John Redwood gets it!

Further to my previous post, here is a brief extract from John Redwoods Diary Blog.

"This gives all prudent Councils plenty of chance to get on top of their budgets well before the shock of a poor grant settlement hits. As much of their cost is personnel costs, applying strict disciplines on recruitment from now could leave a good Council well placed to tackle any tight financial requirements in eighteen months time. Councils should be looking now at reducing the number of posts with Nulabour type job titles that have proliferated in the murky worlds of PPP, partnerships, strategic planning, cross cutting, networks, communications, business services and corporate services. We need to get back to simple and leaner structures, with just Heads of the main services like Education,Social Services and Highways, and Heads of Finance, Property, IT and Personnel. These Heads need to drive higher quality and efficiency throughout slimmed down structures. Using natural wastage and reorganisation should achieve a lot over eighteen months to create a better value Council without needing compulsory redundancies."

The full text is here;

http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/2009/10/13/local-spending/

Thank You John!

Is the penny starting to drop?

Or, to put it another way, why has it taken a recession for our Public Servants to realise they were spending too much of our money?

At long last our Politicians are talking about spending cuts – both Nationally and locally too. A few days ago, it was revealed that the various council Chief Executives in Suffolk had got together to discuss combining services.

SO THEY DO GET IT!

The sooner they can expand this limited agenda to a full-scale cull of their own positions and the unnecessary level of senior management beneath them , the sooner Suffolk ratepayers will see the benefit in their Council tax bills.

This would be a fine prelude to a Unitary Suffolk!

The Boundary Committee - WAWOS

With yet another delay in the long drawn out LGR process, it looks as though any reorganisation in Suffolk will never happen.

Or will it?

Clifford Smith has made another of his intelligent observations (EADT 20-07-09) whilst calling "for our MP's and local leaders to seize this opportunity and show the statesmanship needed to protect our services and save our money".

Perhaps though we need to ask more of them?

The word is our various councillors and local political leaders know the game is up so they need to start talking to each other again after what has been a very acrimonious couple of years.

However, they need to do more than talk.

With huge multi-million £ bills for the LGR process our councils and councillors, at all levels, must actively pursue new ways of working together to cover these costs and reduce council tax demands in the future.

The only way of doing this is to consolidate services and staff across councils, cut out all excess provision and outsource more functions to the private and/or voluntary sectors.

There is a great opportunity here to provide value for Suffolk council tax payers in a very challenging economic environment.

Are our political elite and senior council officials brave and bold enough for this task?

Maybe, one day, a unified and Unitary Suffolk?


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Council Shake-Up may cost 380 jobs!

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An extract fro the East Aglian Daily Times, Monday 6th April 2009, with thanks!

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NEARLY 400 jobs will be lost if Suffolk's district and county councils are merged into a single authority, it has been claimed.

The Boundary Committee for England is looking at two options to turn Suffolk into a single-tier local government system.

The first is a single unitary authority covering the whole of Suffolk and the second is a two-unitary proposal with one covering rural Suffolk, the second serving Ipswich and Felixstowe.

It has now emerged that the single unitary option would involve a cull of 380 jobs from authorities across the county.

The county council claims a single unitary would need 380 fewer full-time council workers - a saving of £14million each year. It says the job losses would only come into effect after the new authority was set up - expected to be 2011.

Although it claims most of these jobs would be shed by not filling vacancies, it has not ruled out compulsory redundancies.

A spokesman said: “Our figures show that a single council for the whole of Suffolk would need around 380 fewer full-time posts after four years saving around £14m annually. “This is a reduction of about 4% of the total number of current full time equivalent posts in all the councils in Suffolk.

“Employee turnover currently exceeds 10%, so we would expect that the majority of redundancies could be managed through vacancy management, as we do in the county council now.”

Jeremy Pembroke, county council leader, said: “We believe that the One Suffolk option serves the best interests of the county as a whole, especially in the current economic downturn.

“It's the only option which is big enough to speak up for the whole of Suffolk, to deliver quality services when less money is available and therefore gives the best deal for Suffolk's council tax payers.

”Figures for the possible number of job cuts which would ensue from the two unitary proposal were unavailable at the time of going to press.

Outlining the proposals, Archie Gall, director of the Boundary Committee, said: “Councils in the county provided is with the figures we needed to come up with information, and our independent financial consultants carried out an analysis of those numbers.

”Nobody from Unison was available for comment.

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And about time too!

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The 'real' Council Tax payers amongst us will want to see a zero added to that 4% figure.

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Have the Boundary Committee seen the light?

The latest pronouncement by the Boundary Committee should allow us all a great sigh of relief!

From the start of their sham consultation, a Single Unitary Authority for the whole of Suffolk should have been the first option on their (very short) list.

The willingness of the original Ipswich bid to throw in their lot with Max Caller’s ‘North Haven’ botch only further demonstrates their power hungry ambitions. As for those still calling for a 3-way split, their desperation to cling on to their little bit of ‘district’ control is embarrassing.

However, the complacency of the ‘One Suffolk’ bid in failing to fully promote their offering much earlier in this process remains as one of two key weaknesses. The other is their reticence to ‘love bomb’ the key figures in the districts and boroughs who would make up the core of a unitary administration. Come on Jeremy & Andrea – get your fingers out!!

So, we now have yet another consultation period to make representations.

As the news headlines reminded us this week, the public sector is still taking on staff and offering inflation busting pay increases. Perhaps now is a great time to opt for real cost-cutting measures.

There is only one option – ONE SUFFOLK.

We've had our say, now can Wonder Woman deliver ‘One Suffolk’?

The deadline to comment on Local Government Reorganisation has passed.

Now it's up to Andrea Hill, but can she do it?

Can she save us from the ridiculous Rural/North Haven split and deliver the ‘One Suffolk’ option?

Will she;

- save Lowestoft from being assimilated into Norfolk?

- make Suffolk a force to be reckoned with in the East of England and Nationally?

- keep our Emergency and Essential services intact?

- demand our fair share of the National Health budget (we currently get just 80% of the National average)?

- allow our councillors their democratically elected say in the running of our County?

- deliver true localism and at the same time protect us from the NIMBY’s?

- cut excessive over bureaucracy at ALL levels of local government?

and finally,

- CUT OUR COUNCIL TAX?

Come on Andrea, show us what you’re made of!

Here’s to a Unitary Suffolk!

P.S. Apologies for the amateur cut & paste!!

Graham Dines & the EADT

In today's EADT, Graham Dines has kindly alerted the readership of the East Anglian to the existence of this blog.

Thank You Mr. Dines!

Here it is IN FULL!

"A MYSTERY blogger is intriguing councillors and officers at the Endeavour House headquarters of Suffolk county council, who have found an Internet ally in the war of words over the future of local government.
Unitary Suffolk, a clandestine cyberspace nerd, has jumped on board the county council's preferred option of One Suffolk - the abolition of the county and seven districts to be replaced by one giant unitary authority to look after all council-run services in the county.
A blog is on-line diary full of gossip and invites people to add their comments. It is growing in popularity across the globe among Internet users Anyone who is anyone has one - Government ministers, MPs, councillors, political activists and analysts, journalists, lobbyists, and angry young men and women.
Blogspot is a popular vehicle to host blogs and it's the site chosen by Unitary Suffolk, the champion of the county Tory leadership's audacious plan for just one council in Suffolk which would save millions of pounds by eliminating duplication.
Unitary Suffolk posted his or her's first and only blog last week, saying it has been created “to provide a free and open forum to discuss and comment” on a single unitary Suffolk council.
Unitary Suffolk declares that just one council “is the simplest and cheapest option and will involve the least upheaval and cost. By integrating the seven district and borough councils into the county, there could be savings and services.
The blog ends with the exhortation “Are you listening Boundary Committee?”
But who is the blogger? The style in which it is written suggests it is not a member of the public. It could be a county officer, loyally banging the drum for the county and his employers. Perhaps a councillor is indulging in some internet fun. Whoever it is sending messages does so at irregular times, mostly late at night but also during normal working hours.
The county council denies its fingers have typed the blog. “This is not a blog we have set up or asked for,” said a spokesman.
Unitary Suffolk replies on-line to readers who leave comments. And he or she reveals a political allegiance, taking a swipe at (Gordon) Brown for forcing local government change on the county.
There is censorship. A comment post sent by the East Anglian Daily Times to the blog has not been published, making nonsense of the claim that is a “free and open forum.”
However, the identity of the blogger may soon emerge. There is no such thing as anonymity on the Internet. Specialists know the emails are being sent from a Microsoft Hotmail account. When they find the number attached to the globally unique Internet Protocol address of the blogger's computer, it will tell them to whom it belongs."

My only comment in response to this is to refute his allegation that the blog has been censored - it has not.

Here's to a Unitary Suffolk!

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