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.

@Tumbleweed101 HA money waste drives me bonkers! My kitchen is so old the doors come off in my hands regularly, the skeletons that the doors attach to are rotten but just keep getting told no money but they have money to build lots of new houses that the old tenants will never get a look in. Told to keep reporting the repairs but then they want to come and do repairs when we are at work with little flexibility to come at other times 🤷‍♀️

True, not the council, but a community hall run by charity. Mate of a mate is rather flakey and gone awol with many £££s intended for new windows and half a roof. Trying insurance claim. It’s all a bit of a disaster, bigger company would of meant higher price but they could of completed the job and there would of been comeback rather than a quickly bankrupt, dissolved ltd company.

The fucking Romans knew how to do water management. It was one of the lesser sung engineering feats that allowed them to seriously colonize Europe.

Even medieval monks knew how to build pools, slipways, culverts and ditches to manage water. As well as not to build on fucking flood plains.

Depends who it's costing, remember. It's clearly not costing the department responsible for fixing it a penny.

Britain seems to have invented the idea of Middlemen. A entire parasitic layer of society who's first question to any suggestion or proposal is "What's in it for me ?"

Only when that produces a non-zero answer will anything ever happen.

And in cases where they didn't exist - nationalised industries spring to mind - they had to be (re)introduced. Muck like rewilding. That's why we ended up with a plethora of "energy companies" none of which actually made a single watt.

The paradigm of a successful UK company is one that can take the money at one end, and immediately dump the liability onto the next in an unbroken circle. Local authorities have almost perfected this. Birmingham City Council may be the first to have made countless billions disappear (they may as well have burned fivers for the return they got) and have managed to still stiff the taxpayer to pay for it.

The water companies really are poor seconds in this race.

I temped at a Local Authority for a few months once. Coming in from the private sector, it was quite the eye opener. There is a lack of flexibility and everything is in silos, with scrutiny and oversight so things can't just be shuffled around. Budgets are closely guarded and there's a lot of internal politics.

When you post hyperbolic nonsense like this you just come across as ignorant and not very bright

Things are far more nuanced and complex than that

I'm thick as pigshit, so what? Doesn't mean that councils are doing a good job.

For all your superior insight and intellect, you have failed to point out any of these nuances and complexities or even punctuate your post adequately.

There were facts amidst my hyperbolic nonsense, no doubt you will enlighten us in due course as to why they are not facts.

They use funds earmarked by govt for useless building schemes/cycle lanes/stuff nobody wants or uses and then plead poverty.

the answer there is in what you posted. Central government puts out very specific pots of money with very narrow criteria. If local authorities bid for that money it has to used for that very specific criteria. They can’t get it and spend it on whatever is most needed however much they might want too