think everyone just turned a blind eye?

Look, either you're too unimaginative to understand that the majority of people don't work Monday to Friday 9 - 5 anymore or you also should be doing something useful like working instead of sitting on Mumsnet all afternoon.

So which is it? Are you a shift worker like the poster you are berating for being on mumsnet at 4.30 despite having a high skilled job or are you an unemployed lout sitting on social media instead of working for a living?

If you had a staff member drunk every day why didn't you do something about it.

Cos it didn't happen.

@Arraminta

If you had a staff member drunk every day why didn't you do something about it.

In my team it would have been dealt with.

Okay.. a single person without children and disabilities is entitled to just under £400 per month plus help with rent and reduced council tax, we already get free prescriptions in Scotland.

• "In addition to the Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), those on a low income or facing financial hardship may also be eligible for Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, and council tax reductions." Not to mention free prescriptions, dental care, child tax credits.
• Income Support.
• Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA).
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

It’s all rehearsed bollocks. Everyone knows what they’re going to be asked. It’s so contrived!!

I had an ex bf who worked for DWP. I stayed at his and decided to work from his the next day as it was one of his three wfh days. I kid you not he made one single phone call and wrote one letter. That was his days work!

I think anything customer facing in the public sector is busy and demanding. It's the Managers who have meetings for meetings that are a complete waste of money

We need more medics not managers.

Civil Service interviews are such bollocks - never ask about your knowledge or experience, just how you “saw the big picture.”

Plus don’t forget the huge pension benefits CS are on too.

Agree - we are overloaded at the moment. I am an SEO doing two people’s jobs. Yet we don’t have enough people at HEO or EO level to do the work delivery, and so customers suffer. Instead managers are proposing more SEOs. Plus we’ve had a recruitment freeze for the past year so the team is dwindling as people leave, and I’m having to pick up work that would usually be done by someone two levels below me.

I didn’t mind back in the day when’s civil service salary was clearly substantially lower than a company salary at a similar level

I think the usual argument is that public services won't be able to attract the best candidates if they don't pay well, @TrainGame, and that has merit

Or at least it would have if the stultifying, "can't do" mindset could be changed, and if as a consequence better staff could be attracted and retained

Edited to add, after your last post, that our own council outsourced most of the libraries to an organisation which (predictably) turned out to be just another funding sponge, and even with the use of volunteers it's finished up costing over twice what running the places themselves did
On the bright side though the head of said organisation's the brother of the chair of the committe who drove this, so at least that's something

Working in customer service in the CS, I don't recognise these tales of shirkers with not much to do. We are swamped! I never worked this hard in the private or charitable sector.

Reading stuff like this makes me think no wonder most of the local councils in the U.K. are going bust. No one is doing any work and yet still we keep paying salaries!!

Ive said for years that local government needs a complete overhaul. Don’t get me started on non-performing contacts that go external suppliers of services like Compass and Veolia who are locked in for very long periods- think 7 or 8 years and then do a terrible job because the local authority won’t enforce the contract penalties. Local authorities seem to have form for ‘outsourcing’ services, signing horrendous contracts and then lazing about in their offices or off sick while their local area falls into wrack and ruin.

We get such poor value for money. I don’t know what the answer is but £3 trillion of debt isn’t going away. Someone needs to do something. I’d willing take Elon Musk and his Doge team to rip through local authorities right now, if I could.

My friend was told to stop being so productive as they were making others look bad too. It was a dull job though, and their thinking was that the more they plough through, the quicker the day went.

They also said that talk of ‘statutory sick days’ was rife. If you hadn’t taken at least 10 days off sick in a year, the view was you were a total mug!

A friend of mine has recently joined a local authority from the private sector. After 2 weeks her manager told her to slow down as she was making the others in the dept look bad. She does about 1-2 hours work a day now and potters around the house with her laptop the rest of the time. About a quarter of her team are generally off sick/stress etc.