Don’t councils understand that prevention is cheaper than fixing

[Cornercandy]

Councils are struggling with money for the past few years. So why do they cut back things like cleaning drains which are clogged up with dead leaves, sediment and rubbish? When the cost of getting road fixed, planning diversions, hiring of temp traffic lights etc is more money?

Where I live there are two roads which are flooded and closed - never have been before. Yet drove past these roads a few days back and they were absolutely clogged up.

I know where I live there have been two Amber warnings for rain this week. If drains were cleared, the roads wouldn’t be flooded enough to close entirely.

2/10

Really you do talk bollocks. I've worked in private and public sector across various departments and different levels.
There's the same amount of good and rubbish people everywhere.
Just in the private sector you have to put up with more arseholes who think they're something.

Which other account would this be?

Councils don't gave any reserves any more and haven't had for a long time.

Duplicate

Perhaps if YOU used your local library more you'd learn not to end sentences with prepositions.

Oh dear. Incorrect and outdated.

@BecauseRonald yes I'm aware that spelling and grammar are outdated concepts these days. Along with having standards in general.

we send out volunteer crews to cut back hedges

I take they have liability insurance ?

Our village has regular litter picks, drain and culvert clearing, hedge cutting, weed control, path maintenance etc etc etc. The farmers do quite a lot too, grass cutting, hedge cutting, snow clearing.

It makes a huge difference if you have an active community.

Well I don’t get a discount for my annual community litterpick. I do think there there can be partnership projects. Where I live there are council minibuses that they will train community volunteers on. They can then be booked out for taking kids to school swimming lessons, transportation for charitable and volunteer groups. Council pays for maintenance, insurance and petrol but saves on bus hire costs which are £££s

Because councils have to accept the lowest possible tender for contracts, they're always going to get work done on the cheap, even when it's a false economy. That's why so many jobs are done badly. Compulsory competitive tendering is another thing that we have to thank Thatcher for.

There are exemptions, but only in certain circumstances, eg something so urgent that it can't be delayed by the tendering process or something so specialist that there's only one company that can supply it.

And there isn't enough money to do both decent running repairs and planned maintenance anyway.

Average councillor IQ is probably 85.

Thanks mate. Appreciate your insight. Am amazed that my moderate intellect at best is sufficient even to work out how to show my appreciation.

I worked in Estates management for large City Council.

It literally had no budget for maintenance, only emergencies.

Places were stripped by chancers, if left empty. Shitshow.

That's why it's so bad that visitor centres in Wales are getting shut (Coed-y-Brenin, Nant-y-Arian & Ynyslas). The buildings & trails will be decimated.

An ounce of prevention is better rhan a pound of cure.

Councils have a legal duty to run a balanced budget. If they can't afford to do the work they can't do the work. Short of putting up council tax, etc their hands are tied

That's not how it works though. Money can't just be taken from wherever to fix something. Budgets are carefully controlled and aren't really interchangeable.

If you ever failed to vote in the 1980s or in the 2010s or voted Tory, you are part of the problem.

If you ever supported outsourcing to Capita, Serco or other providers under a badly devised contract, you are part of the problem.

Case in point - food waste, which all councils were told by central govt they had to roll out. That work (procurement, estate management, refuse vehicles, staffing, premises etc) is happening now with no indication of what funding will be provided - still. It's almost certain the funding won't cover the cost. This is one of the many challenges (not to mention other stat duties that funding and revenue doesn't cover). Couple that with the fact that much of the work on flooding / drainage falls under upper tier authorities who also have huge funding issues around social care... it's a perfect storm.

Are you sure this wasn't done with Active Travel Fund money?

Bit that money wouldn't have been in the budget to clear drains. It would have been for something very specific so they couldn't just say , let's not paint the rainbows and we can spend it on the drains. If it was for painting rainbows then it wouldn't have been available for any other purpose.

What an unpleasant post.

Even if that were true, which it's not, the logic conclusion here is that public sector works should have salaries which match those of their private sector equivalents to attract the brains. As a local govt officer I'd love that!

Spot on

Ah yes. Recruitment freeze. It’s been 15 years now. Expect in social care/education who can recruit but too few people want the work so they just hang there on the website mouldering away. Those of us that have the freeze still have stat duties tho and when we can’t recruit guess what? Yes! We sub to the private sector! Yay! Efficiencies! The private sector are soooooo good at delivery!

I’m acting up at the mo (rolling 3 months secondments even tho the guy left a year ago, recruitment freeze ya know). I’ve been backfilled with a SLA to a private firm who are doing 3 days worth of that work a week for the bargain price of 8K a month. Guess who’s still doing the other two days (in between tea breaks and flexi time, don’t worry, I’ve got my priorities in order).

PS 25 years in the private sector before public. Don’t give me that old bollocks.

The Local Government funding model from central government is broken, like it is for NHS, Schools and other public services. The cost of looking after our elderly and vulnerable has sky rocketed with no additional funding from government to support it. That's why non-statutory services are being cut, staff reduced to the basic minimum so that any extra funds can be filtered through to Adult and Childrens Social Care.

I agree that the top layer of management in Councils are too highly paid for what they do, but the issue is nobody worth their salt would take on those roles if they weren't competitive with the private sector.

The majority of people who work in Councils are absolutely dedicated to the communities they live and work in and as a consequence, are resigned to a lower remuneration than in other sectors. They may get a good pension when they retire but they contribute a lot out of often meagre salaries in order to have it.

Some Councils are 'rubbish' at managing themselves but blame the leadership, not the people who are doing their best for their citizens.

Publishing the results of audits just means we are told what they want to tell us. Our local council holds public consultations on what seems like a monthly basis, then completely ignores what the public tells it, and does what it wants regardless. I can't be more specific on an anonymous forum sorry.

The results of the mismanagement of resources are plain to see all over the country, so there's no need to demand "evidence". 14 years of Tory-led central government is all anyone needs to know, surely.

As gor