I have seen a good number of posts on Liberal Conspiracy claiming that people in the public sector are more generous, public spirited etc than other people

That is true for many (but far from all) workers in the public sector. It is a fact that many choose the public sector when they could get easier jobs that pay far better in the private sector with their skills and qualifications. But for other important public sector workers it is just a job (e.g. do you think people who work as receptionists on public sector buildings are doing so out of public spiritness? What about tax collectors? I could go on).

You argue that public sector workers should accept pay cuts to give other (far wealthier) people council tax cuts, rather than to allow more resources to devoted to public services. It’s unclear why this would be a ‘public spirited’ thing to do – more an incredibly stupid one. Do you think that all public sector workers are paid too much?

Maybe you are right. This recession was caused by those damn teachers and nurses gambling on worthless US sub-prime debt, purchasing foreign companies at vastly inflated sums, and lending money to people who clearly couldn’t afford to pay it back. Those nasty and parasitical social workers creating complex financial instruments and pyramid schemes to sell to gullible investors. They should be punished heavily for this.

And on your logic why stop at a 10% pay cut? Why not a 20% cut? Why don’t all public sector workers work for free? Why don’t we charge teachers for the privilege of being public spirited?

In the real world, it is apparent that for many public service jobs, the pay is already insufficient to attract high calibre candidates for the most difficult positions. Social workers are in very short supply. All public sector jobs in London tend to have high vacancy rates. The teaching profession in Inner London and other areas of deprivations suffers from the wage not compensating for the high stress of teaching in areas of high deprivation.

All this is surely beside the point I was making though. It was more a point of pragmatism.

Enforcing an across the board pay cut on public sector workers is impossible. There will be a lot of strikes. Public services will be paralysed.

But if a political party wants to try and get elected on a platform of “10% across the board public sector wage cuts”, they are more than welcome too. I hope David Cameron takes the opportunity to do this. It’s the only hope of him throwing his chance to be Prime Minister away.

I suspect if this is the plan, it will not be mentioned in any election campaign, denying people a democratic choice.

BTW – note that MPs, ministers and senior civil servents are also public sector workers.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of this (noble public sector workers helping their councils give people living in big houses real council tax cuts by cutting their pay 10%), do you really think it will work from a practical perspective?

I’d love to see it tried – a new Government announcing that all teachers, doctors, nurses etc should take a 10% pay cut. I predict a riot. And additional recruitment difficulties in the public sector – particularly in London, the South East and other high cost locations, where vocations that require degree-level training (e.g. teaching) are already paid far less than other occupations (e.g. losing banks and the British taxpayer billions of pounds through dopey, ill-informed speculation)

Why? Surely all those noble public servants would not want the poorest and most vulnerable members of society to suffer, and so would want to help the government get as much possible good out of its declining revenues?

If so, they would have to support productivity increaces, so that the the governemt could do as much good with a smaller, cheaper, payroll.

A 10% pay cut across the public sector, perhaps?

That could be an option , yes. It’s only fair that public sector workers – after years of pay restraint in the good times – should bear the brunt of the bad times.

Minimum wage legislation may prevent this in certain sectors – though I suspect Cameron can abolish this with the “damaging business in a recession – minimum wage causes unemployment” argument.

Good luck to any Government that tries it while demanding productivity increases from the public sector. I forsee a little bit of resistance from the unions, and a lot of recruitment difficulties in the south of the country. But all public sector workers are lazy and paid far too much by definition I guess.

There’s always outsourcing, which is how the goal has historically been achieved.

Plain old service cuts are far more likely though – it’s easier to achieve this and serves ideological purposes of deregulating business, allowing middle-class advantages to persist, and making the welfare state more voluntary charity (deserving/undeserving poor) on the part of the rich well.

A 10% pay cut across the public sector, perhaps? That would not cost the “vulnerable people” who benefit from social services anything at all.

We already have been in Tory councils up and down the land to enable them to hold council tax rises down to 3% or below. Even 7p per week council tax savings are considered good reason to cut services for the most vulnerable even where less vital services and inefficiencies could be cut instead, as Barnet have shown.

The first target for cuts is always social care for the elderly and other services for vulnerable people, rather than these apparently massive inefficiencies that their media and think tank proxies tell us exist.

A story:

I used to work in a very Conservative Shire council in the South East. The Government were asking local authorities to examine the case for merging into unitary authorities. The work we were doing identified £100 million of efficiency savings for local government, along productivity improvements for local government and other public sector organisations in the county, through reducing the vast number of partnerships (and associated bureaucracy) that are needed to make local public services work.

The Leader of the council was clearly tempted by the possibilities – he could cut council tax, and as a Tory was relishing this prospect.

However, there were two problems.

Firstly, Cameron and Conservative Central Office instructed Conservative councils not to engage with this. It would lead to the loss of a lot of Conservative councillors and end the dishonest spin that the vast majority of councillors were Tory (due to double representation, which doesn’t exist in unitaries and metropolitan boroughs) and also threaten the position of the local Conservative party at the grassroots as a result. Cameron was also apparently of the opinion that Labour weren’t to have efficiency savings – if there were any mergers they were to happen under his watch from 2010 so he could get the credit and continue to make political capital out of “Labour’s failure to make efficiencies in the public sector”.

Secondly, as this would have meant that many of the councillors on the county council – who were also district councillors – would lose their nice little earner, it would have been a very unpopular move with the local party. Threats were made that he would be smeared as a paedophile in the local press and hounded out of the local party.

So, he bottled it. Far better to cut social services for older people (pretend the voluntary sector can do it) and fail to invest adequately in other social services, leading to a service acknowledged by the inspectorate as shoddy.

And all this at the cost of £1 million for the labour costs and consultancy support bought in to do the report.

I take your point though – but there are many choices to make as to where these cuts are targeted. The Conservatives – based on past experience – will target front-line services for vulnerable people (why bother with them – they don’t help the core vote and so the penalty for cuts is lower, and they are far easier to realise than the mythical back-office savings).

We will be seeing public service cuts for a very long time – whoever is in power.

It is not just the national debt and the deficit – their is also the pensions timebomb, and unfunded public sector pensions in particular. We will be paying for a decade of kind compassionate government for a very long time.

Solace Enterprises, a recruitment company, is paid fees by local councils to headhunt chief executives and recommend salary levels. Its advice has contributed to burgeoning pay packets for chief executives, many of whom are now paid more than £150,000 a year.

Solace Enterprises is wholly owned by the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, which represents town hall executives. The company’s directors include a number of serving chief executives.

So, to be clear, we have the situation whereby local authority executives authorise the payment of consultancy fees to a company they own to set their own salary levels.

Who accused MP’s of corruption? And who is surprised there is not enough money left to pay for front line services?

The reference to pips was an allusion to the famous Dennis Healy quote.

And I knew that.

I just didn’t understand how you could claim a 7p per band D household tax increase as somehow being excessive. The point you were trying to make was that to fund the wardens, tax demands on Barnet residents were excessive. Clearly they are not.

The leadership of Barnet council clearly believes that it is better for Band D householders to have 7p a week extra in their pocket than vulnerable old people to have the services they need. But – as you say – one should expect such judgements from a Tory council. Maybe they should be more open about this in their election literature though – “we will have lower expenditure by cutting front-line services” than unkeepable promises based on lies about restricting back-office expenditure on bureaucrats.

re the second point – it seems that there are a lot of efficiencies that Barnet (or other Conservative councils) could make before it has to resort to cutting front-line services for vulnerable people. They seem to prefer the taking services away option though.

Food for thought:

Barnet Councillors give themselves pay and allowances of £1.1 million http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23595637-details/28+million:+the+annual+payout+to+our+councillors/article.do?expand=true

Apparently this has increased significantly over time – not that Barnet publish this data to allow scrutiny.

I would absolutely agree that councils are top heavy and that rationalising of management would be a very useful exercise. Can’t imagine who’d launch it, though

This was the centrepiece of the Tory manifesto in Sutton (SW London) at the last municipal elections. The voters returned the incumbent Liberal Democrats.

‘At Unison’s suggestion, Barnet council hired an expert on public service provision at the end of last year to examine its Future Shape proposals.

So you were actually encouraging them to employ consultants? ‘

I’m not a member of Unison, pagar – I was for a while, but left before I was chucked out (I was being disciplined for writing anti-Blair material on a union computer) in 2006. That said, Barnet Unison did ask the council to consider getting an independent view of its Future Shape proposals and the fact that the council agreed did mean the union encouraged the use of a consultant. Spose you can call it hypocrisy if you want, although I never thought of it that way myself, probably because he wasn’t charging £200,000 for advice. Anyway, the council cut the union’s consultant off as soon as it saw his less than flattering assessment of Future Shape. Last I talked to the local union branch, it was trying to raise the money to continue to fund the work itself.

Like this point:

Why do council department directors get six figure salaries if they are incapable of basic business planning, change management etc?

When I was working in local government, the number of people earning more than £50,000 at that council doubled or even trebled, if memory serves, in the space of a couple of years. That meant there was an even larger number of people around not making decisions while relying more and more on expensive consultant advice. I would absolutely agree that councils are top heavy and that rationalising of management would be a very useful exercise. Can’t imagine who’d launch it, though.

Like Healy, Don seems to think that there are enough rich people around to tax so that a never ending supply of money to fund social projects is guaranteed in perpetuity.

Regarding your second point, I have no knowledge of the efficiency or otherwise of Barnet Council and am perfectly happy to accept your assessment that they are a bunch of evil charlatans.

I’d be surprised if they weren’t.

Make the pips squeak

A 7p per week increase for every band D household (see above – this is what is required for Barnet to fund the £500K) is hardly likely to make the pips even murmur slightly.

And there is always an alternative – e.g. why have they seen fit to increase central admin expenditure by £2 million (26%) while cutting support for the most vulnerable in Barnet?

But here’s a genuine alternative – I’d prefer to put up council tax rather than cut a warden service in this sort of situation.

But Don, that’s your answer to everything. Make the pips squeak. Only problem is it is the tax payers of Barnet whose money you are spending and it would seem they voted for a Tory council.

Kate

At Unison’s suggestion, Barnet council hired an expert on public service provision at the end of last year to examine its Future Shape proposals.

So you were actually encouraging them to employ consultants?

Why do council department directors get six figure salaries if they are incapable of basic business planning, change management etc?

The reason they bring in consultants, at huge expense, to run “change management projects” or to justify outsourcing or whatever is because the LA culture does not allow them to take the bold management decisions that would be necessary to run the organisation efficiently- so they bring in consultants to make the recommendations for them. Then they are absolved of responsibility for any pain.

So if you’re looking for people to blame for the fact that there is not enough money left over to pay the wardens, the power of Unison makes a contribution.

Sorry, but I don’t think that being able to choose between two competing whole baskets of polices once every five years is good enough (especially considering I must choose one basket in it’s entirety, I can’t mix-and-match).

I do not consider the present system adequate at all, I don’t consider it democratic. At best it’s semi-democratic.

At the next general election, the Conservativres will probably win on about 37% of the UK vote. Is it dewmocratic that 63% of the voters have less say than 37%? Of course it bloody isn’t.

Is it democratic that the government, having been elected, can totally ignore the voters and push through contentious policies regardless of opposition (e.g. Iraq War), without the people being able to stop them? Of course it bloody isn’t.

Is it democratic that the government, onvce they’ve won the election, can proceed to renege on manifesto promises, with no comeback to them? Of course not.

If we had democracy in this country, it’d be the people in charge, telling the government what to do. As it is, the government are in charge, telling us what to do, and there’s not a lot we can do about it.

And that’s why people are fed up with the political system, and why we need change.

Err, no. We should have a system of representative democracy, where people vote for representatives to a democratic parliament system… oh, wait. We already have that :s

i am in favour of sheltered housing for all who want it. I am in favour of people living in sheltered housing who simply want the housing – and I don’t think they should be under any contractual obligation to pay for support they don’t need. I am also in favour of people being able to live in sheltered housing and receive they support they might need when and if they need it. I agree people who have moved in sheltered housing without any current support need but on the understanding that support will be there as and when they need it deserve some prioritised entry into support packages. But I don’t think people should have to move to receive that support unless it is absolutely necessary. That’s why I think the basic idea of decoupling housing and support is a good one.

The lowering of the age eligibility for Sheltered Housing is probably a ploy to advance the policies that you advocate . Sheltered Housing is and should be for people of retirement age only !

The two age groups do not mix at all and it only serves to destroy the spirit of Sheltered Housing.

What you have put forward is a philosophy but it is not grounded in fact . Residents were offered a certain level of Support when they first took up occupation and it is unfair, unjust and immoral to say ‘now that we have you and there is no way back’ we are going to take away that support .

If policies change and it is decided that additional care is needed in the community outside of Sheltered Housing, thats fair too, but you have to find the money and the staff to discharge that aspiration. Not rob Sheltered Housing !

Sincerely

To get it in context, these cuts were planned in 2003 way before the present credit crises, indeed some councils and RSLs are way ahead of Barnet and had already cut their services. Profit comes into it too. The present Supporting People budgets and the way the funds are now allocated makes it very difficult for Councils and RSLs to make a profit from Sheltered Housing and they are, therefore, getting rid of their Wardens to improve the balance on their books.

One must not forget also that Barnet charge their residents rents and historically they received
£1.2m from Supporting People from Supporting People. Additionally about 30% of their residents will be self funding, so cost nothing . The figure now is that the Supporting People grant will fall to £ .85m i.e a drop of roughly £400,000. Under present Rentrestructuring and Target Rents (another Labour stupidity) the Barnet council will be able to increase its rents by half a % plus £2 per week, plus inflation, until 2012. Thus, the £400,000 will be made up in a very short time indeed. Especially in this year where this formula still applies yet, interest rates are practically zero (the inflation rate having been decided in September of 2008 when it was much higher),

What has happened of significance is that initially when Sheltered Housing was first moved into the orbit of Supporting People (which largely deals with drug addicts and people with learning difficulties) in 2003 the budgets for Sheltered Housing were ring fenced but that ring fencing comes off in the financial year 2009-2010. Which means that the Council can pretty much spend the Supporting People budget on what it wants. Thus, the money which was previously allocated to Sheltered Housing is up for grabs by any other department which feels its needs are greater than the residents.

From start to finish the whole thing has been vandalism created by Labour but, apparently condoned by the Conservatives . The Supporting People money which was once intended for (sic) SUPPORT can now be used to prevent Council Tax from going up, or at least to minimize it . The people who are paying for all this skullduggery are some of the nation’s most vulnerable, namely the residents in Sheltered Housing.

It was ‘John Prescot’s’ Department , then the ODPM, which introduced all this, but in the near future, probably to be carried on by ‘David Cameron’.

What is really required is either for the ring fencing to be re-established within the Supporting People budgets or, most desired that the ‘Support’ element of Sheltered Housing to be returned to Housing Benefit from where it was taken in 2003

Sincerely

Vernon J Yarker
Chairman
The Sheltered Housing UK Association (SHUK)
http://www.shelteredhousinguk.com
mailbox@shelteredhousinguk.com

1. Because they currently have support needs;
2. As an insurance policy in the event of them developing support needs later in life
3. Because they want to live in a community of people of a similar age and outlook on life.
Given that, in many parts of the country, the lower age limit for entry into sheltered housing is now 55 – a response to occupancy problems – it might be thought that reasons 2 & 3 have been getting more important in recent years.

The solution is fairly straightforward in management terms: the residential wardens take on a mixed caseload, providing support to those in existing sheltered services who need it as well as other older people in the surrounding community who might need it, whilst giving some priority to other residents of sheltered for support packages as and when they need it. If Barnet haven’t done this they do deserve criticism. But I think – and you seem to agree – it is less supportable to imply that the shift from residential wardens is inherently a bad thing per se; it means prioritising a group of people for service simply on the basis of where they live, not the severity of their need.

For those of you for whom all this is all a bit too much detail – I can understand it might be – I would gently suggest that an all purpose political discussion needs to be grounded not merely in some wider sense of what we on the left are against (‘the cuts’) but also some positive sense of what it is desirable for public services to achieve, even in a context of declining spending overall .

I’m not a member of any political party. What’s so appalling about the idea of cutting NI? The problem is that staff costs are too high. There is clearly no room for higher taxes. The only solution is to make staff costs lower.

I don’t think it’s bad to point out that sheltered housing is not the only or most popular
support option that supporting people offers the elderly – that is certainly the case. The
number of people living in sheltered housing in Barnet is not large – 1500 of about 55,000 in the demographic are the figures Barnet uses and certainly Help the Aged reports many instances where floating support works well, particularly for people who want to stay in their own homes.

The point is the existing contractual arrangements that existing sheltered housing tenants have with the council, and, as part of that, their expectations of a residential support service – the fact of which was the main reason many existing tenants decided to go into sheltered housing in the first place. We’re talking about very elderly people who are usually frail, often in poor health and have come to rely very heavily on wardens who they feel very strongly provide them with security, emotional support, and day to day living support. Some of the residents I spoke to for this and my earlier article had been in sheltered housing for ten, 15, and 20 years.

Reading its report, it is clear that one of the main reasons Help the Aged commissioned research into sheltered housing was because it was getting so many complaints and calls from elderly residents who couldn’t handle the change, were terrified of losing their warden support, and who felt they’d been utterly ignored by their SPAA as changes were rushed through – all of which have been issues for the residents at Barnet.

As I pointed out in my original posting, one of Help the Aged’s report recommendations was that existing residents should be allowed to keep their wardens and perhaps that option could be put to a majority vote in schemes. The cost of keeping wardens on really is peanuts the in greater scheme of things – £400,000 in Barnet’s revised proposal. Dan’s point about raising council tax could be interesting here – if there are gaps in the council’s finances (at least some of which are of its own creation), why not plug them by raising council tax for the wealthier people in higher tax bandsin Barnet, instead of screwing a few coins out of this group of very elderly people who have almost nothing anyway?

I think the point about the popularity of sheltered housing is an interesting one, as well. Certainly Barnet argues that it can’t fill some of its flats – that people don’t want to go down the sheltered housing route. Could be true, but I must say that alarm bells always go off for me when I heard that social housing can’t be filled – makes me wonder if everybody is putting their best effort into filling it. Is the option promoted among elderly people? If an elderly woman, for example, breaks her hip and goes to hospital, is she offered a sheltered housing option, or encouraged to stay at home – possibly because that’s a cheaper option?

Let’s not forget that one of the points of the supporting people programme was to separate the ‘bricks and mortar’ costs of housing support from housing support itself. That means housing support can be provided in people’s homes, etc – it isn’t tied to a particular building type, if you like. That’s all very well – and it is, in many cases – but it does in my mind leave the bricks and mortar vulnerable to sell-off, etc,
especially if councils and others are looking to raise funds and can demonstrate that that housing isn’t being utilised. Just a thought.

Speculating – I wonder if that is one of the reasons Help the Aged also called for government to urgently review sheltered housing and provision for the elderly. Its report authors make the point that a failure to properly monitor and understand trends since supporting people was introduced six years ago could land us with a very difficult future.

Many local authorities will be nervous about increasing council tax again.
As several commentators have already pointed out its not a question of IF cuts will be made, but WHERE – this unpalatable reality applies equally to all parties.

For some time now workers in public services (police officers, nurses, teachers, social workers, etc) have been reporting anecdotally there is very little spare capacity in the system, and for as long as I can remember there have been concerns about the standard of public services offered to oldies.

I am not in the least surprised that ‘resource’ wars are starting in earnest – you didn’t need a crystal ball to see it coming.