To think Local Government is full of pointless jobs that exist just to justify managers’ roles?

[NimblePoster]

I worked in Local Government for years and while some teams work hard and deliver real benefits to communities, there are also entire roles - and even teams - that serve no real purpose.

Managers accumulate staff because having a bigger team gives them status, justifies higher pay, and probably makes their own jobs feel secure (especially given the mass job cuts in LG over the past two decades). With little oversight, managers keep people on even when their function disappears. I’ve seen whole teams sitting idle, their jobs now pointless, yet still being paid as if they’re essential.

AIBU to think a huge chunk of Local Government is just wasting taxpayer money?

@CleverButScatty it's almost as if the OPs are here for something other than 'genuine concerns'...

This

I imagine nothing would delight them more. Are you going to chip in to with the budget they are to trying to stretch?

It's a modern democracy, sometimes they have to tell people things, serious and important things.

Its not the middle ages anymore.

Do you want to live in a modern country or not?

This. There's probably a tiny little team responsible for really critical operational stuff, then LOADS of woolly jobs in 'strategy', 'Policy analysis', 'transformation' where god knows what they actually DO because they don't produce anything, or improve anything, just blow a load of hot air!!

They need more money to support the increasing number of people who are suffering from the cost of living crisis. Councils try not to let people die of hunger or the cold. They support people into housing and jobs. They support people with care needs. They provide 10 and 15 year development plans for the borough. The list goes on and every task is ruled by legislation. There is no freestyling or acting on a whim.

And will also no doubt winge when said disabled people can't work and have to claim benefits to survive...
Edited for typo

Councils usually have a flat structure and deliver more for less than for example the NHS. Councils are usually run very well and efficiently on very little. This is why social care is in such a mess but if the NHS was in charge it would cost three times as much.

Rubbish

Id love to know which council this is and when this is supposed to have occurred . I’ve worked in local government for many years and there have been years of efficiency cuts and now people are going flat out trying to keep on top of it and deliver a service. Its morale sapping reading this sort of post

OP sounds like a Tory/Reform bot

It’s more than a suggestion. There is large scale local government reorganisation (all councils will become parts of large unitaries), together with regional devolution, happening at a rapid pace. Councils have been told they’ve got two years to get it done or it will be done to them. Some of ours are on the fast track so it’ll be done much sooner.

Given how much it might affect people I can’t believe it’s not had more attention. It seems councils are deciding themselves who to pal up with. Some councils (like Swindon) seem to be being left behind. It’s all very rapid.

Which council was it that had so much money they invested it in Iceland and lost it all?

Yes, 100%. I work in local government at a borough council and the waste of money is breathtaking. Entire corporate missions being the be all and end all, then all of a sudden being replaced by a completely different strategy to at cost many thousands to develop via an expensive consultancy. A development vehicle that folded very abruptly with nothing to show for it except tens of thousands in sunk costs and no oversight. Snazzy apps costing 10k that about 50 people use. The senior wage bill ballooning by millions per year for vague and unaccountable director level jobs while the social workers juggle impossible caseloads because there are so few.

The essential services are pared to the bone while the comms department sprouts yet more layers of management. It's a Labour council with virtually no opposition and people blindly vote them in every time. It's massively depressing. There are some excellent people working there who are true public servants but I can't blame them when they get fed up and leave.

Labour did the bloat / flabby headlines

I’ve worked in both sectors, and I’ve seen a lot of chancers in the private sector. There is always a stigma against public sector local government workers, often by people who have never worked in public sector, but I can guarantee you from my experience, most people are spinning several plates to get things done to meet deadlines.

Doesn’t ring true for me. Multiple rounds of redundancies at our LA means the remaining staff are doing the role of more than one person and their are massive skills gaps in the staff who perform essential services.

I work in local authority and we've had to make huge savings over years and I am confident there are no teams sat around doing nothing. However I do think there are inefficiencies and things like frontline staff have been so cut that now we get more complaints, so then we needed a bigger complaints department, or then we get people working on a transformation project which is basically trying to work out how the reduced front line staff can do more with less. Sometimes I wonder why we don't just invest more in the frontline. I also think there are a lot more audit and assurance processes then people might realise, a lot of data is reported to central government etc and this all creates work and ever complicated systems. However if it didn't happen then people would be put out the council couldn't confidently say how many kids they have in care year on year etc.

Hello Donald

Only when people agree to pay their fucking taxes 🙄. There’s no money for road repairs - the vast majority of LG money goes on social care and SEN, both of which are desperately in need of more resources both people and money.

Those days are long long gone 🙄

My experience was that the resources were poorly managed. I worked in a finance team with an fte of 6. We could’ve done the work with half of the staff easily.

The majority of the people there had literally no idea what it was like to be truly busy. I don’t like the idea of everyone being worked to the bone but I literally did no work for two weeks because there was none.

However all the front line services were cut to the bone. They should have cut three of the finance staff, saved £150k a year and used that fund another 2 social workers.

Replicate that across the other finance teams who were just as bloated and you’d be in a much better state pretty quickly.

Plus all the fucking ICT contractors on insane day rates.

It was fucking awful and I left as soon as I could.

The staff had no idea what being busy was actually like.

In most of the NHS organisations I've worked for there are far too many useless HR roles where staff don't know the policies, let alone the law, and are low grade bullies. I've never understood why the function isn't regionalised like it was in a different part of the public sector I worked in previously. And the amount of time that gets wasted on pointless meetings and lip service interventions, I swear it would be cheaper for each Trust to employ a dedicated employment lawyer.

That you Elon ?

Or Donald ?

If a service or product line turns out to be unprofitable, private sector companies can choose to eliminate it. If the whole business is unviable, they can cease trading.

County Councils and Unitary Authorities are legally obliged to provide certain statutory services to all residents who need them and qualify for them, regardless of the cost.

In the case of Social Services, demand has risen in recent years, partly due to an ageing population. Unfortunately, the cost of providing care has risen enormously. In particular, there is a shortage of specialist residential placements and some care providers have drastically increased their fees (in some cases by as much as 100% in a single year). Councils might be able to bring some of these services in-house, but certainly not at such short notice.

Councils have limited options to raise the vast extra sums needed. They can increase Council Tax, but only by a limited amount. They can sell off assets, such as property, but obviously they can only do this once. They can cut staff costs, but this will reduce the level of service they can provide.

They are no longer allowed to invest their funds in commercial ventures and there are numerous rules about when they are and are not allowed to use a cost saving in one budget to make up a deficit in another budget. Councils also have stringent audit requirements, hence the bureaucracy that many people see as unnecessary. They can’t really be compared to public sector companies as they are very different.