Local Authorities 'no choice'

[Banker]

2 hours ago, Dirty Buggane said:

Over 100 personal are based in the town hall out of approximately 237 staff currently employed by DBC. The overall employees may be lower but town hall staff are growing, so less people to shovel shit more to put things in files and answer the phone but not your question.  

Well staff in some areas may have dropped when they got rid of things like horse trams, villa starting contracting out work etc but bet things like environmental health, H&S, climate change, administration & finance have grown massively 

[Steady Eddie]

On 12/2/2022 at 11:16 AM, Moghrey Mie said:

First I'd like to see a chart to show how many people are employed by Douglas Borough Corporation and what exactly they do.

Go straight for the pension scheme as that tells you how many active members there are. You might be surprised. This is the latest I could quickly find and it’s 10 years ago. 

Edited December 7, 2022 by Steady Eddie

[Moghrey Mie]

23 minutes ago, Steady Eddie said:

Go straight for the pension scheme as that tells you how many active members there are. You might be surprised. This is the latest I could quickly find and it’s 10 years ago. 

Thanks I wonder how many employees there are now. And what do they do?

[Steady Eddie]

9 minutes ago, Moghrey Mie said:

Thanks I wonder how many employees there are now. And what do they do?

Still not much different. Quite what the hell 400 people do is anyones guess

[offshoremanxman]

7 minutes ago, Steady Eddie said:

Still not much different. Quite what the hell 400 people do is anyones guess

This is where the whole cost saving argument falls apart for DBC. They employ 400 people. After the bin collections changed they still employ 400 people. They still have the same number of bin wagons. They still own or lease the same infrastructure. It’s all fixed costs so where are the savings coming from other than less gate fees paid by delivering less loads to be burned? 

[WTF]

19 minutes ago, Moghrey Mie said:

Thanks I wonder how many employees there are now. And what do they do?

more people doing less would be my guess.

[Moghrey Mie]

On 12/7/2022 at 2:59 PM, WTF said:

more people doing less would be my guess.

 

On 12/7/2022 at 2:59 PM, WTF said:

more people doing less would be my guess.

Do you really think Douglas Borough Corporation has fewer employee than 10 years ago?

[finlo]

1 hour ago, Moghrey Mie said:

 

Do you really think Douglas Borough Corporation has fewer employee than 10 years ago?

There's a clue in the "more people" bit!

[Non-Believer]

Now here's a thing too. Having unilaterally abdicated the duties they had previously carried out in LA areas (in the name of "savings", naturally) and dumped them on the LAs, DOI are now producing a "charter" to ensure that all authorities are to work to the same standards.

Note the reference to "budget" at the bottom.

 

[Apple]

Another charter - has anyone got a copy yet please ?

Is this going to be another attempt to promote an all island rate ? 

 

[Guest]

On 12/1/2022 at 1:28 PM, offshoremanxman said:

But surely most LA borrowing is internal borrowing so why have the rates gone up? Government is lending them the money from our money.

No, the DOIs role is to verify that the LA is rubber stamping the request (whether that’s right is another thing entirely altogether) and the money is lent from the banks. That’s why an LA has to advertise these requests in the media - a petition I think they’re called.

[Chris Thomas]

On 12/1/2022 at 1:22 PM, 0bserver said:

Approval from the DOI is needed before a local authority can take out a loan for capital expenditure. 

So this can very easily be controlled by Central Government. @Chris Thomasjust needs to read them the riot act and put a 24 month hiatus on all LA borrowing. 

Treasury and DoI authorisation in fact. Why should housing authorities not borrow for housing and other things, although the impact on deficiency payments might be significant at the moment as loan rates float? Braddan facility was approved some time ago.

[0bserver]

25 minutes ago, Chris Thomas said:

Treasury and DoI authorisation in fact. Why should housing authorities not borrow for housing and other things, although the impact on deficiency payments might be significant at the moment as loan rates float? Braddan facility was approved some time ago.

Because it's a massively inefficient use of public money. 

~21 local authorities, all with their own agendas and ideas on how to do things, for a population of 86,000 is massive over-governance. 

Simplify it down to one all-island local authority (or even 4+1 if you must) and have some streamlining of what goes on and push for efficiencies to save the ratepayers (who are taxpayers at the end of the day) some money. 

 

[forestboy]

4 minutes ago, 0bserver said:

Because it's a massively inefficient use of public money. 

~21 local authorities, all with their own agendas and ideas on how to do things, for a population of 86,000 is massive over-governance. 

Simplify it down to one all-island local authority (or even 4+1 if you must) and have some streamlining of what goes on and push for efficiencies to save the ratepayers (who are taxpayers at the end of the day) some money. 

 

Also allow single occupancy rate payers a 25% discount as in the UK. 

[Kopek]

6 hours ago, 0bserver said:

Simplify it down to one all-island local authority (or even 4+1 if you must)

Great idea, get fewer people to do the work of 5 or so! Even private industry would benefit from that??? You volunteering?

If all LA's employ, say, 1000 people, bringing all their services under one Dept would not mean that 200 could replace them! Douglas seems to need twice that number.

If Central Govt took on that role it is highly likely that the numbers would increase along with wage bill? Because that's what Govts do.