Public Sector Cuts

[firsttimemum77]

More of a wwyd...

Public sector employees are currently being 'consulted' about where cuts could be made to maximise savings and minimising job losses.

What do you think / what would you do to make savings?

One of the suggestions I put forward is for Councillors not to be paid so much. In most LA's the members allowance bill alone is over a million pounds and most of these members have a fulltime job so earn a fulltime wage and then get members allowances say a flat rate of £10,000 then a special responsibility allowance I.e leader £31,000, deputy leader £21,000 a cabinet member £12,000 etc and the claim travel etc ontop! Surely being a councillor is a vocation not a job and these people choose to stand to be elected to serve their community , because they are supposed to care...?

Anyway where would you make cuts? I will be using the good responses to put forward at the LA I work for.

Sorry I should clarify - it's a million pounds a year.

Not really one for the LA, but I'm shocked by the benefits police officers get. The overtime rates, call out rates, so much for answering the phone at home, fantastic pension after 30 years service, meal allowances, etc.

Other public sector workers don't get such generous allowances. If I work overtime its at my normal rate, I'll have to work till I'm 65 for a pension rather than being able to retire at 50, I have to provide all my own meals even if I stay on unexpectedly and work a double shift if they're short on the late shift.

Expenses include: lunch, hotel stays, travel Inc fuel, stationary, stamps, mobile phone costs etc

This is ontop of being provided with stationary, a computer and broadband at home, a phoneline at home, mobile phones.

What I am saying is that majority of councillors have a ft job and therefore being a councillor will always cone second. They should not be paid a 'salary' for it. I agree they should not be out of pocket and expenses for such are fine.

Stripey, are you a nurse/midwife?

Sounds all too familiar! Think my local trust runs on the goodwill of the staff. I am currently owed about 25 hours in time owing due to staying late. I wont get it back nor will i be paid for it.

We don't get anywhere near the perks that the police get.

i think teachers/other local authority employees courses/conferences should not be booked at posh hotels including 3 course lunches. I hate to think of the money that just my courses this year have cost. I would be perfectly happy to go to a course in a spare classroom in some school and take some sandwiches with me.

I also think it is wrong that council employess get reduced membership at my local gym/sports centre as I assume the copuncil pays the difference. Its very nice for me, but not necessary.

Geek - yes I'm a midwife. I'm often working late and not getting paid for it or time back. And all the training I have to do unpaid in my own time, K2, generic package, cannulation package, suturing package, e-learning packages (about 15 different ones to do every other year), assignments for mentorship course, etc.

I can't think that there's many other jobs where you'd be expected to do this. My sister is a copper and the difference astounds me.

Stripey - In relation to meals etc I know what you mean. Even directors, chief officers on high salaries are provided with lunch, drinks, chocolate bars and crisps etc at meetings because they have a 'working lunch' paid for out of the public purse, but we still have to go out and buy our own lunch no matter what and often end up at a meeting which overruns my lunch hour anyway!

I appreciate what you are saying about councillors but I disagree. I think it is very important that councillors continue to be paid an allowance.

There is a real problem in attracting high quality candidates to stand for council. Those people who will make good candidates are often out pursuing careers that would make it difficult for them to give the time commitment to local government.

I would worry about making the role unpaid. Would you really only want to attract those who are independently wealthy enough to commit only to local government? Or those who run their own businesses? I think that making the role unpaid would make the role even more unrepresentative of the community than it is now.

I must admit to an element of self-interest. My father has been an elected member for many more years than I care to remember and the hours he has put in, and the sacrifices he has made in his own career have been enough to put me off standing for council.

I would look elsewhere for cuts. I would look at dismantling the tiers of local government. Where I live there is still a County Council, District Councils, Parish and Town Councils, all with their own HR, Finance, etc. Now that is a waste.

On the reduced gym membership, it is extremely unlikely that the council would pick up the difference. Local businesses often offer discounts to large employers in return for advertising within intranets for example. For employers, the return is a healthier workforce, reduced absence etc.

ah fair enough - I'll keep my gym membership then

I read about a council which managed to save over £10,000 in a year by stopping providing biscuits in meetings.

I would look at all of these little wrinkles which occur - look at every single cost and say 'where could I make a saving here?'. This means absolutely everything, less & cheaper stationary, switching off the lights, managing space etc.

One of the big savings is managing people costs. In some organisations such as the police overtime has become normal. Some people do mange their jobs so that they are doing overtime to suit themselves. This has to be cut so that overtime is only done when necessary. Many organisations dont mange sick leave so that some people stay off sick to the maximum. Better controls should be used so that sick leave is controlled.

No senior manager is going to want to admit that their organisation could be run more efficiently at lower cost because that is admitting to current failure. Senior managers are going to have to be honest. I wont be holding my breath.

At the hospital where I work they've switched to cheaper, smaller Inco sheets. These are the absorbant sheets that no doubt are used for incontinent patients but we also use them on the postnatal and labour ward for women where their waters have gone or incase they leak blood overnight afterwards.

They're too small though so I end up putting 2 on a bed where before I'd only have used one. So sometimes going for the cheaper option is a false economy.

Suzie, the council I work for has stopped bottled water at meetings saving £41,000. Although just yesterday I saw this did not apply to the CE meetings with directors! Biscuits have also been cancelled - something that most of us thought was wastage well before the cuts started being made.

There are also alot of managers managing managers.

Ilaregubb - I am not saying make it unpaid, but don't pay as much as is currently being paid! Some, not all, councillors only do it because it gives them some sort of Kudos! Some of the standard of members the LA I work for has attracted is scary! And I am sure for some of them it is the ££ and status, not much else... Sad but true. They only have to attend one meeting in 6 months and they get their allowance as ling as they have been seen at 1 meeting - that's wrong!

long

There's a theory in my (public sector) workplace that anyone in the public sector with a reserved or named parking safe can be safely sacked with no discernible impact on performance. I happen to think there's more than a grain of truth to it...

Aside from that anyone who works in any kind of government PR, marketing or "communications" related role simply shouldn't be there.

My local council and police shouldn't be spending millions telling me how great a job they're doing - spend the money actually doing it instead...

Totally agree with the communications point! We have quite a large team who work in communications and also a very 'propaganda' type newspaper for residents! Residents say waste of money get rid of it - council don't listen!

If you get rid of all comms staff though who is going to produce information about the services that are provided. It's like all support staff if you reduced them too significantly then front line staff end up doing jobs that they are not experts in and takes away from the job they are paid to do.

There are huge numbers of staff who have been at my council for years and are just dead wood but the procedures for getting rid of them are so lengthy and almost impossible to implement that those staff just bumble along not doing much and getting paid for it.

I actually think we should get rid of councillors and let the directors and managers who are paid considerable amounts get on with the job, and be accountable to an independent body.

Choufleur - am not saying get rid of all communications staff, but perhaps not need so many in a team doing the same job. Totally agree about the deadwood!

I do think we need councillors, again perhaps not so many. We have 63 at the Council I work for. At least 15 of them we hardly see - they still get 'paid' whereas if I on the other hand didn't turn up for work would get the sack!

Fundamentally, local govt has had to grow because of the amount of legislation that central govt has made it responsible for. LAs are over regulated and don't really have much power to be honest. Central govt decides what we should do and then we have to get on and do it - usually in a totally prescriptive way. I think a review of LA functions needs to be undertaken and the statutory burden removed. For example do we really need a register of water towers?!

Until then the axe will always fall on those services which are discretionary rather than statutory. Leisure, tourism, econmic development etc

There is genuinely not much cash floating around in my LA for anything - we've been trimming for years.

However I think most comms teams could be "trimmed" tbh. I think that the proliferation of policy jobs has been a bit worrying and there could be direction of those resources into actually delivering a service.

Support services can be shared. Land charges and electoral registration could be amalgamated into geographical areas.

We have an internal audit function but also have to be externally audited for weeks at a time by external audit. We don't get a choice of who is appointed as our external auditors, nor can we negotiate the fee. This costs over £100k per year.

Numbers of members could be reduced. There is one member at my LA who turns up to the minumum number of meetings per year (you must attend 1 every six months) - that cost about £3000 per meeting by my reckoning.

Biscuits and tea are long gone at my LA!

Blaming lengthy procedures for failing to get rid of incapable staff is a continual bleat of the incapable manager. It is perfectly possible to performance manage someone out of local government. Managers tend to move the problem around, however.

I'd get public sector bodies sharing resource functions. NHS, Police Authority, Local Government, quangos and civil service all employ people in my area and we could all share resource staff.

I do agree about the numbers of communications staff but I wouldn't get rid of them all. I'd also reduce the number of people who are employed merely to crunch performance statistics, generate inspection reports etc.

I can't agree about reducing the number of members, sorry. Local government needs to be more democratic, not less.

I think the bureaucracy involved in any public sector organisation costs £££££s.

In my organisation so many managers/committees have to sign off on a decision that it is almost not worth it. If we had managers accountable for what their team delivers and get rid of the middle managers who sole purpose seems to be "check up" on people I think we would be much more efficient.

I also agree that there are alot of non jobs that could easily be cut, however most of them have come about due to central government legislation. Eg we by law have to produce two publications to the households in our area a year informing them of the services we provide. Totally pointless!

I would agree llareggub if the calibre of members improved. At the moment there are many members who are not capable of representing their constituents effectively. Also the member profile is still very much male,white and retired on the whole. To attract a more representative section of society allowances will have to go up.

My bug bear is meetings. I'm on maty leave at the moment, but when at work the amount of time I spend at pointless meetings is unbelieveable. We have monthly meetings set up for numerous topics, where representatives of each of the departments have to attend. Usually the agendas are just about information sharing, all the work happens outwith meetings. The amount of time wasted is ridiculous. Everyone thinks that their area of interest is the most important thing happening and so deserves a working group or a steering group or a strategy group. Because of the size of the organisation we'll often have local groups and then an organisation wide group, and we might have a "joint" group that involves other organisations. So 3 meetings a month, travel time, reading time etc etc for all of them. I've often sat at a table and thought "how much is all this costing? Don't you lot have something more important to do??". We have numerous people who do nothing but attend meetings on behalf of other people - its daft.

There have been occasions when I've realised that I'm actually in a meeting about another meeting....