Noting the story about the latest estimated overspend at NNC - so, less than half way through the year, the total overspend identified so far is about £8m. Doubtless, there will be more of the same to come as the year progresses further. I would note that it was overspending (in part due to uncontrolled empire-building by senior managers) in both adult and children's social services that finished off NCC, and that the pan-county trust style arrangements now in place for social services give even less opportunity for democratic oversight of expenditure (even if the councillors in question have the skills, ability and motivation to do this, which is, to say the least, doubtful) than previously.
Delving further into a few other figures, we are told that there are 900 vacancies at the council, and this is frequently offered as an excuse for service failure. Taking these to be mostly fairly junior positions, and applying a civil service-type figure for total employment costs, the full cost of filling these vacancies would be a bit over £40m. Dividing that figure over 122,500 households in the council area gives a figure for the council tax collection shortfall of about £330 per household. This figure could be abated a little, since we know that a small number of unfilled positions are currently being covered, at high cost, by agency staff. But what we also know is that there are significant statutory duties of the council, plus many other tasks and activities that we would reasonably expect, as council tax payers, the council to be doing for us, that that are being either fully or partially neglected due to shortage of staff AND the inability to be able to afford to hire permanent staff into the many vacancies.
I would say that, in order to have something like a fully functioning council, we need to be paying considerably more council tax than we are currently. I would also say that the era of the fantasy that council services can be provided adequately on a shoestring, perpetuated by leading councillors (many of whom are still in office) over years if not decades, through the legacy councils and into the current one, is thoroughly over.
Noting the story about the latest estimated overspend at NNC - so, less than half way through the year, the total overspend identified so far is about £8m. Doubtless, there will be more of the same to come as the year progresses further. I would note that it was overspending (in part due to uncontrolled empire-building by senior managers) in both adult and children's social services that finished off NCC, and that the pan-county trust style arrangements now in place for social services give even less opportunity for democratic oversight of expenditure (even if the councillors in question have the skills, ability and motivation to do this, which is, to say the least, doubtful) than previously.
Delving further into a few other figures, we are told that there are 900 vacancies at the council, and this is frequently offered as an excuse for service failure. Taking these to be mostly fairly junior positions, and applying a civil service-type figure for total employment costs, the full cost of filling these vacancies would be a bit over £40m. Dividing that figure over 122,500 households in the council area gives a figure for the council tax collection shortfall of about £330 per household. This figure could be abated a little, since we know that a small number of unfilled positions are currently being covered, at high cost, by agency staff. But what we also know is that there are significant statutory duties of the council, plus many other tasks and activities that we would reasonably expect, as council tax payers, the council to be doing for us, that that are being either fully or partially neglected due to shortage of staff AND the inability to be able to afford to hire permanent staff into the many vacancies.
I would say that, in order to have something like a fully functioning council, we need to be paying considerably more council tax than we are currently. I would also say that the era of the fantasy that council services can be provided adequately on a shoestring, perpetuated by leading councillors (many of whom are still in office) over years if not decades, through the legacy councils and into the current one, is thoroughly over.