To think Local Government is full of pointless jobs that exist just to justify managers’ roles?

Not in my department

Lol@team leaders earning 80k. 80k is top end of a head of service salary.

Yes, this is what I see, some roles where people are utterly broken and burnt out and overworked and others where people spend a lot of time and energy justifying their own existence

We had highly paid "business managers" at my old work. Their job description was wildly vague and they didn't need any skills experience beyond GCSEs. I think the concept was that they would help facilitate communication between different departments but it was just insanity as they had no technical knowledge and it worked much better once we finally got rid of them and managers etc just spoke to each other. They would constantly be asking me for reports and data but then do nothing meaningful with it. But you could earn more wafting around throwing vaguely corporate catch phrases around than you could as a highly experienced technical specialist

Every time I went into a meeting with our "business partner" he looked like he had just woken up from a good nap

Yes, there are. One on here is virtually word for word of one I saw the other day. I'm sure it's just a cut and paste job. 🤔

(and the team leader role pays around £80k plus pension etc)

I think what we have is just too many layers of management. In a small department there are team leaders, each with a team of 4-5. Then a layer above that managing a team of 20. Then a layer above that managing a team of 40. Then layer above that managing 80 or so . And then assistant directors and directors
There must be almost as many managers as there are technical specialists, and this is for a highly professional part of the organisation where people don't need much "hands on" management or guidance. A lot of the actual supervision and support happens below team leader level.

If they weren’t so useless?

I'm yet to see 1 post that specifies exactly which roles are useless. Which tells me there aren’t any examples to be found.

Just vague generalisations that contradict actual facts like the reduction of council workers/jobs.

I'm in a unitary authority.

Adult social care has four social workers to cover 150,000 people. Community occupational therapy has two OT assistants to service the community. People and departments like this are at breaking point.

The authority recent mothballed one of its offices, a massive building, meaning the other building has everyone squished in like sardines.

Apart from the registrar who has an enormous office all to themselves (you could fit 20 odd people in it comfortably each with their own desk), and only takes customers by appointment. And really doesn't have a vast amount of work to do. They are full time when 4/5 would be plenty.

I completely agree with you OP.

All of them are useless?

Tell us what job it is you do so we can decide if you are useless, public slated and should be gotten rid of.

If they weren’t so useless, people wouldn’t complain. Get over yourself.

You are not being unreasonable.

If it’s not civil servants stealing from the taxpayer, it local government taking the piss. These people are useless and are basically robbing the public purse. Doing all they can to avoid working, taking endless sick time, skiving and being mostly useless. And yet they keep being given more and more money to do naff all. Thats why the paying public is getting sick of them.

I’m becoming sick of these identical threads declaring whole swathes of other people jobs ‘useless’. Yes of course some people don’t pull their weight as with any organisation, but most people cover at least their basic job description and many others go above and beyond with little thanks or pay.

These are people with bills to pay, mouths to feed, same worries as many others, yet because they work for the state, their livelihoods don’t matter, their mortgages and rent, childcare costs, credit card bill, being able to take their elderly parents to the garden centre, none of it matters.

It must be so demoralising given how difficult the world is nowadays in general for public sector workers to see themselves being labelled useless and unwanted/needed every time they watch the news or open a paper.

These are people, and our fellow countrymen and workers. It’s disgusting rhetoric.

Local authority job roles are created at a much higher level than that of the manager who manages the teams. I'm not say the staffing structures are always the most efficient, but I can tell you that's not the result of middle managers trying to garner status by increasing their own number of direct reports. These decisions are made at executive level and those people's salaries don't depend on having additional people on the pay roll doing nothing.

Are you related to Elon?

There are three levels of council where I live. Parish and district councils do a good job. District do a lot of the basics that the public rely on and yet seem very short staffed.

At county council level, there are some competent departments, but others have been found lacking, especially SEN provision and child protection.

Also some of the roles at county level are a complete waste of taxpayers money, replicating what the private or voluntary sectors could do better. Worryingly, there has been a proposal to scrap the district councils and give more power and more resources to the county council.

Yes. Give examples otherwise you're not helping. Which teams and roles could the council do away with?

DH was a road technician which meant he was tracking pot holes, sink holes etc.
Insurance claims, tracing blocked grids. Setting up a gang to do the repairs.
At that time he was 1 of 15 for a whole county.
The day he was made redundant that number had been reduced to 1 in 10.
Now it's 1 in 6.
These workers do not have an office they work out of a van.

No we need specific examples not generalities I’m afraid.

Yes it almost feels like Labour Party researchers via their social media team have been tasked with stirring up ‘debate’ to test the waters on severe cuts.

I expect Rachel Reeves will be receiving a report by end the month.

I have a friend who works for a council in the education department and when school is starting or on they do crazy amounts of work but when it's school holidays there's nothing at all. But they still have to go in and sit there. They aren't allowed to go on the internet so they literally do nothing all day, for weeks at a time.

Most of the public sector is a waste of money. They should concentrate on what people think is important. Emptying the bins and fixing the roads. Instead of having meetings about meetings.

There are a lot of these goady posts about public sector workers at the moment.

Can you give an example? I don’t doubt there are some roles that could change but your argument is very vague, if there are so many teams sitting idle then name some you’d get rid of.

District councils don't deal with road repairs