Examples of waste in public sector?

[Hammy02]

I started a 3 month temp contract and they put me on a 2 day induction course. I didn't need to know the minutae of the organisation for a 3 month contract.
Had to fill out a form to get a book of stamps.
Had to fill out a form to get space in Outlook increased. No-one was EVER turned down for this so what was the point in the form?!

Green, thats great. Question is, if you can do it why doesn't everyone?

I have been a public sector accountant for the last 10 years and seen some shocking examples of wasted money and resources.

E.g. Funding staff parties from their own budget, an admin assistant using the end of year revenue budget to buy a load of capital equipment which later turned out to be unsuitable for the work their team did. It was still sat in their office when I left that particular organisation a year later.

Ordering state of the art mobile phones for everyone in the team when they are office based and can talk to each other across the room.

Not notifying payroll that a member of staff had left and continuing to pay them for 8 months (money not recovered).

Ordering expensive business vehicles with the organisation picking up the increased cost between the car chosen and the standard model.

I often found the biggest issues arose through lack of training. When I worked for the NHS it was not uncommon to find a nurse who was absolutely wonderful at her job suddenly promoted to head of service and given a mahoosive budget with no financial training whatsoever. They can't see their accountant for everything and so decisions are made on very little financial knowledge (e.g. capital/revenue purchase like above). It isn't always people trying to get something for nothing (though those are the examples that stay with you).

The problem in public sector is funds are often ring fenced so you have the ludicrous situation of one department trying to cut costs every which way whilst another tries frantically to waste money.

But what can people do? If the government say "here is £500,000, you must spend it on reducing your carbon footprint" your hands are tied.

People complain that public services aren't run like a business when in many cases it wouldn't be wise or possible. The section I work in is self-funding, we can charge for services under cost recovery, but we're not allowed to make a profit.

The constant employment of Temps at eye wateringly high rates.

I was a temp Medical Secretary for the NHS for some years and was offered a permanent job every couple of months, which I always turned down, wasn't worth it for the reduction in wages. Vicious circle really, no one will work for them because it doesn't pay very well so they employ temps, just pay the perm staff decent wages for crying out loud.

Interesting. I am also a public sector worker. Have to provide my own pens, notepads, stapler etc as the cheap ones provided by my employer are not fit for the the purpose! Manager now has to check ALL expenses claims, even a bus fare to a meeting. No refreshments provided whatsoever. We even had to buy cups etc for visiting colleagues to have a cup of tea (ingredients also bought by us). On the other hand I know of contractors at Head Office, who were being paid extortionate amounts of money £1000 a day, £2000 in some cases to manage projects because the organisation refused to fund training for its own staff who are paid a lot less - a fair few of whom are not only graduates but extremely capable.

There is shocking waste in the public sector. The worst is the spending of money just for the heel of it in order to spend up their budget, its criminal really.

I'm great at blathering me.

Don't worry, I shall vigorously berate myself for daring to extend the established parameters of a thread (which surely by its nature is a comparison with other sectors otherwise why specify...) by comparing ithe designated sector with another of which I have experience.

Naughty me.

I am a Civil Servant.
In my organisation they have stopped any catering for meetings. All stationary can be only ordered once a month and your request has to go through a senior manager for approval, if you run out, its tough!
So many people are being laid off it is actually a bit frightening.

This was a waste of £128000 of tax payers money.

www.metro.co.uk/news/853644-rafs-128-000-spend-on-bat-houses-reaches-new-levels-of-absurdity

They never needed to rehouse the bats in the end anyway but hey ho, they can always recoup the money elsewhere with something like redundancies perhaps???

I worked on a BIG public sector project we'd won a few years ago. The waste disgusted me.

Our company (understandably) had loaded the project with as much staff as they could...since we were charging the govt £1200 per day for each person. THEN the govt dept had exactly the same staff to "partner" us. So for example I am an IT geek responsible for designing a network widget. The govt would employ a contractor on about £500-£1000 per day to validate what I design as correct and met their needs.

Cue virtually no productive work being done unless you count endless meetings as "productive".

In a subproject I was asked to consult on, the dept wanted to spend £1million (approx) to build a "tactical" website (cant say what) which would only last 18 months. The chief driver for doing this was so the guy responsible would get a £28k bonus. I don't think I was popular when I suggested the dept just give him the cash and save the other £972k!

I used to work in private practice, and one of my clients was a government agency. The work was won through a tender, which cost a fortune for the government agency to procure every five years.

I always thought the staff at government agency spent most of their times in meetings, and many of them worked at a slow/ very laid back pace.

It took a very long time for anything to ever get done, and nobody ever seemed busy. I also thought the staff were wasteful with taxpayers money.

I came away thinking that the work they carried out, could be done with less than half the staff, if it was sub-contracted to the private sector.

Staff who work 60 hours a week for no overtime.

Staff who get 12 p a mile for petrol which doesn't cover costs.

A team of 150 whose average absence was 0.9 days per year.

IT and Government departments...

Deep breaths...

No nikynonker, you're just great at stating the bleeding obvious for no discernible reason

Gottakeepchaning I completely agree. I worked for a PCT and we had to pay for our own hotels if we travelled for work, I never reclaimed an expense travelling to a meeting once. I also never got paid for my overtime nor was I allowed flexible working to take the time back.

I also took work home every week just to stay on top of the workload because they wouldn't recruit to fill vacancies. I was also paid £10k lower than people doing the same job, with the same qualifications in the private sector. It was partly why I left in the end. I got a 50% payrise joining my new organisation and couldn't believe I wasn't expected to pay for my own travel or subs. I felt like I was taking advantage or something!

I considered going back for a promotion about 3 years ago but DH reminded of how "They took their pound of flesh" and I realised I just can't do it with dc.

Most people working in the public sector, IME, really believe in improving things and spending public money well.

PFI. Nuff said.

overpaid managers?? See I think that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. And unfortunately the public sector is full of underpaid monkeys trying their best. Agree that some of the problems in NHS is clinical staff being promoted to management jobs when they have absolutely no finance experience and can't see further than their own department.

I currently manage a small team - one of whom manages a slightly bigger team. I get paid less than her - but I'm the one ultimately responsible for her team. She is a great nurse - but a useless manager.

My mum works as a Housing Officer - all headed paper in the entire council has the Chief Executive's name printed on it. Every time the Chief Executive leaves (seems to be about every 3 yrs) all the paper has to be thrown away and reprinted with the new Chief Exec's name on which costs tens of thousands of pounds. Why don't they just have head paper with out the Chief Execs name on?

2 people have left in my Mums' Dept and they have not been replaced. My mum has noticed that her work load has not be affect at all, which, considering they had both worked there for over 10 yrs has left my Mum scratching her head as to what they did all day.

The pens that my sister gets free from the stationery cupboard in her central government job cost about £2 each. In my very highly profitable private sector employer, we get given really, really cheap biros - I buy my own pens.

A lot of her colleagues get paid for full time work when they usually only work three days a week.

My friend who works in local government is a senior manager, getting paid around £50k a year and never, ever works unpaid overtime - she clocks up weeks of TOIL which then have to be covered by a temp worker. I don't know anyone in the private sector who gets paid overtime if they're earning that kind of money. Oh, did I mention she gets a rent free, utilities free flat as part of her job? Until about 10 years ago, even their phone bills were paid by the council until one of her colleagues ran up a £600 phone bill in one month.

She works for the council where I used to pay my council tax :(

Senior manager...overtime?

Since when did any professional get overtime?