If you were a councillor...

[Davie P]

I completely support the idea of a streamlined SIC. However, during the last round of management cuts a few years back, I ken several folk who had a lot more pressure added to their jobs when they lost their managers. Somebody still has to take the strain when others are laid off (unless the job was completely unnecessary in the first place).

[hjasga]

 

 

Unfortunately our council with all it's vast staffing levels, still need to bring up teams from south to carry out repairs. As I've said before get rid of these seat polishers and employ folk who can get out and do the job. Surely someone could be trained to maintain these lights locally ?

 

I imagine companies like Siemens aren't too keen to share the expertise required. Given how unreliable these things seem to be, it makes more sense for them to have the maintenance contracts than to provide relatively unprofitable training.

It's a circuit board, once installed, I'm sure they could carry a spare so the faulty one can be sent south if required. It has to be cheaper than having to pay groups of folk to come up here to constantly fix the lights. The cost of bringing these companies up here is likely to be considerably more than training someone local.

 

Your not a seat polisher by any chance are you?

 

 

"Training someone locally" depends on a trainer being available and willing to do that. If the expertise to repair these devices is held within the manufacturing company it's not uncommon for them to want to hold the maintenance contracts. I'm also fairly certain based on recent news stories that these lights are no longer in production and that spares are increasingly hard to come by.

 

And, no, I am neither a "seat polisher" nor even a council employee.

[Carlos]

"Council roads maintenance manager Dave Coupe explained that each set of lights in the town is now so old that manufacturers are unable to supply some replacement parts.

One new set of lights is due to arrive in February, which Coupe said would replace the crossing at Bolts. But to replace all 10 would cost around £150,000 and he doesn't have the budget to do that straight away."

http://www.shetnews.co.uk/news/7877-council-must-sort-out-traffic-light-woes-says-convener

Full new install at Bolts and likely some spares scavenged from the old one to try and keep the rest going a bit longer?

[Ghostrider]

I completely support the idea of a streamlined SIC. However, during the last round of management cuts a few years back, I ken several folk who had a lot more pressure added to their jobs when they lost their managers. Somebody still has to take the strain when others are laid off (unless the job was completely unnecessary in the first place).

 

This is why I would advocate a clean start, the impression given from previous cuts is that people were chopped and work shunted sideways to achieve an end result motivated by a financial target, not based on the value of the staff member(s) or work to the bigger council picture.

 

The whole council managerial and admin structure is based on a system designed almost 40 years ago, which itself was mostly inherited from its predecessor, which has been tinkered and tweaked with far, far too many times until it is now one of the most dysfunctional resource intensive monsters it could be. Were it a construction project, it would now look like the low end of Soweto shanty city.

[owre-weel]

 

"Training someone locally" depends on a trainer being available and willing to do that. If the expertise to repair these devices is held within the manufacturing company it's not uncommon for them to want to hold the maintenance contracts. I'm also fairly certain based on recent news stories that these lights are no longer in production and that spares are increasingly hard to come by.

 

And, no, I am neither a "seat polisher" nor even a council employee.

You could be right, but I wonder if this has ever been looked into. There must be other councils who have found solutions to problem with the maintenance of lights. Our council have not been known to find the most cost effective solution in the past.

 

Back to " if I was a councillor"

[CrunchieSquirrel]

Does anybody ever feel when they want to say something but they wish not to because it could cause a bit of a concern? I am thinking of something on top of my head on education and I think I will just not say it out loud to any flamboyant gossipy person because I think I might get a little humiliated.

[Colin]

If you don't want to be humiliated/insulted/etc then, you've got no business posting here...

[owre-weel]

Does anybody ever feel when they want to say something but they wish not to because it could cause a bit of a concern? I am thinking of something on top of my head on education and I think I will just not say it out loud to any flamboyant gossipy person because I think I might get a little humiliated.

If your worried it may cause concern, discuss it with a friend first and see what they think. As your no doubt aware there are a few trolls on here who are sitting glued to the screen waiting for something to pounce on! Then there will also be folk who's views will differ from your own and will have a reasonable dialog/discussion, which is what forums are for.

[trout]

If you don't want to be humiliated/insulted/etc then, you've got no business posting here...

I'm sure that's tongue in cheek humour but, for the sake of clarity anybody carrying on in that fashion does nothing to engender civil conversation. *exit stage left*

[trowie246]

If I were a councillor I would go into each of the department offices and shadow people for a day and enquire what they did.  I would try and find out how much duplication goes on in the SIC and look more closely at the recharging of services between departments.  I would then examine what is statutory and what is non-statutory requirements of the SIC.

 

We get in the region of £95 million in revenue grant from the Scottish Government.  We spend about £75 million of that on staff wages.

 

If this isn't ringing alarm bells in councillor's ears than nothing is.

 

Nobody wants to see anyone out of a job but the bottom line is that a combination of too many employees along with high salaries is draining the SIC.  They've cut all the front line staff that they can, it's now time to tackle those offices.

[MuckleJoannie]

I certainly agree with councillors spending time in each department. Every time a service is proposed for cuts the cry goes up that the people who work there have never seen a councillor near the place.

[hjasga]

 

We get in the region of £95 million in revenue grant from the Scottish Government.  We spend about £75 million of that on staff wages.

 

If this isn't ringing alarm bells in councillor's ears than nothing is.

 

Aren't Revenue Support Grants calculated based on the extent of recurring costs? Meaning that, to a certain extent, reduction of recurring costs also means reduction of the grant?

 

And do staffing costs not make up the largest proportion of recurring costs within all/most local authorities?

 

All genuine questions as I do not know exactly how this works.

[trowie246]

I don't know how it works either.  But you could well be right because I heard that in Morgan Goodlad's time there was massive job creation that went on to secure more grant from the Scottish government.

 

All I know is that Orkney island council receive £18 million pound less revenue grant than SIC and have significantly less staff. They have had to make cuts but no where near to the severity of here.

[trowie246]

If I was a councillor I would find out how the revenue grant system works.

[Ghostrider]

I certainly agree with councillors spending time in each department. Every time a service is proposed for cuts the cry goes up that the people who work there have never seen a councillor near the place.

 

Yes, but then there's also what could probably best be described as the "Official Tour", ie. If a councillor shows interest its all well and good as long as they give notice, and accept the "let us show you around" version, and don't ask too many searching questions, they are made "welcome" and shown the "pretty things". If instead a councillor attempts to enquire about things not on the "Tour" itinerary and/or starts to ask "difficult" questions, they suddenly find themselves stonewalled with the same "confidentiality", "data protection", "statutory requirement", "policy" bull and complete lack of co-operation the rest of the public has to put up with every time they attempt to communicate with council departments.