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.

God - I hate meetings too lal123 and avoid them like the plague. Especially the management meetings that don't have a topic. I take work to do at those meetings so at least I can say I achieved something.

Worked in Education & Social care & never been provided lunch at courses/meetings except for one course in the middle of nowhere where we got sandwiches. Our team planning days (4 per year-used for team training /team plans) has a budget of £29 for all 4! We also provide our own drinks & bicuits.

Our latest thing we are flagging up is e-procurement. I ordered an ink cartridge 2 weeks ago which will cost more because its through that rather than me nipping into town for a refill/new one. If it doesnt come before Thursday I'll have to do my printing in town (photos) which will cost a lot more.

I would suggest stop the consultation. How much is that costing???

put the names of all council employees in the hat and fire the first 10% you pick out.

If the rest dont make a saving in costs over and above the reduction in salaries + an improvement in services do another 5% till they get the message.

A little harsh maybe but apparently not to harsh for the private sector that pays the public sectors wages.

I was doing last offices on a lady last week, and gave her a wash with warm wipes, and I had a comment off the sister, basically saying that I shouldn't have used these wipes as they are far too expensive to use on a body, and if there needs to be band 5 cuts then the ones who waste money will be the first to go. also make sure I didn't use any sterile gauze to mop up any blood when I removed cannulas etc.
does anyone else think that this is quite unreasonable behaviour?

That's awful sneezecake, esp her remark about band 5 cuts. Are you a member of a unison or RCN?

Oh yes, ditch the meetings. When I think of how much of my life I have wasted in pointless meetings, I shudder.

When I first started in local government members in the most senior officers had their own lift, complete with plush carpet and wall painting. They had corridors that mere mortals like me were forbidden to enter.

I'm with RCN. but it's made me wonder a lot, there is a lot of talk about cutting nurses at band 5 level, I only work part time due to DS's health and I'm wondering if they are planning on culling us, but then who would look ater the patients??????
we have at least 20 band 6's on our until, they all claim office hours, not all of them have a patient when they work, (depends on staff/patient) levels, why aren't they looking at cutting them back?

I'm working in a statutory area and we are being told to make HUGE cuts. Redundancies are being threatened but there is a surplus of senior managers since the 2nd restructure in 2 years.

Bettydad - just think of that the next time you want your bin emptied, drop Betty off at school, you want to vote, need housing or claim benefit. If you get food poisoning from you local restaurant or get ripped off by a trader. If you want planning permission or don't like something that's built near you. What service don't you want or wouldn't mind a lengthy wait for?

And you're conveniently forgetting the large amount of private sector businesses that feed off the public sector.

llareggub -the CEX in my first LA had his own loo.

Appraisal systems. I'm in central gov & each person must each spend around a week a year on various appraisal related shite. Development managers must spent 4x that.

Just let my line manager write a fecking report on me and I'll add my bits. Oh, and I have been in job 8yrs do not NEED to be developed EVERY.SINGLE.YEAR.

FFS.

I would overhaul the courts system. The time and money wasted every single day in courts across the land is stupid! I am sure averyine who has done jury service would agree.

I would also change the way we look at jobs being done so workers benifit when they actually DO a good job rather than making sure they LOOK like they are doing good jobs via Statistics and figures.

In a previous career I worked in NHS finance for 10 years and the amount of money wasted would make your hair curl.i remember a hospital was to have a new childrens centre and millions of pounds were spent planning this facility, then at a stroke someone in Whitehall decided that what the city needed instead was a new oncology unit and so iy was all a complete waste, and don't get me started on computer systems.
Millions could be saved by getting rid of 90% of strategic management.

meetings should always be held standing up.That keeps 'em short!

"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"

You're joking right ? All overtime in our force has been cut; we have to do the first half hour of any overtime free "for the Queen", rank and file officers do not get call out rates, if you put in a claim for answering the phone at home it would be turned down even though you're entitled to it, we have to pay 11% of our salary for our pension. And meal allowance, what meal allowance ?

We get paid our wages, overtime if you've managed to wangle some and that's it.

Moobaa, I now work in the court arena and could not agree with you more. I could rant on for hours about the shambles known as Her Majesty's Court Service.

Oh yes appraisals, had mine last week. 2 hours and I'm on maternity leave from next week and won't be back til the next one.

Appraisals I find mine a total waste of time but HR always bang on about how vital they are to the effectiveness of the staff etc etc.

Appraisals: Yes- because without a checklist of 9 'competencies' how will I know whether or not I am 'changing with pace' at the correct level for my grade? You see I need to demonstrate this each year... Appraisal form currently 6 pages long.

HR justifying their existence again. SACK HR!

Jusifying my position within the 'golden thread'...

Ooh cathartic thread.
Kitty, the words 'competencies' 'benchmarks' and 'outcomes' send my blood pressure soaring.

Appraisals identify and give evidence of competent / incompetent employees-it seems daft to complain about a process which gets rid of 'dead wood'. It's also relatively quick to get rid of incompetent staff-should be no longer than a couple of months IF you have evidence and have given the right support.

I t.ink this whole thread has a bit of the turkeys voting for Christmas about it. Not many are questioning th,e central proposition: public services are wasteful and can be cut without harm. Well not in my LA they're not. We've never had a food/ ents. budget and we've cut an d saved for years in contrast to my friends in the private sector.

We should really be telling them they need to stop slashing at essentials and supplement our funding from elsewhere. I mean there are banks in 'profit' now, so clearly we get to have our billions back and the crisis is over.

Stop restructuring which requires private sector consultants (£), re-branding (£), wastes time (£) and pisses off the staff.

Get rid of poor performing staff. With all the frigging appraisals, it should be easier to see who needs to go.

Have better flexible working policies. There's a fair bit of "unofficial" flexible working. Make it clearer and easier then people can't take the piss. For example, we can't work from home without a commandment from god, part time is very restricted and god forbid if we want to claim for overtime (on average I would work til midnight during our busiest time of year yet overtime was frowned upon and up to the discretion of our managers). Also at certain times of the year, we don't have much to do. During these times, we should be allowed to take part time hours/unpaid leave etc. Instead we have to fanny about making work.

Change the way public sector organisations are funded. Departments have little incentive to save money. If a department spends less one year, they'll be expected to maintain that saving in future years. Which is fair enough. However if that saving was because of a one-off which won't happen in future years, then they are still expect to maintain it in future years. Even if they need the money. So you get the classic new carpets/stationery purchases just before the year end to "use up" any left over budget.

Bring back bonuses instead of annual performance increases in salary. It could be done so it was cheaper to give out small "token" bonuses. That would create a more tangible link between performance and pay, giving an incentive to do a better and more efficient job. At the moment if I get a certain rating I get a measly percentage increase which doesn't mean anything to me as only works out a tiny bit extra and I don't notice. So I don't really think about improving my performance (but as a professional, of course I do the best I can!)

Finally governments should learn from the mistakes of previous governments instead of thinking that they've got the answers and no-one could possibly have done it their way before. Then spending a fortune employing their mates consultants to come up with fixes. Speak to the old timers in the public sector and they will tell you (for free), it's all been done before.