rural community skips

[dead mans hand]

I see that the rural community skips are under threat. Ok i can understand that save up to 70000.

I never noticed the road side collections in Lerwick being cut.

 

Maybe they have, I dont know?

 

Do you?

[soljey]

Surely withdrawing the rural skips will just lead to folk going back to the old "baal it ower da banks" days - resulting in eyesores and the expense of eventually having to clean all that up.

[Guest Lone Wolf]

Those were exactly my thoughts soljey. I would have thought a reduction in the service to be a better solution.

 

As for Lerwick, not sure whether their collections have changed, I'm sure I wouldn't be affected if mine was fortnightly (although I don't live in Lerwick). My experience of fortnightly collections in more built up areas is that the place soon looks like a tip and just recently one English council has had to spend a fortune on agency staff to collect built up litter bags due to this policy change. Can't imagine Lerwick looking like a tip would go down well with the tourists in Summer and the news would soon spread and fewer people would come. That's life I'm afraid.

 

Anyway this shouldn't be a Lerwick versus the rest as most of these sorts of discussions tend to deteriorate into. Rarely have I seen such a divided community as Shetland

[fionajohn]

i don't think you can reduce the service

up here we have a skip that rotates every 2 weeks between hillswick,heylor and urafirth most times it is full to the brim within 3 or 4 days where is all the stuff to go?not every-one has transport to trail a mattress 40 miles and you can't take it on the bus

[anderslea21]

just throw it in the hill somewhere or over the banks

[Ghostrider]

Surely withdrawing the rural skips will just lead to folk going back to the old "baal it ower da banks" days - resulting in eyesores and the expense of eventually having to clean all that up.

 

[Speccy]

Lerwick lost it's twice-yearly uplift earlier this year.

 

The Council will still uplift for a fee, I think, in town or country.

[Hector's House]

I wonder how much commercial waste goes into these skips

[Scorrie]

I wonder how much commercial waste goes into these skips

 

On Yell, virtually nowt.

[Colin]

What bothers me is that the present bunch of councillors just don't appear to 'get it'

 

No 'business' would survive by cutting back on it's services to the general public whilst, at the same time, maintaining 'back office' staffing levels.

Closing the Viking Bus Station

Withdrawing Community Skips

Shutting Public Toilets

etc. etc. etc.

 

Apart from the glaringly obvious mistake of cutting from the wrong end, it would appear that the general public are the ones who are being asked to take the strain of the cuts whilst there would seem to be an awful lot of under employed staffers sitting around.

[MuckleJoannie]

There is a thought that occurs to me. Quite often a major part of the cost of facilities being cut is their share of the councils overheads. As these thing are cut the overheads get shared out among less and less cost centres, making the unit costs more exoensive, making them seem less viable. It's a classic mistake. Instead of cutting overheads they cut services.

[Guest Lone Wolf]

That's very true MuckleJoannie. I would hope the Finance department is wise enough to realise that when they do their costings, but...........

[Colin]

There is a thought that occurs to me. Quite often a major part of the cost of facilities being cut is their share of the councils overheads. As these thing are cut the overheads get shared out among less and less cost centres, making the unit costs more exoensive, making them seem less viable. It's a classic mistake. Instead of cutting overheads they cut services.

 

Pretty much what I said but with the benefit of inside knowledge..

I don't pretend to understand the vagaries of the SIC's internal accounting procedures but, they must be horribly wrong if they think that reducing front line services is 'efficient' in a business sense.

Rural Skips at £70K per year is, roughly, the equivalent of 3 office jobs and the Viking Bus Park is, roughly, similar.

That means loosing 6 office jobs out of a total in excess of 2000. Anyone care to tell me why it can't be done?

[quattro]

Agree we Colin n Johnnie, but sums no right . More lik £35k each in da office. Only need ta loss 4 persons fae da office.

[owre-weel]

Colin and Muckle Joannie have hit the nail on the head, but when will the penny drop with the SIC?

 

They must cut staffing levels, not cut much needed services in order to make savings. Gary Robertson continues to say that they will do all they can to avoid redundancies! Why? ...The council is over staffed, this is where savings have to be made. No one wants to see anyone losing their jobs, but unfortunately it's reality.

 

I agree all needs to be done to reduce service costs and wastage, but How many complaints have they had to each of the proposed cuts? I wonder if they would receive any if they said they were reducing 20 jobs to save having to cut gritting, old folks meals, bus station etc

 

We pay our rates and taxes to get services, not to keep the council offices overflowing with staff.