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.

Central government tops up the local government grant pro rata to the student population - so towns and cities with a disproportionate number of students shouldn't lose out in theory - though in practice it's a pretty murky calculation and I'm sure some towns feel shortchanged.

You could make students pay council tax, but in order for them to afford it you'd probably have to increase their maintenance loans, most of which would need to be paid off by the tax payer. And enforcing it on a population of housesharers who move every year, many of whom are overseas students, going to move back abroad at the end of their degree would be hugely expensive.

Those sound like pretty commercial salaries to me, considering they would also have gold plated pensions on top.

These are not old claims from the 2012 court case (which is still being paid off), these are extra and relate to decisions made in the last five years or so.

I thought that it was usually the landlord who paid council tax (where due) for a HMO.

The "Director of Strategy, Equalities and Partnerships" is on such a six-figure salary, despite coming into the job with no relevant experience at all.

@Awittyfool no we are East Midlands, our SEND dept is in meltdown it isn't functioning at all. They miss 98% of statutory deadlines and are now averaging 85 formal complaints a week. That said people are formally complaining because they haven't reopened the phonelines since Covid and there have been an out of office response to all emails stating they aren't responding to emails or giving updates due to capacity issues. That the Head of SEND has as his out of office "I will delete all emails receieved unless I am in the office" so considering he's either on flexi leave, annual leave, sick leave, TOIL or working from home he isn't responding either. Ofsted due any day and they have apparently been practising every Monday for months presumably practising hiding and covering up the reality.

@DdraigGoch I've no connection to BCC, so not familiar with that Director or their experience (what you've mentioned sounds like a recruitment issue rather than a problem with the salary level).

My initial post should have been more explicit with regards to salary expectations at that size of the organisation. Apparently BCC is the biggest local authority in Europe, and having looked it up, it has a budget of £3.2bn.

I'd expect Assistant Directors and up to CEO to be on £100-300k for overseeing a budget if that size. Clearly they didn't look after it well, so something has obviously gone very wrong.

No doubt people will be along soon to talk about back room waste, bloated councils and pay

I have relatives who work for two different councils, one is a relatively senior staff member. They all say that there is a lot of waste and some ( not all) staff members WFH are much less productive than they were when working in an office in teams and apparently it is quite difficult to discipline or sack them.

Fair point - that would help with enforceability.
DC1 is getting endless council tax enforcement letters addressed to a previous occupant of their HMO though.

The equal pay claims led by the unions have been plodding along for years all around the country, and the councils almost never win. A council with which I am more familiar (with a budget about half that of Birmingham) initially intended to fight all the way to the Supreme Court, but in the end, settled the claim. This was around 12 years ago at a cost estimated to be around £20m for which they had been making provisions as the case proceeded through tribunals, lower courts and appeals. The Birmingham case originates back in 2008 so they have had 15 years to settle and prepare to pay, but they appear to have done nothing.

It is yet another example of local government being badly run. Councils thought they could run property development better than property developers and failed at horrendous cost. They thought they could run energy supply businesses better than the private sector, and these all went belly up at massive cost to their local taxpayers.

The future for Birmingham residents could well be that council tax will increase by well over the maximum allowed by the government for the rest of the country each year for the next few years. For example the increase for 2023 was limited to 5% across the country, but Croydon, under a Section 114 notice had to put their council tax up by 15%.

I'm not sure that "recruitment issue" quite explains his appointment. Given his political connections I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than just "appointing the wrong candidate" (a pretty big cock-up in the context of the lack of relevant experience) and that there was something more to this appointment. Verging on corruption perhaps.

Yes they should have seen it coming

All true, I worked for one for over 40 years.
They are also very keen on wfh, so you can imagine how little work actually gets done.

Students have lots of money? Where, in fantasy land?!

Yes they do as that pay is low for private directors and if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Do you think that Gavin from the mailroom on min wage would be able to lead a council? No, you need proper experience and that does cost money.

Don't worry, the council leaders will all get big pay outs, go off for a bit of gardening leave and then pop back up in another local authority in a few months time. Just like the NHS.

Should get a central government juicy contract soon then

No one was accountable for anything. It wasn't their money they were wasting.

It all sounds woeful

Utter drivel. The council have a budget. They have poorly managed the budget. I have just started working with the public sector - frankly I am totally appalled by decisions made. This is not a Government issue - it's the lack of any sense in the senior team at the council.

Perhaps less spending on things like rainbow crossings?

Or changing road names to virtue signal?

Yeah... they got sued to hell and spent £100k on a botched It system

Sorry 100mil not k

Sadly every council has over paid heads ridiculous salaries I say stop paying these types of salaries there are others that work in far more demanding stressful jobs without the added perks for less.

It's infuriating when you clock the salaries half of them are on same with NHS they are over paying the wrong ones. Instead of helping those that are more on the front lines with better pay.

Woking spaffed millions on dodgy investments into dodgy companies all green lighted without due diligence by the then Tory Council. It was like there was a magic money tree powered by Tory cronyism - and the main guys retired and moved quickly away once it all came out.

Personally I think they should be prosecuted.