Thanet District Council Stealth Announce Redundancies
Written by Matt B · first published 04/11/2008
In a recent (undated) press release Thanet District Council have announced their "plan" to "save" £4.5 million over the next three years. This plan boils down to "restructuring" so either the council has been running a sub optimal ship for years or they plan to shed some 50 jobs or so.
One also has to ask - if this is so efficient and the savings so easy to find was the council running at excessive cost before?
The biggest proposed saving is to come from a "restructure" of the council’s Revenues and Benefits services, which, they say, is expected to bring savings of around £400,000. Given that the listed savings account for only £950,000 and over four years this is only £3.8 million one must assume that this is per year. So I make that approximately 20 jobs are to go from this "department".
Given that Council Treatment of the Poor is Very Poor already I have to wonder if this "saving" will be at the expense of extended delays in processing claims and sorting out paper work - something Thanet District Council are rumoured to be very good at loosing.
If we are to see further delays in processing benefit applications and council tax paperwork then the practical upshot is that "Revenues" will be taking people to court (in an allegedly illegal manor) that "Benefits" are supposed to be helping because, as they will tell you at length, benefit entitlement or other problems is "nothing to do with the debt you owe the council" which is your responsibility.
We could always hope to see joined up thinking in this area but blue does not suit us and so holding of our breath is not recommended.
In addition to more overtly clawing money from the benefits section the council plans to "bring graffiti removal under council control" because as we all know the council is so efficient. The council would like us to believe that they can take care of Graffiti removal for £20,000 a year less than the way it is currently taken care of. If they are so good why did they not do this year ago? (hint: they are not that good)
Then Thanet District Council plan to use the "tender" process on their insurance bill and hope to pay £300,000 a year less. Let's put this in perspective that's more than the price of a good quality five bedroom house. So Thanet District Council are telling us that they have been too lazy for the past five years to obtain a saving that would have allowed them to house a further ten to twenty families?
A line that frankly scares me the most is "Better use of machinery to provide a more efficient street cleaning service" and a yearly saving of five jobs worth of money. Am I to understand that the machinery is not used efficiently at the moment and that it is wasting £100,000 a year for no reason? The press release is careful to not say what this "better use" might be but frankly it sounds like pie-in-the-sky.
This is a bit like the "Reducing the use of agency staff for refuse collection and street cleaning" which sounds too much like "cut back on services" for my liking. Are we to see less street cleaners? Or are they just to be paid less? TDC expects to find £30,000 a year so I think we can expect to see a lot of low wage jobs going.
As for the £100,000 saving to be gained from "Implementing a joint contract with other authorities for human resources and payroll" this sounds more like heedlessly carrying out stealth manoeuvres to merge TDC, KCC and other authorities regardless of the opinion of the people.
As to where the missing savings are going to be found I shudder to think...
This, to me, looks like a badly written attempt to put a positive spin on what is, in essence, a round of redundancies. Redundancies that do not seem to be especially well thought out. This can only hurt the councils ability to deliver by trying to grab headline making savings where good stewardship should have been the order of the day from the start.
One also has to ask - if this is so efficient and the savings so easy to find was the council running at excessive cost before?
The biggest proposed saving is to come from a "restructure" of the council’s Revenues and Benefits services, which, they say, is expected to bring savings of around £400,000. Given that the listed savings account for only £950,000 and over four years this is only £3.8 million one must assume that this is per year. So I make that approximately 20 jobs are to go from this "department".
Given that Council Treatment of the Poor is Very Poor already I have to wonder if this "saving" will be at the expense of extended delays in processing claims and sorting out paper work - something Thanet District Council are rumoured to be very good at loosing.
If we are to see further delays in processing benefit applications and council tax paperwork then the practical upshot is that "Revenues" will be taking people to court (in an allegedly illegal manor) that "Benefits" are supposed to be helping because, as they will tell you at length, benefit entitlement or other problems is "nothing to do with the debt you owe the council" which is your responsibility.
We could always hope to see joined up thinking in this area but blue does not suit us and so holding of our breath is not recommended.
In addition to more overtly clawing money from the benefits section the council plans to "bring graffiti removal under council control" because as we all know the council is so efficient. The council would like us to believe that they can take care of Graffiti removal for £20,000 a year less than the way it is currently taken care of. If they are so good why did they not do this year ago? (hint: they are not that good)
Then Thanet District Council plan to use the "tender" process on their insurance bill and hope to pay £300,000 a year less. Let's put this in perspective that's more than the price of a good quality five bedroom house. So Thanet District Council are telling us that they have been too lazy for the past five years to obtain a saving that would have allowed them to house a further ten to twenty families?
A line that frankly scares me the most is "Better use of machinery to provide a more efficient street cleaning service" and a yearly saving of five jobs worth of money. Am I to understand that the machinery is not used efficiently at the moment and that it is wasting £100,000 a year for no reason? The press release is careful to not say what this "better use" might be but frankly it sounds like pie-in-the-sky.
This is a bit like the "Reducing the use of agency staff for refuse collection and street cleaning" which sounds too much like "cut back on services" for my liking. Are we to see less street cleaners? Or are they just to be paid less? TDC expects to find £30,000 a year so I think we can expect to see a lot of low wage jobs going.
As for the £100,000 saving to be gained from "Implementing a joint contract with other authorities for human resources and payroll" this sounds more like heedlessly carrying out stealth manoeuvres to merge TDC, KCC and other authorities regardless of the opinion of the people.
As to where the missing savings are going to be found I shudder to think...
This, to me, looks like a badly written attempt to put a positive spin on what is, in essence, a round of redundancies. Redundancies that do not seem to be especially well thought out. This can only hurt the councils ability to deliver by trying to grab headline making savings where good stewardship should have been the order of the day from the start.
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Sir Head wrote:
As for clearing up Graffiti costing 20 grand a year - do me a favor - pay me 20 grand a year and i will quite happilly clear it for em in the places they already clean and if they supply the paint i will do it in places they dont as well. How hard is it to employ someone and give em a paint brush. For 20 grand a year i will quite happily sit on my bum for 9 months of the year which is what the council appear to do at the moment.
The whole redundancy thing isnt about saving money its about ploughing more money into useless schemes and ventures (3 spring to mind - the turder centre, westwood crass and the china hateway) and please if your going to have redundancies shut the useless ramsgate office that will save loads coz you can then lose all the paperwork from there in one hit.