More cuts to Council services despite 4.99% tax rise

[the_bloke 17]

A simple Google search will find you the council website where all spending is shown.

 

Please, where are these wasted monies being spent?

 

That's fine if you want an executive summary. If the government can release MP's expenses down to the cost of a pack of pencils, then so can councils. Until every penny that the council spends is available to Google, the belief that money is squandered will remain true.

 

Unless of course, anyone can think of a good reason why data like that shouldn't be published? If the first answer is 'it would be too difficult to gather it and collate it from so many different sources and in so many different formats' then perhaps you are on the way to explaining how money gets wasted.

[biotechpete 10]

No I don't think they can afford them and that is why many took out loans and used credit cards that they couldn't afford to pay on at the end of the month they got fed up with seemingly everyone else having while they did not.

 

But I did not mention people on low incomes you brought that in. Read the post carefully without jumping to conclusions about what I am thinking and just absorb the words.

 

Most poor people live within their means. They do without like I and my family and many others like us did and they make choices about what to save for when there is a bit of spare cash, about what to buy to eat, about whether to smoke or drink or go out to the pub or have a takeaway. Or a really big one here whether it would be better to save money for new carpets or furniture or stick with second hand and inherited bits from kind people and give the kids a break from bricks and mortar and get them and a tent into the countryside or to the coast in the school holidays.

 

Read again, the first part of the post, to see how it all began to slide down the slippery slope.

 

Once the jobs disappeared over the china sea and no one had anything to spend the next step was to offer seemingly endless credit.

 

Even the Labour government went for the blurb of buy now pay tomorrow America was willing to loan again once we had cleared the war debt, of course they were, how could we refuse to support their war mongering when we are in hock to them.

Now we have all been sold to China, because America Made the same mistake of offering money to people they should have known could not pay it back and they are now up the Yangtze without a paddle to service their debt, which is why they are making a show of strength in the south china sea.

The Chinese of course being an astute business nation will take every advantage of our collective penury, hence their interest in investing in Britain. You can be assured that the businesses will be registered in Beijing or some other Chinese city so very little tax will be paid here and the highly paid staff of course will be Chinese and money owed to them will go into a chinese bank account with living expences transferred to a British bank as necessary, while lower "living wage staff" will be British or EU residents. And why not. The English did similar things in the rest of the world we colonised and tried to subjugate.

 

on a point of note, whilst subprime bundles of loans were held by US banks, they were held on the balance sheets of their London offices. They couldn't get away with that in the US. Our regulatory regime was primarily at fault for the financial crisis.

 

On the jobs thing, maybe some truth in it, but we couldn't afford to buy goods made by british workers with british wages, we simply wouldn't have them otherwise and actually we have lost jobs to automation in a big way. That pace would be accelerated with increased price pressures in the absence of imports.

[the_bloke 17]

That's fine if you want an executive summary. If the government can release MP's expenses down to the cost of a pack of pencils, then so can councils. Until every penny that the council spends is available to Google, the belief that money is squandered will remain true.

 

Unless of course, anyone can think of a good reason why data like that shouldn't be published? If the first answer is 'it would be too difficult to gather it and collate it from so many different sources and in so many different formats' then perhaps you are on the way to explaining how money gets wasted.

 

Perhaps I'm doing a disservice. In October 2016 SCC made available data for all it's expenditure (minus personal details such as wages, as to be expected) of over £250. However, it's meaningless because whilst it lists the business unit and expense code description, the supplier and the cost, you can't get what the actual item(s) supplied were.

 

It's a 100 MB CSV file, which opened fine in Excel.

 

So it has invoices such as:

 

£1,391.50 on translation services paid to LANGUAGELINE SOLUTIONS

£1,000,000.00 on fees and expenses paid to MAGNOMATICS LIMITED

£18,464.36 on taxi services paid to SHEFFIELD TAXI SERVICES LTD

£590.33 on photocopying services paid to THE DANWOOD GROUP LIMITED

£1,500,000.00 on fees and expenses paid to BLUETREE DESIGN AND PRINT LTD

£325.00 on car parking fees paid to APCOA PARKING UK LTD

£33,000.00 on fees and expenses paid to THE PRINCE'S TRUST

£1,487,365.24 on fees and expenses paid to FIRTH RIXSON FORGINGS MEADOWHALL

£947.80 on rent paid to EARL MARSHALL GUEST HOUSE

£6,145.50 on grounds maintenance paid to ELVEDON FARMS LTD

£1,500,000.00 on fees and expenses paid to KP SNACKS LIMITED

 

Do they identify wastage? No.

[Anna B 1,414]

A letter in one of the papers recounts an incident in the hospital they were working in.

 

The ward he was working in needed a blackout blind. A quote from their suppliers had come in for £832. The ward sister incensed, had gone out and got one herself from a local DIY store, cost £22.99 One of the guys fitted it for free.

 

OK, so just an anecdote on the letters page, but is this what is happening to our taxes?

[Cyclone 10]

Council leaders are warning of deep cuts to services despite nearly every local authority in England planning to raise council tax in 2017. Increases of up to 4.99% are expected across the country, but libraries, bin collections and other services will still face funding gaps.

 

We are continuing to pay for a service that is not being provided. Is time to say enough is enough with a mass revolt just like the poll tax days.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38982643

 

We are paying for many services, but due to central government cuts the overall funding the council has keeps going down.

Expect it to continue whilst ever the conservatives are in power and have an excuse for "austerity".

 

---------- Post added 21-02-2017 at 07:40 ----------

 

I wouldn`t be happy with 15% and if the money had not been wasted for all these years we probably would not be in the mess we are now. However, I share your views on the idea of the council demonstrating exactly where the money is being spent both government money and our council tax contributions. I think we all know that this is never going to happen. I wonder why:suspect:

 

The council budget and actual spending is all available online, you can go back multiple years in examining the accounts.

Anything else you need correcting because you couldn't be bothered to actually look?

[biotechpete 10]

Perhaps I'm doing a disservice. In October 2016 SCC made available data for all it's expenditure (minus personal details such as wages, as to be expected) of over £250. However, it's meaningless because whilst it lists the business unit and expense code description, the supplier and the cost, you can't get what the actual item(s) supplied were.

 

It's a 100 MB CSV file, which opened fine in Excel.

 

So it has invoices such as:

 

£1,391.50 on translation services paid to LANGUAGELINE SOLUTIONS

£1,000,000.00 on fees and expenses paid to MAGNOMATICS LIMITED

£18,464.36 on taxi services paid to SHEFFIELD TAXI SERVICES LTD

£590.33 on photocopying services paid to THE DANWOOD GROUP LIMITED

£1,500,000.00 on fees and expenses paid to BLUETREE DESIGN AND PRINT LTD

£325.00 on car parking fees paid to APCOA PARKING UK LTD

£33,000.00 on fees and expenses paid to THE PRINCE'S TRUST

£1,487,365.24 on fees and expenses paid to FIRTH RIXSON FORGINGS MEADOWHALL

£947.80 on rent paid to EARL MARSHALL GUEST HOUSE

£6,145.50 on grounds maintenance paid to ELVEDON FARMS LTD

£1,500,000.00 on fees and expenses paid to KP SNACKS LIMITED

 

Do they identify wastage? No.

 

There are a couple of high value ones there that stand out to me. Magnomatics makes magnetic gears, which can be built into different products like wind turbines. Seems a strange thing for SCC to be procuring. Then Firth Rixon? Are SCC secretly building an armoured tank?

[cgksheff 44]

There are a couple of high value ones there that stand out to me. Magnomatics makes magnetic gears, which can be built into different products like wind turbines. Seems a strange thing for SCC to be procuring. Then Firth Rixon? Are SCC secretly building an armoured tank?

 

Are these actually procurements?

 

The £1million to Magnomatics could easily be the support given from the Regional Growth Fund, which I think is financed from Westminster.

[biotechpete 10]

Are these actually procurements?

 

The £1million to Magnomatics could easily be the support given from the Regional Growth Fund, which I think is financed from Westminster.

 

I suspect their either loans or as you say growth funds. Which begs the question of why it is on the council's books described like this.

[the_bloke 17]

Are these actually procurements?

 

The £1million to Magnomatics could easily be the support given from the Regional Growth Fund, which I think is financed from Westminster.

 

The CSV data described both as fees and expenses. I don't have the data to hand, but all the rows in the data are individual invoices, with the supplier invoice number. Would a supplier create an invoice for a loan?

 

It's definitely all SCC data according to the site that hosted it. So if it was from the Regional Growth Fund it would be from the Regional Growth Fund, not SCC unless there is some strange accounting going on.

 

Easily Googleable if anyone fancies a look.

[El Cid 218]

I was at a meeting where a local councilor said Government funding to Leeds city council would be zero by 2020, I was quite surprised at this.

 

I have found this

 

With county authorities seeing their core government support grant reduced by 92 per cent by 2020

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/local-councils-england-county-finances-chaos-uk-government-2020-a8421591.html

 

Almost half of all councils - 168 districts, counties, unitaries and London boroughs – will no longer receive a penny of this government funding by 2019/20.

 

https://www.local.gov.uk/about/news/council-funding-be-further-cut-half-over-next-two-years-lga-warns

[Anna B 1,414]

So they have to raise all the money from council tax? Yet council tax can't go up by more than 2%?

 

Good luck with that...

[El Cid 218]

So they have to raise all the money from council tax? Yet council tax can't go up by more than 2%?

 

Good luck with that...

 

Maybe a local income tax would be the answer? Is it right that businesses and homeowners are the ones paying all the local taxes?