COUNCIL TAX RATE INCREASE

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Every household in the country could get a £450 tax rebate if councils stopped wasting £10billion a year. Town halls are failing to shop around to get the best price for basic goods and services, a report revealed. Experts found potential savings that would allow £450 to be slashed from every council tax bill and could be made easily, simply by following tried-and-tested business practices. They found needless spending on energy, mobile phones and legal services. Whitehall aides estimated the wasted money was enough to pay the wages of 500,000 refuse collectors, which could alone reduce the need to move to the hated fortnightly or monthly bin collections.

The overall £10billion savings also dwarf the £2.6billion cut in town hall funding from the Government this year. The report was carried out by Opera Solutions, an independent management consultancy. In one example, it found that three ­councils had spent a total of £13.6million on mobile phones, energy and solicitors’ fees. They could have saved £1.4million by clubbing together to buy in bulk. The report also recommended that councils improve data systems to identify incorrect payments, duplication and fraud. They should also make more effort to reduce multiple suppliers and spot when they are paying over the odds for similar items.

Whitehall officials said that the report showed widespread savings could be made throughout local government without a “slash and burn approach” to public services. Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles' aides said some councils were making genuine efforts. They praised Cornwall Council, which has cut £3million from waste collection services by contracting out to one firm, not six. A number of Essex authorities have clubbed together to negotiate best prices on supplies, while other authorities in the South-east have saved £1million this financial year by setting up a “Best Deals Service” to slash prices of anything from pens to refuse collection vehicles.

Not surprisingly, council chiefs rejected the £10billion figure as unrealistic. Baroness Eaton, chairman of the Local Government Association, said, “As the minister readily acknowledges, councils are working hard to save money.” She said the total savings last year alone were £1.6billion. Savings measures can take time to implement and the cuts were demanded so swiftly that many councils could not avoid an impact on frontline services. She added, “Taking estimated savings from a tiny part of the spending of three councils and grossing them up across all 375 authorities in England and Wales is eye-catching, but inaccurate." (Source: Daily Express, Jun/11)

Council tax bills are rising to pay for a growing army of fatcat pen-pushers earning more than £50,000 a year. Figures show there are now 30,000 middle managers in town halls across Britain receiving almost double the average national wage. They are costing their councils about £4million a year, equivalent to over £20 for every household. Local authorities insist that their staff are highly skilled and that taxpayers are getting value for money but the total annual wage bill for the fatcats now stands at £2billion, up from only £207million when Labour came to power a decade ago.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance figures reveal that local authorities across the UK are now employing an average of 66 middle-ranking managers on lucrative packages worth more than £50,000 a year. Figures taken from councils’ annual records showed that officials getting deals worth £50,000 or more, including bonuses and benefits but not pension contributions, rose from an estimated 3,341 in 1996-7 to 30,889 in 2006-7.

John Ransford, deputy chief executive of the Local Government Association which represents more than 400 councils in England and Wales, trotted out that old chestnut, "To attract the best and brightest people to deliver value for money, you have to pay a suitable wage. Councils are responsible for ensuring that more than £100billion of taxpayers’ money is spent wisely and provides the services local people want and need." (Source: Daily Express, Jan/08)

Council tax is set to rise by 5% for each of the next three years. This means people in Band A properties are set to pay more than £800 after Derby City Council announced its budget plans. Despite the rise the council still needs to find an extra £6.7m to run its services in 2007-8. It plans to cut its budget by 10% by April 2010, starting next year when it proposes £5m of savings. Job cuts, axing grants to organisations, increasing the cost of meals on wheels and charges at day centres, and raising ticket prices at the Assembly Rooms and the Guildhall are among the proposals to gain more money.

Council leader Chris Williamson said, "We do have that gap that needs to be filled but that's why we're consulting. It may be that there are planned spends in the document which people do not think are necessary or it may be that there are savings to be made elsewhere. There is a cost to all of this, but it's a price worth paying."

The extra costs the council plans to take on include paying for job evaluations to ensure fairness of pay as a result of the Equal Pay Act. This has forced councils to arrange settlements for workers in roles predominantly held by women, like cooks and cleaners, who have been paid less than men in jobs deemed to require equal levels of skill, like refuse collectors. Another £2.5m has been put aside to spend on development projects, such as planned improvements to the Market Place, the Sir Peter Hilton Gardens, The Spot and Osnabruck Square, as well as the proposal to create new civic offices for the authority. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph, Jan/07)

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