It's our money they're wasting!

[davieG]

From the Merc:

It's racked up millions of pounds in legal fees, filled acres of paper and caused years of bad blood.

Yesterday in court 62 on the 11th floor of London's High Court, a bitter row resumed between a council and a community association.

Ten solicitors and barristers sat before a judge and a packed public gallery.

The court benches bowed under the weight of 14 cardboard boxes stuffed with files detailing every inch of this complex case.

One of the stacks was so high it blocked a QC's face from onlookers – with only her silver wig in view, bobbing above the pile of ring-binders.

So far the case has cost the Leicestershire Council £940,000

Full Report - http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news...il/article.html

And on a lesser scale:

Investigation into conduct of Leicestershire parish councillor costs £5,000

Friday, March 05, 2010, 09:30

An in-depth investigation costing £5,000 has been carried out into the conduct of a parish councillor – after she criticised a council clerk.

The probe, led by one of the most senior council officials in the county, saw a 262-page report compiled after a complaint was lodged over comments made by Blaby parish councillor Lorna Gutteridge.

Blaby MP Andrew Robathan has condemned the investigation as "completely disproportionate" and said it should not have taken place.

Parish councils are the lowest tier of local government and have limited powers on issues such as allotments, bus shelters and street lights. Councillors volunteer their time.

The controversy began when Mrs Gutteridge filed a report to the council about how an Easter car boot sale had run into trouble last year.

Full Report - http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news...il/article.html

[Jon the Hat]

Jesus. So if they lose, the council will have spent over £7m. Nice one. Would havebeen a hell of a lot more sensible to agree to build a new hall. Idiots.

[Collymore]

Jesus. So if they lose, the council will have spent over £7m. Nice one. Would havebeen a hell of a lot more sensible to agree to build a new hall. Idiots.

They could have put it towards Waghorn

[Tony Pine]

robathans wife is hot

that is all

[davieG]

Council chief executives leaving their jobs early are pocketing an average pay-off of £256,104, a local government spending watchdog report has found.

The Audit Commission said of the 37 given severance deals by English councils since 2007, 13 got more than £300,000 and three more than £500,000.

The government said new ways to "claw back" taxpayers' money had to be found.

The Conservatives said the pay-offs were an "affront" and that councils had to provide "clearer guidance".

The commission said the main reason for the deals - which affected almost a third of chief executives - was personal differences with elected council leaders rather than poor performance.

It recommended that, in future, severance deals should be fully disclosed and subjected to tighter scrutiny.

The Audit Commission found that, of 122 chief executives departing between January 2007 and September 2009, 37 had been paid off under mutually-agreed contract terminations.

'Quick-fix solution'

A total of £9.5m was handed out over 33 months.

The commission found competent chief executives had been laid off needlessly and those not up to the job were being paid off when they should have been sacked.

It recommends that consideration be given to advance "pre-nuptial" agreements setting out the specific grounds and terms for severance of contract.

For the government, Communities and Local Government Secretary John Denham backed the recommendations and wrote to Margaret Eaton, chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA), urging their adoption.

He said: "The Audit Commission report shows that too many chief executives are being dismissed because they have fallen out with council leaders - this can cost as much as £500,000 in some cases and is all too often seen as a quick-fix solution.

"Taxpayers' money should not be used to resolve personal differences. It is time we find a way to change the rules so taxpayers' money can be clawed back where the system has been exploited...

"Local government, like the rest of the public sector, needs to show that it can take the tough choices to make sure public money is used in a way that protects the frontline services which matter to people most."

Audit Commission chairman Michael O'Higgins said: "There have been a lot of assertions made on this subject, against the backdrop of concerns about public sector pay generally.

"Now the Audit Commission is laying out the facts and making recommendations aimed at protecting the public purse, as well as the rights of chief executives and council leaders."

'Huge organisations'

For the Conservatives, shadow local government minister Bob Neill said: "Such payments are an outrageous waste of taxpayers' money and an affront to families facing soaring council tax bills.

"There should be no rewards for failure, either in the public or private sector. There needs to be clearer guidance discouraging such redundancy payments and greater transparency about the pay and perks of senior town hall staff."

Jo Miller, deputy chief executive of the LGA, said: "Council chief executives are responsible for huge organisations with budgets of anything up to £1bn a year, running services that are vital to every family in Britain.

"Councils need talented people so they can improve on their record as the most efficient part of the public sector. In deciding salary levels they need to balance that with the need for all salaries to be demonstrably reasonable.

"It is right that chief executive pay is subject to public scrutiny. All council senior pay and severance packages are subject to scrutiny by external auditors.

"Council leaders are very aware of the impact of decisions about senior staff as they are subject to the voters' judgement through the ballot box."

[davieG]

The number of UK government ministers should be cut "by as much as one third" to reduce costs and make Parliament more independent, a report by MPs says.

The public administration committee recommends no more than 15% of MPs should be on the government payroll.

The UK has almost 120 ministers, while India - a country of with more than one billion people - has 78, it adds.

The committee claims some civil servants have been "making work" for under-employed ministers to carry out.

The report - Too Many Ministers? - says: "The ever-upward trend in the size of government over the last hundred years or more is striking and hard to justify objectively in the context of the end of Empire, privatisation and, most recently, devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland."

The committee says there were 60 ministers in 1900, which almost doubled to 119 by January of this year.

'Not a target'

Cabinet posts increased from 19 to 23, while the number of middle-ranking and junior ministers expanded from 41 to 96.

The report quotes evidence it took from former cabinet secretary Lord Turnbull, who said: "If you add up the number of ministers and deputy ministers... in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is something like 75.

"You would have thought the number of [uK] ministers would have gone down when we gave power to Scotland but it has actually gone up. So the ministerial cadre for the United Kingdom is now around 190 whereas it was about 110."

HOW MANY MINISTERS?

119 in total

22 paid cabinet ministers

One unpaid cabinet minister

96 junior ministers

Under current law, no more than 90 MPs can be ministers.

The limit of ministerial salaries payable by the government to people in the Commons and Lords is 109, including a maximum 22 paid cabinet ministers.

The report says: "However, these categories can be worked around - ministers may be entitled to attend cabinet without being cabinet ministers, a whip may be given a nominal ministerial post in order to count against the limit for junior ministers rather than whips, and so forth."

It adds: "The limits on ministerial numbers should not be seen as a target to be met, or even exceeded."

The committee also says there is a "growing consensus" that increasing the number of ministers "harms the effectiveness of government".

It says: "Ministers' role is to take key decisions, account to Parliament for them and conduct discussions at the highest level. Some junior ministerial roles appear to fall far short of this.

"Civil servants should not be put in the position of 'making work' for ministers. Not only is this costly and inefficient but it devalues the role of ministers."

'Absolute limit'

The committee also raises concerns about using "unpaid ministers", saying it is "a way in which a prime minister can increase the total number of ministers in his government without exceeding the statutory limits on the number of paid ministers".

These still "bring with them a significant cost to the public purse. Moreover, relying on ministers to take unpaid positions brings with it an incentive to favour those who are independently wealthy".

It calls for the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975 to be "treated as setting an absolute limit on the number of government ministers, paid or unpaid".

The use of parliamentary private secretaries - MPs who assist ministers - should be limited, the committee says, with a maximum of one per cabinet minister.

[davieG]

The public sector wastes at least £25bn a year because of a failure to reform outdated procurement and outsourcing practices, business leaders say.

The Institute of Directors argues that most state-run bodies "do their own thing" when it comes to money.

It says at least £15bn can be saved from annual procurement spending and £10bn from public organisations working together more efficiently.

The institute is calling for reform of the public sector within a year.

Its report says the UK's "staggering" annual £220bn procurement spending total represents a third of government spending and costs every person an average £3,500 a year.

'Out of business'

It adds: "Despite some areas of excellence and good collaborative initiatives, the majority of public procurement spending is so fragmented that huge potential savings are being missed every year."

If multi-national companies operated on a similar pattern "they would have gone out of business years ago", the institute says.

Director general Miles Templeman said a restructuring of the public sector could be completed within 12 months and deliver savings within three years.

For the Conservatives, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond said: "Billions of pounds are going to waste every year because the government refuses to implement the savings their own efficiency advisers have identified."

[davieG]

The government spent £780m reorganising its departments and agencies in the four years after the 2005 election, Whitehall's spending watchdog says.

The National Audit Office says more than 90 such moves happened, some of which may have been unnecessary.

Detail of the value for money achieved was "unsatisfactory", its report adds.

But the government said this was a "key priority", adding that it had to be able to act quickly to make reforms where they were needed.

The National Audit Office said it was impossible to demonstrate that the changes made between the May 2005 general election and June 2009 represented value for money.

'Broad terms'

Most were rushed through by Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown without a clear explanation of the purpose, it said.

The watchdog examined 51 reorganisations made during the period, putting the cost at £780m.

This represented an average expenditure of £15m per organisation.

Two of the new departments created since Mr Brown became prime minister in 2007 - the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills - lasted less than two years.

The report contrasts the 25 new central government departments set up in the UK since 1980 - of which 13 have gone - with the creation of just two in the United States, both of which still exist.

The reasons given for Whitehall changes were generally expressed in "broad terms" without a clear explanation of the expected benefits, "creating the risk that some reorganisations may be unnecessary".

The report says: "The value for money of central government reorganisations cannot be demonstrated given the vague objectives of most such reorganisations, the lack of business cases, the failure to track costs and the absence of mechanisms to identify benefits and make sure they materialise.

"Overall, the value for money picture is unsatisfactory and the costs are far from negligible."

'Frenzy'

The head of the National Audit Office, Amyas Morse, said government workings were in a "constant state of change", bringing "inevitable" disruption.

He said: "We believe a more deliberate and carefully planned process makes sense before such costs are incurred and would also like to see a slow down in the rate of change."

Conservative MP Edward Leigh, the chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, which oversees the work of the NAO, said: "Designers of logos and makers of nameplates have had much reason to be grateful for central government's passion for constantly reorganising and renaming its departments.

"No one else seems to be very keen - especially the hard-pressed civil servants who have to cope with the fall-out while still trying to do their day jobs.

"Whether this frenzy of reorganisation and renaming gives value for money is entirely mysterious."

A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "Value for money must always be a priority, but it is also important that the prime minister is able to structure the government, acting quickly if necessary, to best develop and implement the government's policies and deliver on key priorities that bring real benefits to people and public services.

"Eighty-five per cent of the changes described in the report are not changes to Government departments, but to arm's length bodies.

"We have set out a clear programme of cuts and reforms to these bodies, making it more difficult to set them up and ensuring there are plans for them to be abolished when their purpose has been served."

[hairy]

I get the feeling that your not happy with public spending Mr G

[davieG]

I get the feeling that your not happy with public spending Mr G

Too right when I'm paying tax on a pittance of a private pension, to which I contributed fully including additional voluntary contributions that wouldn't be enough to survive on if I still had a mortgage, yet not entitled to a penny of unemployment benefit etc even though I contributed every week for 44+ years.

Makes me wonder why the fook I bothered to do with out for all those years, if I was young now I'd be more inclined to take the view live know and let some other sucker pay later!