To think Councils going bust are not all at fault?

[Turmerictolly]

Another council (Birmingham) declaring bankruptcy/severe financial difficulties. Yes, there has been some financial mismanagement but decades of austerity and squeeze from a Tory government haven't helped. I have connections to Birmingham and feel sorry for the sorry state it's in - the streets are filthy and depressing in a lot of areas.

These changes were made via the Equal Pay Act 1970, it's wasn't something sprung on unsuspecting councils by central government recently.

That various councils ignored this is on them. Birmingham were still underpaying female staff in 2012.

This

This

This is a very clearly Central Govt thing - believe in equal pay? Fucking pay them !

Totally agree OP, my Local District Council is just generally shit at a lot of things - generally because they don't have the 'nous' to be good at turning a penny into a pound and not getting too bogged down into taking all Directives (admin) as fact.

The CC is huge and doesn't give too many fucks about this District when it comes to service provision.

However, besides the UK norm, there isn't any 'obvious' local suppression of women to the extent that's found in B'ham.

Ridiculous yes it’s on them

Yes, the private sector - for example the shit-spreading water companies and our wonderful rail companies - are all amazing.

And their CEOs ask only millions each year for their efforts.

As a Brummie I’ve seen how bad the council has crumbled over the years.
Parks no longer looked after- despite the council boasting about how many there are. Once round the corner has a play area that has been closed for 3 years! The area I live in is neglected big time.

the city centre is a building site because the council has been granting planning permission for beauty projects instead of considering the needs of its residents.

library hours cut. leisure centres cut.
getting through to any department is a nightmare!

housing… I won’t even go there!

equal pay claims- these have been going on for ages, yet they didn’t factor in their budgets and now auditors have picked it up.

The only time you see any councillors is during election times.

I really wasn‘t surprised by the announcement today.

If you deal with LA SEND depts then you see an awful lot of money just thrown away and it's hard to have sympathy tbh. Our LA regularly uses barristers against unrepresented parents at Tribunal and still lose 99%. Where is the sense in spending hundreds and thousands of pounds to win one or two Tribunals a year? I was forced to appeal again this year, I wanted a £20k package, they forced me to appeal without having any alternative option then conceded the day before to an £80k package. Where is the sense in that? Dd is 20 the £80k would have seen out the end of the EHCP. Only it gets worse, rather than commissioning provision for 38 weeks they commissioned them for 52 so adding an extra 27% to the £80k because they didn't bother to establish the number of weeks. Last week they asked me to send links to the tech needed, it cost £875 but they didn't wait for the link they sent me a budget of £1200. That's one EHCP, so much wasted time and money.

You realise that the rail companies are just puppets of central government in Whitehall? Harper says "jump" and First Group says "how high?". Except for those run by the devolved administrations (Scotrail, Transport for Wales, Merseyrail and TfL), and it's no coincidence that those don't have any industrial relations issues.

This!!! If they had acted fairly in the first place, or not fought tooth and nail against paying what was owed (incurring huge legal fees), then they wouldn't be in this mess.
(I knew someone high up in the council when this first kicked off and she said they were digging their heels in hoping the ripped-off women would just give up)

Yes students should pay council tax

Really? They underpaid women for years and you think those women should not have got every penny they were due?
Would you accept such a settlement if you knew you were owed a whole lot more?

Agreed. A family member was a councillor for many years and was horrified by the cost of basic things. A speed bump cost £120k to install. Just crazy.

It wasn't in the days before the 1974 equal pay act! The claimants won because the council knew what they were doing was wrong and didn't care because y'know it's just women,and they don't count: but they do!

Do they need to pay £100-200k for these jobs?

Again: the underpayment post-dated the equal pay act, the council knew it was wrong but didn't care because it was low paid women who they did not expect to stand up for themselves!

So have I got this right, they're not really bankrupt, but despite it dragging on since goodness knows when they've never allocated anything in any of the annual budgets to cover the cost of this equal pay award? And now the intention is to declare bankruptcy to get out of paying it
That's shocking mismanagement by a number of accountants and councillors over many many years.

I hope those women affected have a class action going.

Why? They arnt working full time they are paying out exorbitant rent for a room and they are an investment for the future

It's a combination of so many factors.

Yes, some mismanagement / strange financial decisions.

Yes, the complete mishandling of the equal pay claims

Yes the computer system bought in for a price of £19million that still isn't completely sorted 3 years on and £100million spent so far

Yes, being the biggest LA and hugely cosmopolitan comes with it's own issues as well as all the positives.

Yes, having such a high % of U25s creates big financial holes - both high % of dc in the City, so all children and family services being provided by a relatively smaller % of adults than is usual. Also the high number of students attending the City's many Universities gives a disproportionate number of people not paying Council tax.

However, let's not forget the fact that £600million worth of cuts "savings" had to be made because of the Government cuts after bankers decided to gamble with other people's money prior to the crash in 2010. All "fat" was cut by about 2012, and then the cuts just kept on coming. They are talking about no "non-essential spending" being allowed, but that has been the case for the last 13 years. That isn't the City's fault.

@UsingChangeofName would you class pride events as essential then?

1970 equal pay act: what happened to the new edit button Mumsnet?!
(Ah: found it on this post: seems to be absent from posts which quote other posts)

@Theunamedcat so they don't use the bins, streets, local services etc?

So what if they are studying.

People going to work and a low wage pay CT, so should student.

Students have lots of money. They can contribute to the area they live in - unless they get no service due to say living on a remote campus etc.

They are only studying, they aren't special.

Thing is that on a wide basis yes there is underfunding by central government.

But on a local level we all know of council mismanagement and idiocy - people barely out of their teens being elected as councillors and playing at politics with declarations of solidarity to various causes, hair brained schemes around 20mph zones and ltns that take no account of the necessary travel patterns of working people, fortnightly or even monthly rubbish collections that may or may not happen but no workable alternative in place etc, while we can see our physical neighbourhood environment degenerate before our eyes, and when we try to contact anyone there is no one to talk to, and our council tax liability goes up and up.

Councils are up against it, for sure, but they don't help themselves when they spaff our money up the wall on (for instance) installing cycling bollards on a 200 yard stretch of road with no integrated infrastructure or plan as to how that might add any benefit at all to the area while failing to keep the basics running.

No. They as an organisation are though.

I can't dismiss a colleagues mistake from 10 years ago, I have to correct it.