Black hole in town hall budgets rises to £5bn

[s1962a]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66428191

What a shambles. Looks like councils will cut services and increase council tax just to provide the bare minimum of services.

[FourWheelDrift]

Got to pay for all those bullst council jobs somehow.

I wonder if Moray Council in the Highlands still pays £19,887 a year for a street football co-ordinator.

[Biker 1]

Our local 'warden' costs about £20k pa. He wonders around 'reassuring' old people, but doesn't do weekend or night shifts & has zero powers of arrest. I would rather the ££ was spent on something useful, like pothole repairs.

[rscott]

Biker 1 said:

Our local 'warden' costs about £20k pa. He wonders around 'reassuring' old people, but doesn't do weekend or night shifts & has zero powers of arrest. I would rather the ££ was spent on something useful, like pothole repairs.

Is he a district or county council employee? Only the latter can deal with potholes.

[Getragdogleg]

At what point do the people just say "no, we are not getting anything so were not paying council tax until you sort it out" ?

Because in terms of the social contract of "Pay tax-get stuff done" the pay tax bit is becoming the only side that is keeping their side of the deal.

[munroman]

FourWheelDrift said:

Got to pay for all those bullst council jobs somehow.

I wonder if Moray Council in the Highlands still pays £19,887 a year for a street football co-ordinator.

Moray Council you say?

How about 100 year old road bridge between 2 communities condemned due to concrete cancer, closed to all traffic.
It provided a bypass to having to go into Elgin if heading South, as well as access to schools.

£30,000 study to show there was a need to replace 100 year old bridge.

Now a further, £150,000 to be spent on 2nd study to prove that they really, really need a bridge, to justify to UK Government.

So £180,000 to produce next year's toilet rolls, and not a bridge in sight.....

Strangely, they don't answer my questions on their 'open communication' Facebook page.

Another cracker was, after the finding of that dodgy concrete which could collapse at any time in a local school, they announced some classrooms would be closed for repairs, 'to reduce the risk'.

If my kinds were at that school, I'd want the risk removed, not reduced.

Plenty of time and resources to organise Drag Queen Story Times at their premises though.....

[We are all Brexiteers now]

The probability is the vast majority of money spent by LAs is spent on adult's and children's social care. The rest left over will cover the traditional council roles such as streetlights, roads and parks.

[Killer2005]

Kirklees council is close to bankruptcy

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/kirk...

Naturally it's all central governments and therefore the Tories fault, and absolutely nothing to do with how poorly the council is run.

[darreni]

Our local council must have spent £5b on road signs alone, every 10 yards there is a warning sign for something.

[Jasandjules]

darreni said:

Our local council must have spent £5b on road signs alone, every 10 yards there is a warning sign for something.

Funny you should say that, my son (who is seven) was asking me why there are so many road signs..........

[ZedLeg]

munroman said:

Plenty of time and resources to organise Drag Queen Story Times at their premises though.....

Costs substantially less than £180k to organise.

[Biker 1]

rscott said:

Biker 1 said:

Our local 'warden' costs about £20k pa. He wonders around 'reassuring' old people, but doesn't do weekend or night shifts & has zero powers of arrest. I would rather the ££ was spent on something useful, like pothole repairs.

Is he a district or county council employee? Only the latter can deal with potholes.

Errrr......... He's useless & serves no practical purpose. His role should be scrapped & the resulting £20k saving put into pothole repair....

[We are all Brexiteers now]

rscott said:

Biker 1 said:

Our local 'warden' costs about £20k pa. He wonders around 'reassuring' old people, but doesn't do weekend or night shifts & has zero powers of arrest. I would rather the ££ was spent on something useful, like pothole repairs.

Is he a district or county council employee? Only the latter can deal with potholes.

Untrue. Others such as City and Metropolitan can.

[Biggy Stardust]

My dealings with the local council have shown them to be utter incompetents who have no concept of how to do their jobs properly.

This could potentially be connected with any financial issues they might have. I have no sympathy for them as they have caused a lot of their own problems.

[BoRED S2upid]

FourWheelDrift said:

Got to pay for all those bullst council jobs somehow.

I wonder if Moray Council in the Highlands still pays £19,887 a year for a street football co-ordinator.

This. Is there a council out there that isn’t a utter shambles and has thousands of overpaid non jobs?


Seems to me they all knew they didn’t have the money so instead of cutting costs and non jobs they just borrowed more.

[Type R Tom]

darreni said:

Our local council must have spent £5b on road signs alone, every 10 yards there is a warning sign for something.

Your council has installed about 50,000,000 signs?

[Wills2]

Type R Tom said:

darreni said:

Our local council must have spent £5b on road signs alone, every 10 yards there is a warning sign for something.

Your council has installed about 50,000,000 signs?

Feels like it at times, everything costs so much these days nothing can be done without huge expenditure and they keep spending so eventually the money runs out.

Our city council has a hard on for traffic lights and mini roundabouts they simply love them and will squeeze them in anywhere they can they will cost fortune to do and they have no money for new road surfaces but any chance they get to increase journey times, pollution and congestion they will.

The most recent set has caused mile long queues on a stretch of road that for all of my life time didn't exist all to control the traffic coming out off a small side road, they are truly special.

[Octoposse]

Quite impressed with mine . . . our road had been patched so often that the “lip” to our dropped kerb had disappeared, causing problems with surface water (neither the storm drains nor sewers in the area can cope in heavy rain . . . thanks privatised water people).

More in hope than expectation, I emailed the council. Within two weeks they relaid my dropped kerb, and my neighbour’s, and resurfaced the pavement.

Their finances look wafer thin, with expenses such as social care for the most vulnerable children eye wateringly expensive. The demands of multiple hotels for refugees can’t help, with some people with significant needs and vulnerabilities arriving with no notice. I assume some central government money comes with them?

Give it a year or two and our local authority will join the “statutory services only” list.

[SpeedBash]

Biggy Stardust said:

My dealings with the local council have shown them to be utter incompetents who have no concept of how to do their jobs properly.

This could potentially be connected with any financial issues they might have. I have no sympathy for them as they have caused a lot of their own problems.

Council employees really are a unique breed - unemployable in any other sector but readily hired by their local borough.

[PlywoodPascal]

Biker 1 said:

Our local 'warden' costs about £20k pa. He wonders around 'reassuring' old people, but doesn't do weekend or night shifts & has zero powers of arrest. I would rather the ££ was spent on something useful, like pothole repairs.

On the other hand he might notice issues for/with elderly people that can be intercepted earlier at much lower overall cost than if they’d been ignored/left to reach crisis point.