When times are tight, what do people want from their council? Teachers in classrooms. Clean streets and regular rubbish collections. Help for the elderly at home. These are the services that matter.
What people don’t need is a casting list of hundreds of directors, executives and strategists paid with their cash. You read the job descriptions for some of these posts and wonder who dreamt up these non-jobs and what they do all their day. It must be more galling for those doing a real job on the front line to see what people behind the desks earn. Under Labour, bureaucracy in some areas of local government became more important than policy. Council taxpayers cannot afford it anymore.

Do I detect you have quite strong feelings on the subject?

He's not wrong though -

Why are we blaming councils?

That's rich coming from you, I mean you're ready to sue them if one of their pavements even looks at you funny.

Why are we blaming councils? The only reason they're hiring these people is because they are legally required to by central government, and central government give them ring-fenced funding to do it.

It's all well and good saying X council wasted Y million on non-jobs, but that is literally the only thing they could spend the money on.

And no, councils can't defy the rules because either a) they end up in court or b) central government changes the management.

Personally I think some of these "desk jobs" are very worthwhile. The Chief Executive of the OFT delivers savings to consumers of more than 6 times the OFT's budget, and administrators mean the front-line officers can spend more time out doing inspections etc.

But sometimes the management/bureaucracy is necessary. Spending and executing a £1bn+ authority isn't easy, and neither is meeting statutory obligations (nor keeping up with the many, many changes in legislation, "best practice" documents, codes of practice, government guidance etc), keeping on top of staff levels, meeting public demand, staff training etc.

Yes but if they did not spend so long in meetings they might actually achieve something. There are 6 levels of management in the local social services to cover all 1500 staff from director of social services. That is far too many.

I don't think so. I've worked in private companies where there are two layers of management to deal with less than 30 employees (a sub-department), then above us were another two layers of management. In all, there were 4 layers of management for 500 employees - yet local authorities employ thousands.

That sounds like over-managed to me. Though are some of those managers instead of pay increases? That is what has happened in many organisations. In your sub department they are clearly over-managed. It is small enough for one person to manage. Unless you are including team leaders.

It would depend on how it is organised. A typical fast food restaurant will have an owner/manager who will also have duty managers for each shift, and then team leaders for each segment and then those that do much of the work. All in a total number of people of 30 to 50 depending on size of store. Though you could probably ignore the team leaders as they are more likely to be simply senior workers on a slightly higher rate of pay. So could have simply three levels layers of staff, or two levels of management. Even with 500 staff you could simplify it considerably to a couple of levels. You would start at the top with the board of directors, then below that departmental managers. All at the same level basically but with different importance depending on the nature of the business. Then those managers will be responsible for up to a few dozen people, but with the odd team leader but depending on roles they may not be management.