Crisis at local council level

[RabidCity]

What about smart motorways?
How much is that costing?
Years of disruption and inconvenience and for what?

I think this works quite well around Leeds and look forward to be it being an improvement in Manchester.
No doubt we paid twice as much and it also ran a year late, so still able to manage it incompetently. No wonder private companies queue up to tender for public contracts.

 

[Chippy_boy]

All good points, it's too easy to blame central government whilst practicing financial incompetency.

Another gem is the traffic lights at the M5 Junction 14. Traffic used to flow past there with little or no problem. But no, the local council with money to burn decided they needed to waste a few hundred grand on something or other. Presumably underspent on the highway maintenance budget so something must be found to waste money on. They thought J14 was the perfect candidate.

So they spent nigh on £1m on installing traffic lights and changing the road layout a bit. The result? Total gridlock at peak times. Not deterred, the council concluded they needed to waste even more money to "fix it". So another £500,000 was splurged on tweaking the timings and moving a kerb or two. Made no difference: still absolute grid lock at peak times.

So the final conclusion was that the traffic lights are unsuitable for peak traffic conditions and must be turned off during peak hours - say 7am to 9am and 4pm to 6pm. They duly turned them off and the junction works fine again.

We now have the utterly farcical situation of traffic lights being on when there is little or no traffic there, and switched off as soon as a few cars arrive. You could not make it up and it would indeed be hilarious if the local tax payers were not £1.5m down on the pantomime.

Were we rolling in money, these sorts of idiotic events would be much less irritating, but to continually waste money like this, on things that no-one wants? And there seems to be no accountability, because they are all in this same club: People being paid with someone else's money, responsible for spending someone else's money and with a sense of self-importance because, well, we're part of "government" you know.

Personally, I'd disband half of our local authorities. Why should we have different standards of healthcare, or education for example in different parts of the country? Makes no sense to me. A good move would be to get rid of much of these wasteful layers of "democracy" which in many cases seem to lack any concept of fiscal prudence and responsibility.

 

[hilts]

A lot of jobs in the council are occupied by people who got their role by the sheer fact they breath and turn up most days.

 

[BrianW]

I'm pretty sure that the work on Motorways (whether needed or not) is funded by a central government agency, not local councils.

Most people are not remotely interested in local politics unless something happens (or doesn't happen) that impacts on them personally. That's part of the problem. If people could be arsed to get onto the back of their local councillors, a lot of the crackpot schemes mentioned could be halted. But then again, one person's crackpot scheme is someone else's cherished project.

For example, a bit back Bury Council spent quite a lot introducing 20 mph limits on our local back roads. I didn't ask for it and I don't know anyone who did, but I dare say someone thought it was a great idea. From what I can gather, they got special funds from the Government to do this that could not have been spent on something more useful.

 

[stonerblue]

Of course councils are incredibly stretched, not least due to the ever spiralling social care costs as we get older and require more looking after.

Which is why it is so ****ing infuriating to see the sort of utter, utter bollocks which the average council still persists with. As a prime example the Winterbourne - Highway drainage improvement works, in my own area. Millions of pounds being almost literally pissed down the drain on something NOBODY wants. The justification is "The road floods on a regular basis causing traffic disruption, damage to properties and to the highway." Well I've lived here for 16+ years and travelled down the road concerned, regularly since 1982. As far as I am aware, it has NEVER flooded.

Or the guys with chainsaws that came in and cut down a load of trees (with protection orders on them I might fucking add) opposite my house, when NO-ONE asked them to, because "the council has asked us to clear it in case they need to do any drainage work at some point in the future".

The problem here is that councils are incapable of doing nothing and spending nothing. It's like that Polish glass manufacturer churning out glasses that nobody wants, with years of inventory piling up because "that's what we do". Until John Harvey Jones goes in and says turn the fucking thing off, go home, stop making glasses.

The same needs to happen with our councils: You are under severe financial pressure: Stop spending money on utter bollocks that no-one has asked for. Stop now. Go home.

When budgets were not so stretched, we tolerated shite like this. But to have our rates increased by the absolute maximum, whilst they bleat about not being able to make ends meet, and at the same time, continue to waste millions on utter bollocks? It does my head in.

Mine too. Sheer incompetence. Bury in Bloom competition has seen lots of nice displays, sculptures and flowers popping up everywhere yet the fucking council can't even keep my park clean or weed free for the last 3 years. Now it's an overgrown mess that will cost a hell of a lot just to get it back to a fair state.

 

[stonerblue]

I'm pretty sure that the work on Motorways (whether needed or not) is funded by a central government agency, not local councils.

Most people are not remotely interested in local politics unless something happens (or doesn't happen) that impacts on them personally. That's part of the problem. If people could be arsed to get onto the back of their local councillors, a lot of the crackpot schemes mentioned could be halted. But then again, one person's crackpot scheme is someone else's cherished project.

For example, a bit back Bury Council spent quite a lot introducing 20 mph limits on our local back roads. I didn't ask for it and I don't know anyone who did, but I dare say someone thought it was a great idea. From what I can gather, they got special funds from the Government to do this that could not have been spent on something more useful.

Dare i mention the 'cycleway' scheme rolling out across the borough?

 

[Chippy_boy]

A lot of jobs in the council are occupied by people who got their role by the sheer fact they breath and turn up most days.

"most days" meaning "more than half the days". They probably get 12 weeks holiday and another 12 off sick.

 

[BrianW]

Dare i mention the 'cycleway' scheme rolling out across the borough?

Might be interesting to ask your councillor where the money is coming from. I'll have a small bet it's another special Government "pot" that can't be spent on anything else.

That's where a lot of these hare-brained schemes come from. The Government produces a pot of cash to paint cows pink, or install ugly twisted ironwork "art" on top of hills, and Councils bid for the cash as they like to be seen doing "something". And a minority in the population will think it's cool.

Meanwhile, the basic, essential stuff is ignored as there's no money for it.

 

[hilts]

"most days" meaning "more than half the days". They probably get 12 weeks holiday and another 12 off sick.

If you get paid for being sick I’m not sure there’s much difference.

 

[discopop]

So councils and their problems? First up Manchester a council where the big 6 department managers hate each other and can’t work as a combined unit despite having recently spunking out 30k to have a consultant to get to the bottom of the issues and when faced with the report have not responded and basically decided they don’t like harsh truths, a council with multiple workers earning well over 100k a year with little come back, then you can multiply this for for every single council in the UK. The money wasteage is unreal.