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Trust in Politics

Non-job of the week

Dec 15th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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As this is the last non-job of the week feature of 2011, I have been looking back at the examples of non-jobs and ridiculously high pay I have highlighted throughout the year. I won’t pick a winner as the non-job of the year – I’ll leave it to you, but there is no shortage of runners and riders competing for the accolade.

Some councils have been busy building large change and performance departments. Surrey County Council and Oxford City Council immediately spring to mind. Surrey has advertised for a Performance Manager, Performance Officer, Intelligence Officer, Change Officer, Senior Change Manager, and a Senior Performance and Research Officer (Intelligence). Non-Job of the WeekOxford City Council have recruited similar officers and managers, as well as a Tenants Involvement and Development Officer.

Nottingham City Council (the only council not to publish its spending above £500) ironically recruited a Head of Quality and Efficiency Services, and Walsall Council was looking for a Smarter Workplaces Programme Manager. Also this year, the new Future Shape Programme Manager of North East Lincolnshire Council was revealed.

Reading Council was looking for no less than ten Seasonal Personal Travel Plan Advisers. Their job was to contact residents and discuss with them how they travel to work, school, and go shopping, etc. If you think this is bizarre, then what about Waltham Forest’s search for a Laughter Yoga Teacher?

This year, many councils have scrapped their newspapers, but Hackney (surprise, surprise) has not followed suit. Earlier this year it was looking for a new sub-editor for its propaganda rag newspaper, Hackney Today.

There has also been the usual raft of Climate Change Officers (something I highlighted repeatedly), Political Assistants, and Diversity Officers - including the BBC who was looking for a Diversity Talent Executive!

A London council was looking for a Governance Officer – Openness and Transparency. Ironically, we didn’t know which council this was, as they were recruiting anonymously through a recruitment agency! Those recruitment agencies have been a feature this year. Remember the Interim Head of Parking Services for an unnamed London Council? In March this was yours for £500-£600 a day! This was the most egregious salary of the year. When annualised, a parking manager was due to be paid more then the prime minister.

I could go on, and please have a look through these examples and the others from 2011. It does come with a health warning though. I don’t want your blood pressure to rise to dangerous levels.

I wish you all a very Happy Christmas, and here’s hoping 2012 will be a non-job free year!

Rotherham councillors booted out

Dec 12th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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How much work do your councillors do? This is a question being asked in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, today. All councillors in Rotherham are paid an annual allowance of £12,130. This is to compensate them for their time, and for any income lost from their normal business activities or job whilst fulfilling their council duties. Yet what about councillors who don’t do any work but continue to claim allowances?

John Gamble was elected to Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC) in May 2008. Mr Gamble is something of a Scarlet Pimpernel. He rarely attended meetings, and the last one he did attend was a full council meeting at the beginning of February this year – ten months ago. According the Local Government Act 1972, a councillor is automatically disqualified if he/she fails to attend any meeting for six months. As Mr Gamble did not give any reasons for his absences, such as ill health, this disqualification should have taken place in August.

Instead, RMBC has let this drag on a further four months until they finally took action. As a result of this inertia, Rotherham council taxpayers are over £4K out of pocket, although with such a poor attendance record since he was elected, it could be argued they were out of pocket the moment he was sworn in.

Attendance at meetings is one of the few ways we can judge a councillor’s performance, but councillors will also point to the other work they do in their communities. A supporter has told me that Mr Gamble did not even hold surgeries. Looking at the council’s website, this seems to be true. On his profile page, under the heading of ‘Surgery Details’, nothing is listed.

I contacted RMBC to find out if we are going to get our money back for the last four months when he shouldn’t have been a councillor. I am still waiting for an answer, but this is not the only Rotherham councillor who has acted in a similar way,

In March this year, former Tory councillor, Gavin Sharp resigned his seat just a few weeks before he was due to stand for election. Since being elected in May 2007, he had been absent from 80 percent of meetings. He hadn’t attended a full council meeting since May 2009, and had made appearances at just enough meetings to allow him to receive his allowance.

According to press reports at the time, his fellow Conservative councillors tried to persuade him to stand down and asked to him to pay the money back, but without success. You would have thought that as a bank manager and magistrate, Mr Sharp would have done the right thing at the time, and it is not known if since his resignation he has paid back all or some of the money he claimed.

These two lazy, (now thankfully) former councillors pocketed money from Rotherham residents, many of whom are on low incomes, without batting an eyelid. Not that they are the only ones at fault. RMBC should have acted sooner to remove John Gamble, and the Conservative group should have taken action against Gavin Sharp.

We elect councillors to make decisions on our behalf. For them to do this, they have to attend meetings. We also elect them to represent our views. Unless they regularly meet their constituents, it is impossible for them to do that effectively. Both of them should hang their heads in shame.

 

Non-job of the week

Dec 7th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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North Somerset Council is looking for a Waste Minimisation Officer. As far as I can see, the officer will spend a large amount of time either visiting or communicating with schools, community organisations, and other partners showing them how to minimise the amount of waste going into their standard refuse bins.

This is despite the various leaflets already sent out to residents and businesses informing them of what they can and cannot recycle. Does it really need someone to be constantly haranguing them with the same messages? Non-Job of the WeekThe EU landfill directive keeps increasing the burden on council taxpayers, so I can understand why councils are keen to push the recycling message. There does come a point though where you wonder just how far councils will go. With recycling rates already on target to hit 60% this financial year, this is one job North Somerset council taxpayers can do without.

A central government department is looking for a Senior Integrated Communications Officer based in Leeds, paying £180-£220 per day (£900-£1100 per week). This role requires the jobholder “to gather intelligence about the mood, activities, opinions of key stakeholder e.g. staff representative groups and professional bodies, the national media.”

The job description goes on to say they will be “supporting senior members of the team to deliver communications about pensions reform to staff. This will be vital as elements of the reform ratchet up over next 6 months and will also entail feeding into the Departments industry relations policy group.”

When we published our report on the taxpayer funding of trade unions, we were told by union leaders that union reps needed time off on our watch because it promoted harmony in the workplace. Recent strikes don’t back up that message, but leaving that to one side, it could be argued the government needs to communicate its message on public sector pensions reform more effectively. As TPA Research Director, John O’Connell wrote last week, there are many myths about pensions reform still being articulated in the media – mainly by unions.

Take a look at the job advert. This role predominantly involves communicating with staff and stakeholders, which in turn means the unions. We will be paying someone the equivalent of £45-55K per annum on a temporary full-time contract to tell the unions what they already know – or at least should know.

I appreciate there is more to this job, but as it’s a temporary contract on a daily rate, clearly it’s not going to last a long time. Once again though we don’t know which department it is, as the job is advertised through a recruitment agency, which will also incur additional fees.

This job is unnecesary as the government already has a team of negotiators working with the unions. The unions then pass on the information to their members, with additional employer information distributed to staff. This is an additional expense we can do without.

 

Wasteful spending during Council efficiency drive

Dec 7th, 2011
by Paul Harwood.
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Like many councils, Sheffield City Council recently embarked upon a £57 million cost-cutting exercise in response to a fall in the central government grant. After council tax bills have nearly doubled across the country in the last decade there is no way taxpayers should pick up the bill.

Apparently unaware of the irony, the council has spent £21,000 sending 230,000 leaflets to residents asking them for ideas how to save money, living up to Sir Humphey’s mantra that it’s more expensive to do them cheaply.

While it is obviously good for a council to talk to voters about a necessary reduction in funding and how to save money, it should be done when it can have a meaningful impact on all aspects of spending rather than at the tail end of the discussions.

The consultation is open until January 6th leaving the Council just three months to prepare and adopt a budget to take effect in April 2012. The opposition Lib Dem leader, Shaffaq Mohammed, claims that decisions must have already been made about next year’s budget, “We are now almost at the door of the final closure of the budget process as far as I’m concerned.”

If this is just a smokescreen for councillors to use to defend their own plans when the outcome is already decided, it is a very cynical waste of money.

Julie Dore, the Labour-run council’s leader, claimed that it cost just 9p to produce each leaflet and this represented “value for money.” But the question isn’t whether they have bought the leaflets at a reasonable price but whether or not the project was worthwhile in the first place, whether it was a genuine attempt to engage with the public or just a presentational gimmick.  Taxpayers will suspect it was the latter.

Who watches the watchmen? Government credit card agency in its own waste scandal

Dec 5th, 2011
by Tom Welsh.
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Who watches the watchmen? Taxpayers will be demanding answers after it was revealed that the very agency charged with delivering ‘significant sustainable cost reductions’ in public sector procurement has splurged £1.7million of taxpayers’ money in nightclubs, five star hotels and on trips to New York.

The Government Procurement Service (GPS) manages a vast scheme of government procurement cards (GPCs), some 133,000 of which have been issued since 1997. Civil servants in departments, agencies and quangos can use these cards to make purchases on behalf of government. In theory, it is a ‘fast and efficient way of purchasing different types of goods and services’, speeding up transactions and ensuring prompt payment to the businesses that supply these services.  Spending on credit cards has got way out of hand.  We need more transparency and accountability and fewer civil servants running up extravagant bills and leaving them to taxpayers. Civil servants have legitimate expenses, but there is no excuse for some of the lavish spending that has been uncovered .

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has attacked wasteful GPC spending many times before:

  • In November this year we revealed the £185,000 credit-card spend at the Sustainable Development Commission between April 2009 and March 2011 – including £10,000 on air travel, and £14,000 in 4-star hotels.
  • In August, we exposed the £20,000 put on government credit cards by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in payments to political parties.
  • In June, we condemned the £25m spent by 18 Whitehall departments, including £60,000 dining at exclusive restaurants.

Today’s news is a stark reminder of how deeply a culture of profligacy can take root. Taxpayers must have trust that there are controls in place to prevent unauthorised and wasteful spending. So when those who should be strict financial guardians indulge their personal fantasies at Newz nightclub in Liverpool (popular with Cheryl Cole) or spend £6,000 in New York hotels, it’s clear that the problem is systemic and won’t be solved by shuffling around personnel.

It’s good news that the Government has begun publishing all spending on GPCs over £500. But £500 is an arbitrary figure and taxpayers clearly can’t trust government watchdogs to be stringent and critical on sums beneath this level. Government should publish GPC and credit card statements in full (personal details redacted, of course) so taxpayers can judge for themselves what is necessary and what is wasteful.

Oslo Trip

Nov 22nd, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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Fact finding missions have long been the butt of many jokes. You name the subject, and it seems an elected or unelected official has been forced into arduous foreign travel to get that final piece of information to complete the jigsaw. In our report earlier this month, we highlighted the foreign jaunts council taxpayers in the Midlands have had to pay for, and now another one has come across my radar.

The recycling rate in Hull is currently at 50%. This is above the target 45%, and residents of the city are regularly told to ‘Recycle for Hull.’ Not content with this, some councillors recently went on a fact-finding mission to Oslo to see how Norwegians dispose of their rubbish. They have already visited Rotherham, Sheffield and Swindon to see how its done there.

This had angered Cllr John Fareham, the leader of the Conservative Group, as the councillors who travelled to Norway are a sub-committee of the environment scrutiny commission. This means they can only recommend. They cannot make decisions.

The cost of the trip was under £1000, but to defend it as cheap (as a councillor has done) is missing the point.

A group of councillors and officials drove to Stansted Airport, stayed overnight, then flew to and from Oslo in the same day, and then drove back to Hull. The people who can make decisions about this were not present. It has to be asked what did they find out that they couldn’t find out by research on the Internet, and a conference call on Skype?

If councillors spent our money in the same way they would spend their own, trips like this would not happen. All it achieves is two things. It makes councillors the butt of jokes, and gives the impression they have their snouts in the trough. I know that’s not true of the majority of councillors. If they don’t want to give the public that impression, they know what to do next time.

Leicester Mayor set for large pay rise

Nov 18th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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According to a report in the Leicester Mercury this week, the elected Mayor of Leicester is in line for a 78% pay rise. Sir Peter Soulsby (who stood down as MP for Leicester South to run for the job this May) currently receives a salary of £56K a year.

The Independent Remuneration Panel (IRP) has recommended his salary rise to £100K. His deputy is also in line for a large rise, as are the city’s forty seven councillors. It has recommended some savings too, such as scrapping vice-chairs of committees and the extra cash they receive. 

All of this is happening at a time when the council is looking to make savings of £100 million in the next four years. Sir Peter said, ”It’s right that an independent panel reviews pay, rather than myself and councillors.” He also went on to say, “It’s important to remember we now also save £250,000 a year due to no longer having a chief executive.”

I can’t disagree with anything he’s said. Scrapping the chief executive’s role has proved the council can operate without one. This still isn’t a justification for whopping pay rises for him, his deputy and councillors. It sends the wrong message to those 1000 council staff who have either been made redundant or are facing redundancy.

Town Hall Square, Leicester Councillors will vote on these pay rises next week. Hopefully, they will vote against them, and send the right message to Leicester taxpayers. If you live in Leicester, contact your councillor and tell them what you think. It is hard to justify these increases at the best of times. We are not living in the best of times. We are facing the most difficult economic challenges we’ve seen for decades. Leicester taxpayers cannot afford these increases, and for councillors to accept them would be a kick in the teeth for them, and for other council employees.

Non-job of the week

Nov 16th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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A non-job of the week with a twist today. Barnet Council do not like criticism, and it seems the council will go to any lengths to make sure it silences its critics.

A local blogger, writing under the pseudonym Mr Mustard, criticised Barnet Council for hiring a Change and Innovation Manager in 2010 on a salary of £47,550 -£50,913.  It sounds very much like the sort of non-job I highlight on here every week. He quoted from the job description, which has to be said is written in perfect gobbledegook, and also quoted from the personal website of the man who got the job – Jonathan Tunde-Wright.

Non-Job of the WeekAlthough I have joked in the past about receiving a letter from Oxford City Council’s solicitor for harassment after all the non-jobs I have highlighted in the past, I have of course never received one. Nor should I. Freedom of speech is something we hold dear in this country, unless you are from Barnet Borough Council.

The council went to the extraordinary lengths of contacting the Information Commissioner claiming Mr Mustard had committed a criminal offence under the Data Protection Act by not registering as a data controller  because he had made critical comments about whether some of its officials have real jobs! The commissioner rightly disagreed, but that didn’t stop the council. It then came up with what can only be described as the most ludicrous description of what he could write about. The One Barnet blog has the full details of the correspondence between the ICO and the Council.

The council said all that bloggers (and that includes us on this website) can write about is their own personal data, their own family defined as people related by blood or marriage and their own household, which is anyone living in their house or flat. Barnet Council claims everything else requires registration and can be subject to a legal challenge.

The Information Commissioner disagreed again, saying this would have a hugely disproportionate impact on freedom of expression.

Because Mr Mustard (real name Derek Dishman) regularly holds his council to account on his blog, and sends in freedom of information requests to find out how our money is spent, he is regarded as an inconvenience. This may be so, but as he is not writing anything defamatory, he is within his rights to write about anything he likes – inconvenient or not.

So not only do we have a job with a more than dubious title offering £50K a year, we also have the council employing its staff to actively prevent anyone of us criticising them. If Barnet Council had its way, none of us would be able to speak out against waste and hold councils to account.

Hat-tip: David Hencke 

A sad day for democracy in East Yorkshire

Nov 10th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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Council standards committees were set-up as a way of disciplining councillors who have brought their office into disrepute. They were designed as a way of investigating sleaze. What happened at a meeting of the Standards Committee in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) yesterday proved once again that they are increasingly being used as a way of stifling debate, and forcing councillors to toe the line.

Conservative councillor Paul Robinson was censured not for something he said, but for two comments he allowed to be posted on his blog. One of the comments described Mike Whitley –  a political rival of Cllr Robinson – as an “absolute idiot” and another one said that in Mark Twain’s day, troublemakers were stripped, tarred and feathered before being ridden out of town. The person who made the comment then said that was not something he was advocating. A little tongue in cheek perhaps, but nothing that can be described as defamatory. Mr Whitley took exception to those comments, and reported Cllr Robinson to ERYC.

The case should have been thrown out immediately. It was clearly vexatious, but instead ERYC – which has form when it comes to wasting our money – took this case all the way to a standards committee hearing. The cost of this is unknown, although I will be sending a freedom of information request to find out. The punishment meted out was merely a wrap on the knuckles, and under the circumstances even that was a nonsense.

This case is very worrying on many levels. We elect councillors to speak their mind. If we don’t like what they say, we always have the opportunity to kick them out next time they stand for election. Councillors who do blog about their work and local issues are opening up channels of communication and debate, which is the hallmark of a free society. We may not like what other people write about us, but it is their right to do that. If I took exception at everything that is said about me, there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day for me to get on with my job.

Cllr Robinson was not accused of saying anything defamatory himself, which is why this charade is breathtaking in its nonsense. It eats at the heart of our democracy. It turns councillors into automatons, fearing if they say anything or allow people to leave comments on their blog, they will be hauled before the standards committee. It closes down channels of communication, and makes councillors less accessible. It makes them less likely to speak out, and stand up for what they believe in.

In a press release sent to me yesterday, Cllr Robinson ended by saying:

If ever there was an example of why the Government is right to abolish this expensive and misused system, this is it. Absolutely nothing has been achieved and no difference has been made apart from the taxpayers get the bill for someone to pursue a personal, vexatious political agenda. 

He is correct. Taxpayers are being forced to pick up the tab for another nail being hammered into the coffin of democracy.

 

Non-job of the week

Nov 2nd, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has been in the news this past week. The RPA is an executive agency of Defra, and its job is to administer an EU subsidy for farmers for maintaining their land. It was introduced in 2005.

It has faced much criticism over the years for delayed payments to farmers, and although it is questionable why such an agency needs to exist, I will leave that to one side. The post of Interim Finance Director (which was a job share, and has now thankfully been replaced by someone on a much lower salary) cost taxpayers a massive £425K a year. MPs were rightly outraged when they heard this figure. Conservative MP, Neil Parish said his constituents wouldn’t believe that the highest paid post at Defra was an accountant.

Non-Job of the WeekI have regularly highlighted some of the egregious amounts paid to consultants and interim staff. Many of these posts are advertised through recruitment agencies, which of course makes it much harder to pin-point which government department, Quango, health authority, etc, is recruiting. This example though is the worst I have come across, and proves why we need more transparency in the public sector so we can see where our money is going.

Staying on the same theme, the recruitment agency Morgan Hunt is advertising for a Head of Campaigns and Partnerships for a central government department. Once again we don’t know which department, or what those campaigns are going to be. We do know if it for a fixed period of 3 months, and the post pays £250-£400 per day. Is it a non-job? Who knows, and unless there is more transparency, I doubt we ever will.

Morgan Hunt is also acting on behalf of a local government client who is looking for an Interim HR Manager. All we know is this is a London council. The job pays between £150-£200 per day.

This week we can see once again that our money is being spent in large amounts in ways we know very little about. The money spent on the Interim Finance Director’s post at the RPA wasn’t discovered until after the event. The same will apply with the two other posts I have highlighted.

Until and unless there is more transparency this is going to continue. The government will from time to time recruit people to highly sensitive jobs, and for reasons of national security we won’t necessarily know those jobs exist and what those people do. I understand that, but this cannot be said of the examples I have given. We have a right to know how our money is spent.

 

Turn that light out!

Oct 24th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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It’s around 10 o’clock in the evening, and it’s been a long day, so you decide to go for a couple of beers at your local pub to unwind. You get chatting to some friends, and you leave at midnight. Because you are a responsible citizen, you left your car at home, and made the 15 minute journey there and back on foot.

Sound familiar? I’m sure many of us have done this before. The only problem if you live in Derbyshire is next year the council may have decided to switch off the street lighting, so you may need a torch to find your way back.

(but not after midnight!)

This is the latest wheeze from Derbyshire County Council to save money, although when you read comments from Cllr Simon Spencer, cabinet member for highways and transport, it seems he is more interested in reducing carbon emissions than protecting the safety and security of council taxpayers.

According to a report in the Yorkshire Post, Derbyshire County Council is responsible for 89,000 street lights, but the council has drawn up proposals to turn off 40,000 of them between midnight and 5.30 am, and around 900 permanently. Senior councillors have stated this will save 2,000 tonnes of carbon every year – the equivalent of taking 625 cars of the road. With costs of motoring rising, and drivers collectively being overtaxed by £17.9 billion a year, I imagine those 625 cars will come off the road anyway, as people struggle to pay their bills.

It is estimated switching the lights off will save £200K a year. If the council would like any suggestions on how to save that amount, it can look at our Town Hall Rich List, or its own accounts. In 2009/10, there were 103 council officers earning in excess of £50K a year. This figure rose in 2010/11, to 126, despite a pay freeze. Rather than looking inside its organisation, and reducing the tiers of management, it instead looks at ways that will impact on front-line services – and street lighting is surely one of the most basic front-line services there is.

If you want to have your say on this matter, you can do so by contacting the council. You have until 6 December.

Cambridgeshire county council vote themselves 25 per cent pay hike

Oct 19th, 2011
by Tom Welsh.
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In the face of angry protests outside Shire Hall, Cambridgeshire County councillors have voted themselves a massive 25 per cent pay rise. According to a review panel, councillors were ‘undervalued’ on their existing allowances and a rise to £9,500 was needed to allow ‘local democracy to prosper’. Council Leader Nick Clarke will be even better off. From £29,246, he will now take home £38,000 a year with his ‘special responsibility allowance.’

Councillors cannot justify these increases, especially at a time of supposed public spending restraint.

The total increase in spending is not small. Conservative-majority Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) has 69 local representatives, and with extra payments made to Cabinet members, leaders and spokesmen of all parties, the total amount set aside for allowances will rise by £166,000 to £929,000 a year.

Put into context, CCC is trying to make £161 million of necessary spending cuts over the next five years. Politicians will not convince voters of the importance of savings if they cut with one hand and feather their own nest with the other.

Councillors have explained away their pay hike as the recommendation of an independent review panel, a public-spirited attempt to attract candidates of more diverse backgrounds into local politics. Of course, councils should make it attractive for ordinary people to become councillors. But while other council workers are facing redundancy, largesse for elected officials is unjustifiable.

Instead Cambridgeshire councillors should follow the lead of their chief executive, Mark Lloyd, who took a voluntary 5 per cent pay cut in July. Although he still earns an excessive £186,167, he was right to lead from the front.

From a blog he wrote about Mark Lloyd’s voluntary pay cut, Council Leader Nick Clarke knows the weakness of his own position:

‘One of the most important characteristics of a really good leader, I’ve always felt, is the ability to lead by example.

And when residents are finding life tough, and tightening their belts because money is tight, council’s [sic] can’t be out of step with what the people who pay for services are experiencing.’

Given these comments, Nick Clarke will no doubt forego his extra £9,000, and Cambridgeshire councillors will reverse this pay hike at the earliest possible moment.

Victory in Winslow

Oct 17th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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In June, I wrote about a local campaign in Winslow, Buckinghamshire to stop the introduction of parking charges in one of the town’s car parks.

Last year, Aylesbury Vale District Council announced plans to introduce parking charges in Greyhound Lane Car Park. A petition opposing these charges was organised by a local resident, the indomitable Ruth Ash. Ruth had never been involved in political campaigning before, but she knew parking charges would have a negative effect on her community. Although she was told to forget it as she would never win, she set about collecting signatures, and managed to get 2186 people to sign her petition – over half of Winslow’s adult population. 

It has been a long and rocky road, however thanks to her determination and tenacity she has achieved a remarkable victory, and parking will remain free until 2018. It should have been obvious to councillors and council officers that charges would drive business elsewhere. Instead the wheels of bureaucracy moved at just about the slowest pace they could as consultations and enquiries took place. It will be interesting to find out how much all of this has cost taxpayers in AVDC, and this is something I will be enquiring after.

In recent months I have highlighted campaigns across the country where local people have stood up against their councils on this issue. In Salisbury, where local traders told of a dramatic fall in business after charges were increased, the local newspaper led the campaign. It was the same story in Northumberland, but I have not come across a campaign that has been so successful and organised by just one person. Ruth is a modest lady who doesn’t want the credit, but as I told her, she deserves it, as without her hard work the council would have go its way, and her town would have been poorer as a result.

I hope this story serves as a catalyst to others around the country. It is possible to take on your council and win. This story has proven it.

Regeneration Failure

Oct 14th, 2011
by Colin Cameron.
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Even while the Government is trying to apply the brakes, the public sector gravy train rolls on for some overpaid executives.

On Tyneside, 1NG (it stands for Newcastle-Gateshead), the regeneration company handed £4m of funds, has been closed down after just three years over concerns about its success rate. Even the Newcastle city councillor who chaired the scrutiny panel during the company’s existence has condemned its failure.

And as a reward for this lack of success, 1NG’s Chief Executive, Jim McIntyre, has been handed an £80,000 pay-off, equivalent to his six-month notice period. And there’s more to come – the rest of the organisation’s 14 staff will receive pay-offs in March, or be re-employed by Newcastle or Gateshead Councils.

This public sector largesse raises (again) some pertinent questions:

  • Why does the boss of a failed organisation deserve a pay-off, as opposed to replacement or dismissal?
  • How many other companies do you know of with only 14 employees where the boss is paid a whopping £160,000 salary?
  • Was it really necessary to put Mr McIntyre on a six-month notice period?

Bradford Council’s £4 million overspend

Aug 12th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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Bradford Council is currently building a new city park, funded largely from the sale of Leeds-Bradford Airport, which was until recently jointly owned by both Leeds and Bradford Councils. It’s not just going to be a place for recreation though. No, it’s going to be ‘all singing and all dancing’ including a mirror pool containing 100 fountains. The estimated bill for this venture was £24.4 million.

You will not be surprised to hear that not only is building work behind schedule, but the costs have also risen. According to Andrew Mallinson, chairman of Bradford Council’s regeneration and economy overview and scrutiny committee, the overspend could be as much as £4 million, and we know from experience that these overspends can and do increase further. Of course, all of this is happening when the council is trying to rein-in its spending.

Councillor Ian Greenwood

I’m not saying creating a new park is a bad idea. We all like green spaces to spend time with our families, or to eat our lunch on a pleasant summer’s day, but why turn this into a grandiose project, with all the expense involved? It’s as if we have gone back to the nineteenth century when large towns and cities used to compete with each other as to who could build the grandest town hall.

Many councillors are naturally demanding answers. Who signed off this overspend is one of them. If you have read some of my posts to do with Bradford Council you will not be surprised that answers are not forthcoming. In a way that optimises this council, the leader, Cllr Ian Greenwood, had this to say to the Bradford Telegraph and Argus:

“Discussions about any issues surrounding the cost of construction are still commercially confidential and it would be inappropriate for anyone on any side to comment further at this time.”

With the building of the park almost complete, and taxpayers facing an additional bill of at least £4 million, how can it be commercially confidential? In other words, Cllr Greenwood is refusing to comment, and hopes to kick the issue into the long grass. Just as he dodges the issue of over £500K of our money being spent on trade union activities, whilst campaigners fight to save their local libraries.

As previously reported, the secretary of our West Yorkshire branch has been in a battle with Bradford Council over a Freedom of Information Request. I have also had problems accessing information which may be embarrassing to the council. This £4 million potential overspend may be embarrassing too, but it does not give the council an excuse to bury information which should be in the public domain.  If something has gone wrong with the building of the new city park, we have a right to some answers. Hiding behind the guise of commercial sensitivity is an insult to the intelligence of Bradford taxpayers.

Bolsover councillors vote to keep pay high

Aug 2nd, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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Many parts of the UK are covered by unitary authorities, who have responsibilities for all council services. In other areas, there are two-tiers of local government, where districts and boroughs provide services such as bin collections, and county councils are responsible for things like highways and education. Derbyshire is a county where the latter applies.

District councils cover smaller geographic areas, and provide fewer services than unitary authorities. Councillors are not expected to devote as much time to their council work, and are therefore paid a smaller allowance. In North East Derbyshire Council, councillors are paid a basic allowance of £5,010 per annum, however in neighbouring Bolsover councillors are paid £10,047 – more than twice as much.

Both sets of councillors have the same responsibilities, and as a result, the Independent Remuneration Panel (IRP) in Bolsover has recommended the basic allowance should be cut to £5,354. They haven’t plucked this figure out of the air either. This figure is the average paid to councillors across similar authorities.

Unfortunately, the IRP can only make recommendations. It cannot enforce its will on councillors, who ultimately decide their own pay and perks. It will therefore not surprise you to learn that the turkeys have chosen not to vote for Christmas. Out of thirty-seven elected councillors, only one was in favour or reducing their pay. Instead, they have voted for a four-year pay freeze. The deputy leader of the council described the panel’s recommendations as flawed. He said they have no consideration to the amount of time and effort that is put in.

Although I accept there are fewer councillors than in the example I have given in North East Derbyshire, as the council tax is still roughly the same, they are not scrutinising more ways to get better value for money for council taxpayers and their work certainly doesn’t warrant twice the pay. I have written before about reducing the number of councillors in general, and how much this would save. Scrutiny is important, but take a look at many councils’ websites and you will see scrutiny committees packed to the rafters. It doesn’t take that many councillors to scrutinise decisions. Paul Francis, the political editor of Kent Online said this on his blog about Kent County Council:

So do we get value for money and would KCC be any different if it was represented by say, 60 county councillors, rather than 84? Democracy needs strong political advocates and it is vital that there are strong checks and balances in the system but I do sometimes sense that County Hall would get along just as well with fewer politicians.

Councillors in Bolsover are paid more than their counterparts in any other comparable council in the country. They had an option to reduce their allowances, even if it was not by the amount the panel recommended. They should be leading by example. Instead they are using their position to maintain the status-quo. If I had served on the IRP in Bolsover, I would feel my time had been completely wasted, and if I was a resident and council taxpayer, I would be asking councillors why they deserve to be paid twice the average. If you feel like me, you can write to the deputy leader, Alan Tomlinson. He seems like the man who does all the talking, and I’m sure he will value your views!

Kirklees Council leader accused of meddling with information

Jul 26th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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After I wrote yesterday about some councils not complying with Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation, a supporter left a comment alerting us to a story in Kirklees.

It was reported in March in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner that the leader of Kirklees Council, Cllr Mehboob Khan, had been meddling in public information. Cllr Khan instructed staff to let him see FOI responses going to members of the public so he could amend them if necessary, and the newspaper obtained e-mails proving this. Cllr Khan says freedom of information is important and he only wanted to ensure the correct responses were going out, although the opportunity for him to make politically motivated amendments is there, something he vigorously denies. 

Leader of Kirklees Council, Clr Mehboob Khan

To give you an example, one of the newspaper’s reporters, Katie Grant, issued an FOI asking how much council tax is currently owed by people living in Kirklees – including all overdue payments. The FOI officer prepared a thorough report going back to 1993, which was then sent to Cllr Khan. He refused to let it go out, and instead told officers to prepare a report covering 2010/11 – a financial year which at the time had not finished.

When asked by Katie Grant why he had interfered in such a way, he responded by saying:

“This area falls into the portfolio shared by myself and Clr Shabir Pandor and we would want to see this kind of information as a matter of course. In terms of this particular response, after discussing with colleagues, I felt that the figures were less clear when they covered several years all the way back to 1993 and masked the real facts which was about how much as a council we had outstanding and how much we had collected in council tax in 2009/10. I think the picture given in the response was a clear one about the current situation.”

If there are still outstanding council tax payments owed covering previous years, it reflects badly on the council. I don’t think the initial report prepared was ‘less clear’. Nor do I think it ‘masked the real facts’. It strikes me that Cllr Khan was using his position to act as a spin doctor, ensuring the council was painted in the best possible light.

Bringing this story up-to-date, is has now been reported Cllr Khan is being investigated for misconduct, and rightly so, although the process will be conducted behind closed doors! I’m sure the irony isn’t lost on you. We have a council leader who has interfered in the FOI process being investigated behind closed doors, and the council will not even supply any information about it, including the date of the hearing. All the council will say is, “Due process is now being followed and we will not comment further until completion.”

When the newspaper informed the council they would be running a story about this non-transparent process, the Head of Legal Services said they would explain why. They then promptly pulled out of the interview, without giving an explanation.  I have spoken to the newspaper this morning, and the council’s position has not changed.

The way some councils abuse the FOI process is nothing short of criminal. They don’t respond in time, or give wholly inadequate responses. They manipulate data to suit their own ends, and try to limit our right to freedom of information. Barely a day goes by without a supporter or a journalist contacting me about problems they are encountering or a story they want giving a wider airing.

Taxpayers in Kirklees do not have faith in a process that hides itself away. By refusing to give the names of those investigating Cllr Khan’s alleged misconduct, and by also refusing to give a date when the hearing will take place, it further undermines the trust it has with the people it’s supposed to serve.

Nottingham City Council fails again on transparency

Jul 21st, 2011
by Anna Bailey.
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Transparency watchers are all too well aware that Nottingham City Council is the only local authority in England refusing to publish all spending over £500. What is less well known is the accountability-dodging council’s repeated flouting of Freedom of Information legislation (FOI), and the role the council’s leadership plays in blocking FOI responses.

Nottingham City fails to answer an astonishing 40 percent of FOI requests within the statutory deadline of 20 working days. These figures were revealed by an FOI request which, ironically enough, took the council 36 working days to respond to, and only then when the requester had asked for the case to go to internal review.

Of the 623 cases that were responded to late, a ‘clerical error’ was listed as a factor in eighteen of them. What then of the other 605 cases? A brief glance over Nottingham City’s FOI responses on the What do they know? website reveals the following introductory passage appearing with alarming regularity:

‘Initially, I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the delay in responding to your request. This is due to us encountering problems obtaining the information from the relevant department(s).’

One can sense the frustration among NCC’s FOI officers in this little paragraph. Trying to extract information from their City Hall colleagues is clearly like pulling teeth; the fact that the council is legally obliged to provide requested information does not seem to count for much. Publically placing blame on another department in your organisation is generally considered a cardinal sin in the public sector. If Nottingham City’s information officers are forced to publically reveal the difficulties they have in getting other departments in the council to hand over information, you can be sure the problem is endemic.

NCC make no secret of their disdain for FoI legislation

In fact, evidence is beginning to grow that the council’s leadership is blocking the work of its own information officers. It has emerged that in December last year council leader Jon Collins refused to let Information Governance staff carry out an automated search of his e-mail account to answer an FOI request from a Liberal Democrat councillor.  The council’s head of communications Stephen Barker also blocked the publication of council publicity plans alleged to show publicly-funded publicity for the council and the Labour party in the run-up to the 2007 elections. The spin chief denied the council held such plans, then handed them over once the legal deadline to respond to the FOI had passed. An angry information officer emailed the council’s head of legal services, pointing out that the council was in danger of committing a criminal offence:

‘I found the actions of communications colleagues particularly unhelpful on this matter, with Stephen’s actions potentially placing him as the individual, or the council, at risk of committing a criminal offence by asserting information isn’t held and then subsequently disclosing it.’

Collins himself has made no secret of his disdain for FOI, recently tweeting, ‘£500,000 a year on FOIs – could save a lot of services with that.’ It would be interesting to know how much of this supposed cost is self-inflicted by the council’s persistent attempts to block the FOI process. The time wasted by information officers having to repeatedly chase up officials who do not provide information; the large number of cases that go to internal review and the Information Commissioner because the council has refused to answer them; lawyers’ time spent concocting dubious uses of exemptions to avoid releasing information… these must be significant costs.

One instance of the latter tactic is the council’s attempt to silence a local blogger, Andy Platt, who uses FOI to scrutinise the council’s leadership and spending. When Platt asked for copies of internal reports on the housing allocations scandal in the council (which Notts Police controversially agreed to let the council investigate for itself), the council invoked Section 14 of the Act, accusing Platt of making ‘vexatious’ requests. The basis for the ‘vexatious’ claim was that Platt had made twenty FOI requests in a year (which it classed as ‘obsessive’, despite the fact that they were on unrelated subjects), and that he often publishes findings from his requests on his satirical blog mocking NCC’s leadership (by some mysterious tenuous link his requests are thereby said to be ‘harassing the Authority and distressing its  colleagues’).

This contradicts FOI guidance, which clearly states that it must be the requests themselves which are vexatious, not the requester and not any use to which the information may be put. Unfortunately for the council, no sooner had it brushed off Platt than another – presumably less vexatious – requester asked for copies of the same internal reports. The council reverted to its default tactic for dealing with FOIs. It simply ignored the request.

Nottingham City’s repeated flouting of FOI legislation has caught the attention of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which placed the council under a period of special monitoring that came to an end on 30 June (at least it had company – 11 other councils were also on the monitoring list). The council, however, is as contemptuous of the ICO as it is of the general public. On numerous occasions the ICO has ordered NCC to release requested information, and on numerous occasions NCC has simply ignored those orders. Given the repeated and systemic violations of FOI legislation at Nottingham City Council, it will be interesting to find out just how sharp the ICO’s teeth really are and what action it will take against the council. We will certainly keep you posted.

Hull’s Lord Mayor to wine and dine fellow councillors

Jul 12th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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The current Lord Mayor of Hull, Cllr Colin Inglis, is a very colourful figure to say the least. A former leader of the city council, and a former chairman of Humberside Police Authority, he made it clear a few weeks ago he fully intends to use his term as Lord Mayor as a platform in his bid to become Humberside’s first Police and Crime Commissioner.

When it comes to wasting money, he is no stranger to controversy. Under his leadership the council spent £650K on a big screen very few wanted. The decision was made by him without public consultation and the screen was eventually removed at the beginning of last year. This is a man who shamelessly wastes our money, and isn’t bothered in the least if we don’t like it.

Last week I was sent a copy of an invitation he has sent out to newly elected councillors and two of the city’s MPs. He plans to wine and dine them at our expense. This is what Cllr Inglis had to say:

“Hosting dinners is what the Lord Mayor does. As it happens, in the six weeks since my installation we haven’t even had one dinner. I have invited Karl Turner because he is a new MP and Diana Johnson MP because she has never previously been invited to a dinner by any Lord Mayor”

You have to feel sorry for him. He has been Lord Mayor for six weeks and he hasn’t hosted one dinner! Not that any of the plebs will be invited to one of his soirées. We just pick-up the tab. Liberal Democrat, Cllr Craig Woolmer has this to say about the event:

“No member of our group is attending on the grounds that they believe it’s a waste of money. The reason being given for the dinner is that it will give new councillors an opportunity to see the Lord Mayor’s Parlour.

At a time when the council is having to make cuts, it is hypocritical to have councillors wining and dining like this at taxpayers’ expense.”

Not enough dinners, apparently.

I couldn’t agree more. As elected councillors, I’m sure any one of them can meet the Lord Mayor in his parlour when they visit the Guildhall on council business. They don’t need a three course meal with all the trimmings to be given the opportunity of saying hello.

It seems Cllr Inglis will make sure he lives the high life during his term of office, and no doubt will do what all other civic dignitaries do – eat, drink and be merry at as many official knees-ups in the area as possible.

At a time when the council is having problems balancing the books, the last thing it needs is a profligate Lord Mayor.

Senior officer in Hull walks away with £77K

Jul 7th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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Councils are apparently the most efficient of all public sector organisations. I have always thought this was more a reflection of the state of government departments and Quangos, rather than saying councils are efficient. All too often we see examples of wasteful council largesse, and this story is no exception.

Until recently, Susan de Val was the chief legal officer for Hull City Council. The legal department has had more of its fair share of problems in the last few years, and she is the second chief legal officer to resign in the last four years. When I say resign, I mean she jumped before she was pushed. In recent months the advice from the legal department has not been of the highest quality. This has left egg on the faces of some senior councillors and senior officers, therefore a change at the top was needed.

Thanks for the money!

What happened next is a classic example of someone in the public sector being rewarded for failure. Ms De Val, who has only been working for the authority for two years, has walked away with £77k. The council’s reasoning is it would have had to appoint an independent advisor to investigate Ms De Val’s conduct, and would have also had to suspend her on full pay. Paying her off was seen as the cheapest option, and she will also have waived her right to take the council to an employment tribunal.

She has now freely walked away from Hull City Council with an officially unblemished record. The council cannot give her a bad reference. As matters have not been properly investigated, anything anyone says about her is hearsay. I have no doubt all she will do is take a short holiday, and then pick-up another council job, probably on an interim basis on an inflated salary, until the dust settles and a permanent job becomes available.

This is what will happen to Andrea Hill, the chief executive of Suffolk County Council who walked away with £218k this week. There seems to be a council merry-go-round, where you get paid off, walk into another job, get paid off again, and then walk into yet another. Taxpayers lose out as these people get wealthy at our expense. When you ask some of these high-earning officers to take a voluntary pay cut, most will laugh in your face.

While no one wants a lengthy and expensive disciplinary process, at the same time no one should benefit financially as a result of their incompetence. This is what appears to have happened in this case. I have already written about some of the spending decisions of Hull City Council. Since the new administration took over in May, £500k has been spent on reducing the cost of school meals for all primary school children in the city, irrespective of whether their parents are on high incomes and do not need a subsidy. Start adding these figures together, along with news today that the council failed to collect nearly £3 million in council tax last year, and you get over £3.5 million that could have been used to fund front line services and perhaps reduce the tax burden for the city’s residents.

A few years ago Hull City Council was at the bottom of the pile. It was one of the worst performing councils in the country. Wasting money in the ways I have outlined does not fill me with hope for the future. The council needs to pull its socks up and collect the council tax due, not waste it on subsidising school meals for those who can easily afford to pay the full rate, and certianly not reward senior officers for failure.

Non-job of the week

Jul 6th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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Yesterday, the BBC reported that according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), public sector workers are paid on average 7.8% more than their private sector counterparts. This is an increase of 2.5% in the last three years. When you factor in generous pension entitlements, the gap will be wider. Faced with tough spending choices, and a need to bring down the public sector wage and pension bill, why is Waltham Forest Council employing a Laughter Yoga Teacher? Here’s what Liza Moon, the aforementioned teacher has to say about her job:

“It can help with depression and reduces pain and stress. At a time when people are going to be affected because they are losing their jobs, this is something that can help with depression and lift up people’s mindsets. It is such a simple thing but it can do so much for a person’s health.

Laughing can be contagious and when people are watching other people laugh, they will start laughing as well. When a person starts to laugh, the brain tells the mind that a person is happy, thereby releasing those chemicals.”

I enjoy a laugh, although I am told my jokes are hopeless! There are many classes you can attend to make you feel better, and support groups run by charities to help people with depression. During times of reining in spending, this is not a justifiable expense. As someone said on the local newspaper’s website:

Laughter is the best medicine, they say, but when the medicine being handed out to the public services at present is so bitter I think strories like these, which in the past would be seen as ‘silly season’ fillers, are, like the medicine itself, increasingly hard to swallow.

Non-Job of the WeekThree months ago, I highlighted Morgan Hunt were advertising for a Programme Manager for a healthcare provider in the South West, paying £200-£300 a day. The same company are now advertising for a Programme Manager in the South West, but this time for a local government client. Once again this is a temporary position, and once again we don’t know who the local government client is. What we do know is the job pays between £550-£750 a day – or £2750-£3750 a week!

To give this some perspective, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is looking to recruit a Counter Terrorism Senior Research Analyst. The successful candidate ‘will advise senior officials and ministers helping to inform and influence overseas Counter Terrorism strategy’. Helping to protect the nation from terrorist threats is a very important role, and whoever gets this job will receive a salary of £35K a year. Yet a Programme Manager for an unnamed local government client in the South West is set to pocket more per day than a Counter Terrorism Senior Research Analyst will earn in a week. They will (on a temporary basis) earn more than cabinet ministers, the prime minister and some of the permanent secretaries of many government departments.

This ‘local government client’ must have money to burn – our money, yet the council taxpayers in this unknown part of the South West will have to pay for it out of their taxes. If anyone knows who this council is, please get in touch. Any information you give us will be treated in the strictest confidence.

£500K taxpayer subsidy to Aylesbury Theatre

Jun 24th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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When you scratch the surface, it’s amazing what you find. Last week I wrote about Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC). As they had some negative publicity from the local press, they prevented officers and cabinet members from speaking to local journalists. They really did shoot themselves in the foot, as more negative publicity has come their way.

The locals don't want it, but still have to pay

One of the negative stories they complained about was the hiring of the Waterside Theatre in Aylesbury for the local election count. That cost taxpayers almost £20k! To add insult to injury, it has been revealed this week that the council is subsidising the theatre at a cost of £36,400 a month. This has got local residents’ blood boiling. Whilst AVDC fights a protracted war to introduce car parking charges in Winslow, they prop-up this theatre with almost £500K of our money every year. It’s not that it’s popular with the locals either. The Buckinghamshire Advertiser has discovered out of 120,000 ticket sales from March to October last year, only 3547 were bought from people with a MK18 postcode.

I don’t know about you, but I get very tired of listening to councils complain how hard-up they are, and then read about stories like this one. AVDC would rather risk putting people out of business in Winslow than get a better deal for taxpayers. They would rather pay over the odds to hire the already heavily taxpayer funded theatre for election night than give the grossly overtaxed motorist a break. When it comes to breaks though, unsurprisingly the council still manages to award bonuses to the chief executive and two directors. On 2009/10 the chief executive trousered an extra £11,375 and two directors got an extra £4,587.

If the council wants to find savings, perhaps it can start here? Then it can look at the cash it injects into a theatre locals don’t want to visit, and perhaps it will then be able to agree to residents’ wishes, and not start charging £12.50 a week for workers to park their cars in Winslow. We live in hope.

Tameside’s jobs for the boys

Jun 23rd, 2011
by Liam Billington.
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Back in 2010 in Tameside, we had a leadership battle between Labour councillors with the then incumbent leader Roy Oldham and Councillor Kieran Quinn. At the time Roy was suffering from cancer and had little time to rally support and ended up losing the leadership in May last year. He died just two months later. I always had respect for Roy, but we also had our disagreements. One of them was over political assistants, a position highlighted by the TPA as a non-job.

I remember Councillor Kieran Quinn’s first speech as leader where he promised that he’d change several things which would please Tameside’s bloggers who, at the time were questioning the need for political assistants in the face of incoming budget cuts. To Councillor Quinn’s credit, he removed both Labour and Conservative political assistants which saved the council £67,438 per year.

Mike Kane (right) with Ed Balls

However, a year later it seems political assistants are creeping in under a different name. Tameside Council has just appointed Mike Kane as a “Senior Executive Assistant” to work in the leaders office. Kane has moved from working for Stalybridge and Hyde MP, Jonathan Reynolds as his office manager, a job he inherited when former Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell stepped down from the seat. He also briefly served as a Labour councillor for the Northernden Ward at Manchester City Council.

Mike Kane is a political assistant all in name. Senior Executive Assistant may sound like a jumped up PA (which is probably what he is), but there is no denying Kane’s close links with the Tameside Labour Party and you have to ask if this was the reason he was brought in to work for the council. It stinks of jobs for the boys. It clearly shows the lack of judgement shown by Tameside’s Executive Council Leader, Kieran Quinn. On one hand he complains about the lack of money for frontline services, yet somehow he can find the money for more backroom staff for his own personal benefit and increased trade union funding.

Aylesbury Vale District Council shoots itself in the foot

Jun 17th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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The normally quiet market town of Winslow, Buckinghamshire, has become the centre of heated debate in recent months. Last year, Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC) decided to reintroduce parking charges at the Greyhound Lane car park. Those people who work in the town but have to commute by car are facing additional costs of £12.50 per week. Many of those people are on low incomes and can’t afford these additional charges, while local shopkeepers fear the charges could kill their businesses as they lose valued and trusted members of staff.

The charges could easily encourage people to shop elsewhere too, and will no doubt create additional parking problems in side streets. One local resident, Ruth Ash, decided to take action and started collecting signatures on a petition. She managed to get around half the residents to sign it and also enlisted support from the town’s MP, John Bercow. Despite this obvious opposition, AVDC has pushed ahead with a consultation that will no doubt cost more than the council will receive in revenue from parking charges.

AVDC blames the town council for this problem, claiming that an agreement reached in 2005 for Winslow Town Council to contribute £2000 per year + RPI had expired, and the town council refused to negotiate. The Town Council has stated AVDC made unreasonable financial demands when trying to negotiate a new agreement, demanding the contribution increase from £2000 a year to £16,000

Stomping off home in a sulk

Now events have taken a sinister turn. As a result of negative publicity in the local press on various issues, AVDC has banned local reporters from speaking directly to cabinet members and officers. Instead, residents will be drip-fed a diet of press releases coming from the council’s communications department. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! If AVDC thinks the previous coverage was negative, it ain’t seen nothing yet!

I am not saying the council has anything to hide, but by taking this course of action, it is surely implying it has. AVDC has shown no regard to public opinion, and when the going got tough, retreated to its bunker like a spiteful child unwilling to share his football.

Councils should be listening to what their employers – us – want. They should stop treating us with disdain, and should certainly stop engaging in adolescent games like preventing the press from talking to cabinet members and officers of the council. Taxpayers in this part of Buckinghamshire certainly deserve much better.

How much do ‘Pilgrims’ cost you?

Jun 9th, 2011
by Andrew Allison.
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Jane Pilgrim is a nurse, and is employed by the NHS, however she doesn’t spend her day tending the sick. She spends her day working full-time for her union.

Last week, Liam Billington wrote on how union funding at Tameside Council has risen by 48% and I highlighted how in Hull UNISON had a ‘countdown to power’ before the recent local elections.

In our report on union funding last year, we showed how much YOU PAY for union activities in your local council, NHS Trust, and other public bodies. Here are some figures from 2009/10:

  • Ofsted are charged with inspecting schools, but we also contribute around £175K to union representatives.
  • Over £600K of our money assists unions in the Valuation Office Agency.
  • The next time you pay your taxes, remember over £6 million of our money pays for union activities in HMRC.
  • Union activities in councils cost over £22 million, and this is a conservative estimate, as many councils (like many Quangos, NHS Trusts and government departments) do not record the amount of time spent on union business when they should be working for us.

In a written answer to a question in parliament, DCLG minister Bob Neil said:

“I am aware of the public and parliamentary concern expressed in recent weeks over trade union officials paid for from the public purse. The coalition Government’s transparency agenda will help ensure that cash payments to trade unions and the titles of staff posts in local government are open to public scrutiny. At a time when all local authorities need to make sensible savings to help pay off the budget deficit, councillors will rightly wish to review the merits of (full-time) union officials funded by the taxpayer and the provision of the office facilities to trade unions.”

The more pressure that can be exerted on these pilgrims, the better. If you feel that the taxpayer funding of union officials has to stop, here’s what you can do:

  • Read our report to find out how many union representatives there are in your local council, NHS trust and fire service.
  • Write to your MP to insist that the taxpayer funding of union activists has to stop.

Any responses you get, please forward them on to us. We pay our taxes for legitimate government services, not for officials union members should be paying for themselves.

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