Thank you!

Isn’t it mean’t to be elected reps decide policy, not a hierarchy of bureaucrats. We voted NO to the North-East one and the arrogant whatsits took it as meaning ‘no we don’t want to elect then so you’ll have to appoint the members instead for us’!

The cheek!

My impression is that the amount a council gets is pretty much dependent on how much clout they have & how much they spend. This gives them very little incentive not to spend. If the grant was clear & based on a repeatable formula, not quite a flat amount per head (shades of the poll tax) but heading that way the grant would, instead of covering 80% pf everybody’s costs would cover 80% of the average. Councils who are 20% more efficient would have zero rates & those 20% less so would double rates. I think this would provide a strong incentive towards parsimony.

We could also do with central government not always giving them more powers/duties. Who pays to enforce smoking bans etc.

No I haven’t worked in local government all my life, I’m in my my 20’s and have worked in the private sector too. I have ever had decision making powers in local government. Based of my experience talking to older mor experienced council officers I would say that left leaning councils are no-where near as ‘loony’ today as in the eighties where trade union reps had HR jobs and devised sick-leave rotas.

The drive by international quangos, think-tanks and lobby groups to push trendy new-agendas such as ’smokefree’, ‘5 a day’, ’sustainability’ and ‘fairtrade’ has had an effect on the legislators in Westminster. This in turn has had an effect on local government. Back in the 80’s one London council banned staff from buying the brands of or shopping at around 70 companies because of purported links to aparteid South Africa. After the revolution in Nicaraguan coffee became very popular among council staff too. My point is that local government promotion of ‘fairtrade’ is a grwon-up version of these boycotts. ‘Fairtrade’ urges people to boycott non-fairtrade coffee, chocolate and bananas.

As a multi-million pound not-for-profit organisation they should surely be able to promote their products themselves through the employment of dedicated staff and the recruitment of volunteers. At the moment the tax-payer is promoting them. I’d say that this is a sign of the loony-left growing up. Rather than a loony-left resurgence, I’d argue London is seeing a loony-left renaissance led by the hugely popular Ken Livingston.

Ken has just signed a deal that epitomises loony-left socialist economics to a tee. Venezuala’s Hugo Cahvez has agreed to sell him discount oil to run London buses in return for advice on urban regeneration. Ken intends to use the savings to give travel discounts to people on income support. Who loses? The people of Venezuala lose oil revenue, London council tax payers lose out paying for Kens

I agree on cutting legislation and initiatives - unfortunately our wasteful and over-spending and over-taxing government has driven too many councils to carry through useless legislation driven by people in Whitehall who have no idea what the country is looking for. However your comment about the loony left growing up is incorrect. With one of the highest taxation umbrellas in Europe and a history of having introduced more single taxation traps than any other UK government in history should we not expect to see a loony left resurgence in the near future led perhaps by one Loony Brown?

The question is would the tories be willing to cut the trendy services they like to advertise in their glossy brochures and risk being labelled ‘nasty’?

Councils (tory councils included) hire staff at over

We are continually bombarded by our papers and council publications talking about new “efficiencies”. Nobody seems to grasp the fact that efficiency is utterly useless without effectiveness and it is in this area our council and many more councils around the country fail.

Look for example at the planning regulations and how they are applied. Application after application is submitted, followed by appeal after appeal. Who really benefits? There are two clear beneficiaries - (1) those applying for planning permission (as most applications in development areas are eventually granted) as the one that makes financial gain and (2) council employees who without this ridiculous roundabout of applications and appeals, they would not be necessary. The majority of us who fund this ritual of time wasting and nit picking gain nothing. More often that not we are disadvantaged as this government continues it’s rural and community destruction policy of allowing back-garden developments.

Lets understand the difference between effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is about looking at the goal to be achieved, measuring its necessity and making sure it happens. Efficiency is about ensuring the most economic means are used in the process. Our councils are not always looking at the effectiveness of their operations but more at their efficiency. There is no point in conducting a planning and appeals process in the most efficient manner unless you measure whether or not the process if after all effective.

Sadly council employees are not renumerated sufficiently, not measured effectively and consequently both under-motivated, under managed. And before anyone spouts off about more managers - our councils have a dearth of managers - probably most of whom are as efficient as they can be. But we must understand if our Chief Executive is driving toward achieving maxiumum effectiveness from these noble people. If they achieve maximum effectiveness it will certainly cost us all less on our Council Tax Invoice. Lets start asking our council why it is pursuing certain activities, what are the goals and objectives of each branch each year and how these goals were arrived at. Lets question how these objectives are measured, how they are delivered and how the processes could be improved to maximise effectiveness.