Speaking as someone who works for an MP and sees the level of abuse and opprobrium directed at councillors, I frankly wonder why any one would bother to stand, let alone the system attract higher quality candidates. An increasing proportion of council budgets is unavoidable spending and is a consequence of kids with special needs or adult social care. Local authority funding has been squeezed for 15 years. I have no wish to defend councillors or officials as a collective, but the knee jerk moaning of local residents who blame councils for everything short of global warming is lazy and frankly pretty stupid.
Just because not everything is waste, or some inefficiencies will take time to address, that’s not an argument to let all waste continue. I’d start with taxi contracts.
A lot of spending is now on care and children's SEND support. The massive increase in awareness about neuro diversity is a good thing, as less children will drop out of school and be more productive. The issue isn't increasing spending for special needs, but that school systems are setup exclusively for "normal" kids. You try to step outside of the national schools setup and it's impossible.
One area that would hugely improve schooling and probably massively reduce send spending is school vouchers. Let the parents decide where kids goto school and give parents the individual choices to decide how their needs are met. New schools will be setup and outcomes will be better.
Most government waste is just shoe horning everyone into a protected area like education where unions have huge political power.
I think this is unnecessarily cynical. Charlotte Gill (see her Substack) will tell you that there is A LOT of government spending being wasted on agenda-driven claptrap. And there's A LOT of government interference in areas where governments have no business interfering. People will be surprised, I think, at the level of waste, and it's not all - or even mostly - to do with IT systems and outmoded processes. At the very least, these matters need brought into the light.
Accepting that councils are largely the victim of central government diktat as to things they must carry out, nevertheless any council which has declared a climate emergency, engages in diversity training or celebrates Pride month is self evidently not serious about using its scarce funding prudently.
Speaking as someone who works for an MP and sees the level of abuse and opprobrium directed at councillors, I frankly wonder why any one would bother to stand, let alone the system attract higher quality candidates. An increasing proportion of council budgets is unavoidable spending and is a consequence of kids with special needs or adult social care. Local authority funding has been squeezed for 15 years. I have no wish to defend councillors or officials as a collective, but the knee jerk moaning of local residents who blame councils for everything short of global warming is lazy and frankly pretty stupid.
‘Local residents’ = council tax payers. Thank you for demonstrating the aloof sense of entitlement that thoroughly deserves their contempt.
As a former civil servant, doing the donkey work, I can see huge savings to be identified.
But those savings are the result of AI.
So much of civil service work is process and managers tasks are no different.
I expect IT companies have been given the task of replacing these jobs with AI intervention. There lies the savings.
But the civil service tends to look after their own at the higher levels.
Government should look at the management roles at a higher level after the lower ranks have been removed by AI.
HR? Not much use when the workforce is decimated.
Just because not everything is waste, or some inefficiencies will take time to address, that’s not an argument to let all waste continue. I’d start with taxi contracts.
A lot of spending is now on care and children's SEND support. The massive increase in awareness about neuro diversity is a good thing, as less children will drop out of school and be more productive. The issue isn't increasing spending for special needs, but that school systems are setup exclusively for "normal" kids. You try to step outside of the national schools setup and it's impossible.
One area that would hugely improve schooling and probably massively reduce send spending is school vouchers. Let the parents decide where kids goto school and give parents the individual choices to decide how their needs are met. New schools will be setup and outcomes will be better.
Most government waste is just shoe horning everyone into a protected area like education where unions have huge political power.
I think this is unnecessarily cynical. Charlotte Gill (see her Substack) will tell you that there is A LOT of government spending being wasted on agenda-driven claptrap. And there's A LOT of government interference in areas where governments have no business interfering. People will be surprised, I think, at the level of waste, and it's not all - or even mostly - to do with IT systems and outmoded processes. At the very least, these matters need brought into the light.
Accepting that councils are largely the victim of central government diktat as to things they must carry out, nevertheless any council which has declared a climate emergency, engages in diversity training or celebrates Pride month is self evidently not serious about using its scarce funding prudently.