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?!

I worked in the private sector and they spent a whole day singing karaoke!!

whoops sorry yeah that was the private sector.

I worked in the private sector, and they had an expensive fully integrated computer system, but they didnt train people properly, and the important people who were supposed to use it couldnt be bothered to learn/remember how to do it. so they had to employ many extra people to check, redo, send back everything...

the important people were supposed to be artistic or something, hence the reason I had this summer job, which paid my way through uni, stimulated the economy etc...
who says its a waste?

Oh yes and in the public sector you pay for your own Christmas meal/party which can only be outside office ours.

No company paying for a 3 hour boozy lunch followed by the christmas party.

I worked at one central government job that had so little provided for staff due to funding we even had to bring in our own cups and tea spoons.

I then moved to a Local Authority that didn't have enough desk space for everyone due to funding so if everyone happened to be at work and you were there last, you had to spend the day moving around meeting rooms and using other people's computers while they were in meetings.

I think the public sector is a little easy to pick on TBH.

All the cups/crockery/cutlery in our school staffroom are provided by staff. Ditto coffee and milk. And since the cleaners' contracts changed, they don't even clean the sink - it's our job apparently, although they won't provide anything to do it with so we also have to bring in our own cleaning materials! Teaching, eh, such a cushy job!

I have not read all the thread but is the point not that when the public sector waste money it is coming out of the tax payers pocket, and when the private sector waste money it comes out of the companies pocket?

Not always.

The private company I work for does the majority of it's work on public sector contracts.

I've doen a few short term contracts for the Local Authority's legal department and was astonished by the pettiness of some money saving schemes and all the admin for things that cost pennies.

Then on the other hand, the lawyers ahd such a cushy number. The caseload was so small compared to private practise. And I was paid ridiculously well for what I did (and the agency took a cut). A private firm would never pay those rates.

I worked in a hospital recently where I discovered that they paid £150 per mop bucket, amongst other shocking over-inflated purchases. When I questioned this, I was told that they were tied to the one supplier and "that was what they charged".

Negotiation with suppliers was just not done; costs were just accepted and paid.

i am employed by one public sector organisation and seconded to another. neither can agree who should provide me with stationary. so neither does, and i buy my own pens/diary/notebooks/files etc. sounds like a petty gripe, but it adds up.

i agree though that in a lot of organisations the lack of admin support is a waste of money, as i spend more time in this job doing my own filing/re-typing reports/taking messages for people/photocopying/scanning. I earn three times what a basic grade administrator does, but the push to save money has led to cutting back office staff, whereas we frontliners are seen as untouchable.

YYY regarding losing admin staff then SWs doing admin instead of SW

YYY at only allowed to buy from certain suppliers incl train tickets even when some have tailcards which would get them much cheaper.

YYY to agency staff (although all gone now & not replaced)

We also had £30 for our team away days( have to have 4 a year) for 10 of us. Which basically was a team meeting where we did team training/updates in practice etc(so actually useful). That's gone now though.

TOIL can only be claimed back 7 hours a month or 7 carried over so you never clear it.

I've got one

Benefits departments sending out letters in multiple copies, in the past I've had 2 or 3 letters dated the same day sent out to me telling something new on one letter. Of course each letters carries the standard pages detailing how to appeal the decision. Why can they not just put it all in one letter?

And why the need for the council to send me out a 4 page letter telling me that from the 1st of April to the 4th of April my housing benefit will be.........exactly the same as it is now, adn then from the 5th April it will still be the same amount, accompanied by all the calculations to show me how they worked that out? Apart from the dates on the letter it's an exact copy of the letter I received a year ago

At least you can get your your email box size increased OP. Everyone in my govt dept has a limit of 60MB which will not be increased under any circumstances. This is so low that I and most of my colleagues spend a good hour every week franticly shifting emails about and deleting stuff in order to be able to send emails. We do have an electronic filing system as well but it's so slow that it takes 10 minutes to file a single document.

I've been through 6 departmental restructurings in three years. It's this kind of stuff which grinds you down after a while

I used to be a nurse...

No perks at all

No bonus

No overtime - in fact you got less per hour if you did extra time as you were employed as Bank Staff and got taxed at 20% on a basic nurse's wage

No Christmas party

Had to fund our own tea and coffee

No petrol allowances or travel expenses even when they moved the ward to another county

Once got a Christmas present from the Trust - a £1.50 WH Smiths token, enough in those days to buy a copy of the Nursing Times

SUCKERS, the lot of us.

There is a theme here.....frontline workers e.g., teachers and nurses, seem to get no perks. Those not on the frontline, or higher up the greasy pole get all the perks....

No, goodbyemrchips, where private sector companies waste money it comes out of the end consumer's pocket.

The idea that the market and competition will force bad private sector companies and partnerships out of business is a myth. Lots of reasons why like imperfect knowledge, monopolies, few competitors in the market, cartels.

It's about time we started looking hard at private companies and partnerships to see if they are genuinely offering consumers value for money.

Ha!! Awaydays!! What a joke. Ours are done in a room upstairs. So basically it's a "meeting".

Public sector: I knew some people that were literally in meetings all day everyday. I don't know when they actually had time to do the actions from the meetings. Private sector, completely different attitude in that only the people that absolutely had to be there, attended the meetings.

My DH works for the public sector and his department is basically him and another bloke, they have to juggle all hols between them and do work flippin hard.
BUT, I worked in the public sector before having DS and here's what I saw.
Education advisors on 47k per annum doing their own typing and photocopying while their admin assistants on 16.5k photocopied colouring sheets for out of school Rainbow sessions!!
Refreshments for every single meeting - even the 30 minute ones.
A very fancy in house restaurant where all councillors ate free and staff received HUGE subsidies.
Ridiculous mileage and expenses claims.
Loads of pointless courses, held in venues that had to be paid for along with facilitators fees and refreshments, when there were available meeting rooms in the town hall for free.
Sure I could think of more, I think the biggest waste though was 4 executives on 100k each and a chief exec on 140k - blardy scandalous.

NHS here. ditto re: buying own stationery. Room I use never hoovered only bins emptied, bring in own cleaning materials, no sink except in ladies toilet, one for washing hands the other for cups (shudder),carpet 20 yrs old,covered in stains, lack of admin support so type own letters/reports, send out appt. cards, do own filing, computers so old they keep breaking down and take ages to work, reception not on computer so can't email messages, no budget for training materials or info for patients, no overtime, no away days no christmas party/bonus...........boring myself now, so will stop.

Why are people moaning about having to supply their own cups for tea and coffee? Do people really think it should be bought out of public money? Really?

I think whether you work in public or private sector, the cups should be brought in by staff. Everywhere i have worked (private) we have brought in any spare cups that have just been sitting in our cupboards unused.

It is also not unreasonable to have a tea fund.

Tea and coffee is fine. Materials and car use less so.

I saw on the news today that they're planning on spending £18 million evicting travellers from a site.

Surely it would be cheaper to find them somewhere else to settle if they really have to??

www.metro.co.uk/news/858124-eviction-order-approved-for-big-fat-gypsy-weddings-traveller-site

Anoth public sector worker here... My manager got a lot of faces at a meeting last year where (after hearing about budget cuts and how they were going to directly affect our service users) said that she would not be taking her two teams on an away day (after being given £1000 out of a budget) as she didn't feel it to be appropriate.

They genuinely couldn't understand it.

We are facing horrendous budget cuts, redundancy, teams being split apart, offices being sold etc. but we have to get on with it if we want our jobs.

Stories of wasted money just rub salt in the wounds.