So, I guess this is where all the taxes are going.

ubersonic

ubersonic

ubersonic

Soldato
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Warning, if you hate government needlessly wasting money this post may enrage you, lol.

Just had the council on the phone in work, we have a couple of rented units on a trading estate which were built in the 1990s, because of this the vibration damping pads under the sinks (one in each unit) contain asbestos. Even though it's zero risk asbestos the council still send an asbestos contractor round every year for a management survey to ensure it hasn't been stolen by terrorists.

Now then, they called today to say the inspector will be round in February, only ten months after their last survey, basically they will come round and glace at it then tick a box and move on to the next unit, the whole estate will take them around an hour for which the council will give them £5000 (granted they will also have to spend ten minutes printing some auto generated paperwork then post it to the council).

Why the post about this? Because I never stopped to think about it until the fact they are doing an annual inspection on a ten month interval struck me, but they do this for every estate round here (all in a similar situation) which means if the inspector is doing 4-5 a day the council is throwing away millions of pounds of taxpayers money every year managing something that doesn't really need any interaction, and that's just what's being spent on one inspector by one council, madness.

And people wonder why the country is in such debt/deficit lol.
 
That's nothing, try equipping a whole site with new windows, roads and street lamps, only to tear it down 6months later.
 
Checking that hazardous building materials aren't a threat to health sounds like a pretty reasonable way to spend the council's money.
 
Councils get a set amount of money from government every year. How the council uses it is up to the council.

A lot of buildings still have asbestos in them. Being stolen by terrorists is not taught as being a concern.

If it is cheaper for a council to employ a third party contractor rather than the council to employ someone itself to carry out the duty of the council, then that is the situation. If a council is grossly mismanaging a situation then that is down to the individual council.

The funding to councils has been squeezed like never before. What council is this that has money to throw around?
 
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the council here sends a guy round each month to check that our water heaters installed in our unit reach temperature ..We don't even use these heaters !!! the guy loves his job lol
 
I would imagine a great deal of miss spending is not incompetence but favours and under the table deals.

The NHS argument always seems to be 'feed it more' against 'let it starve' rather than eat better and trim the fat. Is it acceptable that they have contracts that charge them more for some things that we can purchase ourselves at fractions of the price in Tesco?

Having a quick look at prices for asbestos surveys, OP figure seems very high. It is one thing saying it is for safety and another saying it is money well spent.

Councils do get a set amount of money a year and they should be held accountable to poor spending, voting doesn't seem to do much in that regard - There should be sharper eyes and stricter hands involved when looking over the books but that will never happen. The attitude of 'their money, their choice' just enables poor spending and corruption.
 
There's no incentive to save money if you can't go out of business and you get a set amount each year, that's why things that are run on government money are bad. They should incentivise councils who don't spend all of their budget but maintain or provide a better level of service with long term bonuses, one's that are paid out in 10 or 20 years, so if things go bad due to changes made those bonuses can be taken away.
 
That's nothing: Wokingham Borough Council are repaving the tiny Market Square in the town centre for £3,000,000 while getting rid of the 7 really valuable lollipop ladies outside the primary schools due to lack of funding. Beat that!
 
Safetytrousers said:
How would it be decided on what was a better level of service?
Click to expand...

Survey the people using the services. You'd do a survey before the changes, then the same survey a year later. If you save money on refuse collection but people feel they're getting the same level of service or better, then you've done well. I think the problem with councils is that they're happy to make cuts, give a worse service, and then blame the government. When actually they could've made smarter cuts and kept a similar level of service.
 
How about a tram system that only goes half the original distance originally budgeted for was £375m over budget and now we have an inquiry which so far has cost £7.5 million and all we have to show for it is that it was all someone else fault though the inquiry has not discovered who.
But some interesting stuff has come out and that was that the contractor building the tram system created disputes deliberately with the overseeing body Transport for Edinburgh (TIE) purely to cause delays and increase costs and it seems this is normal business practice on large infrastructure projects.

The parliament was supposed to cost £40m and I believe in came in at 10 times that amount and growing as the design chosen was/is fundamentally flawed so each year maintenance costs increase
 
I'm sure most local councils waste money on purpose...
Most recent thing I recall our local council spending money on was when they forked out almost £60,000 to paint a bus lane onto a short stretch of road only to change their mind about using the lane within a month.
 
If I order a part at work it's already more expensive than it is to the bloke on the street.

Now that in itself isn't too bad, but once we find a company prepared to sell us the part there's about 3-4 people paid full time to authorise us to buy it which can take months. We can't have it unless they all agree the purchase, think the last thing we were after was 4 bolts at 76p each. Still not got them.
 
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