I'm honestly not the least bit surprised! I work for one of the largest councils in the UK as an engineer in the highways department and have done since 2006
to give my own experiences
I might be a little out on dates
2006-2007(before the crash)
- My section consisted of 42 staff members
- we had an annual revenue budget in our section of £2million (not including work funded by development or local transport funds, aka where a client paid us for work)
- we looked after all 'minor' improvement works - aka schemes under a certain threshold
- each staff member had approx. 4 schemes they oversaw, from design, through reports and consultation all the way to implementation on site
- each staff member above trainee level, answering correspondence from one of the 30+ electoral wards, with trainees having none and picking up the slack
2008-2010 (The main period of the crash)
- all staff were offered the opportunity to take early retirement, this saw (over the course of a year)4
- with each person who left, their position was deleted from the staff structure
- those who left were of the most senior positions, with them gone there was no room for progression for those below them
- the responsibilities of those who left fell to those who were under them
- the next year more redundancies were offered and a further 4 members left, they were a mixture of posts, but relatively senior posts
- again their posts were lost from the structure
- trainee posts on the structure became vacant as trainees had no where to move to, so left for the private sector - of the 9 trainee posts, myself and one other remained
- their posts from the structure were removed once they left
- our budget was reduced to £1million in the first year
- our budget was reduced to £500,000 in the second year
- our budget was reduced to £250,000 at some point between 2010 and 2014
- the same level of work remained despite the reduced budget and reduced staff
2010 to current
- at some point in 2010 further redundancies were required, but our section lost no further members
- however some other sections were lost entirely which brought its own problems;
- our section work load doubled as we picked up projects previously undertaken by lost teams or teams who also saw a shift in priority i.e the major projects team stopped
- our survey team was gone, so all surveys had to be outsourced - and increase of approx. 1000% in costs
- by this point each team member has about 9-15 schemes
Generally the above has proven to destroy moral, many experienced and qualified staff members have left to the private sector as progression has effectively been stopped by deleting any vacant posts - something exasperated by the fact nearly all staff over the age of 55 had left, meaning its atleast 10 years before some posts could become vacant allowing people to move up
I'm a fully qualified engineer, my job title still says trainee as nobody has moved up a post or posts don't exist anymore
This also stifles low level pay for front line staff, who quickly reach the top of pay bands and rely on annual pay rises in line with inflation, or rather not inline with inflation! since 2006 its been a 1% pay increase per year
My section isn't an isolated case, others have been equally decimated or destroyed! the maintenance section went from 30 odd staff to 3! THREE and they have a multimillion pound budget they are expected to use per year, its like a morgue in that section as everyone is utterly demoralised.
So I'd be nigh on certain to bet the same situation occurs in adult social care, and with an aging population they'll have skeleton staff to deal with more Pensioners!
And then the Government cut council funding (again) and put in the living wage, which in principal is awesome, in practice it means this situation where any rises in rates barely make up the wage shortfall
and then people who don't like the public service sector bash us for enjoying wage increase at their rate expense
our country is screwed, if nothing changes we will either see council tax rises ever 5 years or a complete collapse of public services! the Private sector will not be better, they make profit, we do not, that gap will be out of peoples pockets
