WCBC Wasting Money
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I have just read this topic for the first time, deary deary me ! :mad:
Whilst not really knowing who runs this forum, is it the council or ?
If not do council officials read what is on here because some of the topics are quite disturbing as to what goes on in the corridors of power within Wrexham Council … :eek::eek:
@99DylanJones 11688 wrote:
How come Wrexham Council spends money that benefits the profits of private business when services are being cut.
1. Car park signs — yes the Council will say they had a grant but the reality is that they are sign posting drivers to private car parks such as Eagles Meadow at a time when they have increased the price of parking in their own car parks. Can anyone please explain the logic?
2. Bus station – yes local people benefit but it is the private bus operators who use the Bus Station that benefit the most. Other businesses that sell services have to pay rent and rates yet this doesn’t occur for the bus operators!
3. Electronic Bus signs — massive investment but ceased to operate within 18 months.
4. Why pay for all Council Members to attend an Executive meeting when they have no chance of changing any proposals. Waste of time having 30 plus Councilors in a room with no one listening to them!!
5. What is the point of having rows of highly paid officials at an Executive meeting listening and not participating- there are usually 20 present on an average of £25 an hour for 3 hours– £1500 of wasted time when they should be doing proper work! At all the Scrutiny meetings as well and their is probably about £2500 a week over £1 million a year for people to sit doing nothing.Come on decision makers of Wrexham start looking closely at how you work if you want to see some cost savings.
Dylan20 people on £48k a year at every scrutiny meeting? If thats true why are they all their?
Scrutiny and Executive
If ever you have some time on your hands go to the Guildhall to listen to the debate (use of the word debate is perhaps a bit misleading- even many Councillors accept that there is little debate on many topics).
At a Scrutiny Meeting you could see about 8 officers who don’t even present a report as these are no done by Council Members).
The Executive in the main Council Chamber has up to 20 officers and up to 52 Council Members yet there is often less than 15 Councilors and 2 officers that actually speak.
Do the sums and you soon realise what a financial waste this whole process is>
DylanI firmly believe that if you take away most of the so called meetings in WCBC ,then a third of the staff would not have a job.
@Adam 11737 wrote:
I’d like to know where you find inverters for £400. If they somehow did manage to find them some bargain bucket ones then somebody in the chain is making a tidy markup…
The primary failure of these is when the cooling fails so if you’re right and these are covered in dust from day 1, with no cleaning schedule, then the outcome is pretty inevitable..
to be honest its quite easy to find cheap inverters, and as long as they are mcs approved theres no problem. The council specified fronius inverters and they can be found quite cheap on internet sites, they are very good inverters. But its only a matter of time before this problem raises its head.
@wid9999 11743 wrote:
Hi – apologies for being slightly off topic.. but it is related
Can anyone tell me why council houses typically have an odd number of solar panels? Seven I think.
Is it weight related? I don’t think its power related as each house can have up to 16 for 4Kw I believe.
Just looks odd from an aesthetic point of view but I am sure there is a logical reason.
ThanksSome of the layouts leave a lot to be desired, some properties have the same amount of panels yet have a different configuration which makes them look awful especially when its a terraced row or pair of semi`s. As regaurd the quantity, i have been told by someone who works for the council who asked the same question, adding an additional panel would not have been cost effective, as the payback would have not justified the cost of the extra panel. Maybe true i dont know, but most of there systems are quite small around the 2kw mark, i dont think they had many 4kw systems, i am guessing they had smaller systems so more people had the benefit of free electric, well thats the only logical reason i could think of.
@jimbow 11753 wrote:
I firmly believe that if you take away most of the so called meetings in WCBC ,then a third of the staff would not have a job.
The Wrexham.com piece referring to a proposed Parking Refund Scheme recently discussing a sum of £13k, mentioned that this money was not available and would have to come from elsewhere, such as adult social care or child welfare.
WCBC is obviously a very tightly run ship if the first place to look at cutting spending to fund a parking scheme would be these.
So the suggestion that staff at meetings are there for little or no purpose must be wrong, otherwise Wrexham could consider following Birmingham or Flintshire councils, to cut staff and reduce wages and benefits etc.With every year money from Westminster and from WAG down, what is the way forward ?
At the recent Plas Madoc Leisure Centre meeting somebody shouted we don’t need a Mayor.
It could be there are other roles that similarly are redundant ?Would the people of Wrexham prefer to pay higher council tax, despite reduced services and facilities to protect WCBC staff, or rather a reorganisation to lower staff costs, leaving more to spend on other things.
I suspect the leaders of WCBC already know the answer.
” However Cllr Rogers pointed out the scale of the cuts the council face over the next three years.
Cllr Rogers said: “This year we have to save in the region of £13m, that figure will go up next year and more the year after. That is the scale of what we are dealing with. If we want to spend £13,000 on this scheme the money would have to come from somewhere else, such as adult social care or child welfare.”There are a few points to raise about the massive cuts required:
1. Most other Local Authorities in Wales are not cutting to the same level — in most instances they have never gone to the route of expansion with no sustainability. Project funding was used appropriately with time limited projects in other Authorities where as in Wrexham once you are an employee you almost have protection for life.
2. Wrexham have made no reference at any time to the use of reserves.#
3. Why is it that so much has gone over budget over the past few years – starting with the Superschool budget fiasco and continued ever since — many of the officers and Members who where involved in the past are the same ones today presiding over these cuts..
4. Why should we as ratepayers be paying another 3.5% (if the budget goes through this week this will be the rate) for significantly less services.
WAKE UP WREXHAM RESIDENTS YOUR FUTURE IS BEING DECIDED 6.00PM AT THE GUILDHALL– BE THERE AT 5.30PM IF YOU WANT TO GET A SEAT TO LISTEN TO THE BUDGET DEBATE.@99DylanJones 11858 wrote:
There are a few points to raise about the massive cuts required:
…
WAKE UP WREXHAM RESIDENTS YOUR FUTURE IS BEING DECIDED 6.00PM AT THE GUILDHALL– BE THERE AT 5.30PM IF YOU WANT TO GET A SEAT TO LISTEN TO THE BUDGET DEBATE.
Have people been able to read and comment on the budget:
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/MinutesData/Council/Reports/hf0914.pdf
Published “Cash Limited Budget”
Title in report – 2014/15 – (Last year 2013/14)
Environment – £27,742,681 – (27,836,381)
Housing & Public Protection – £3,859,917 – (4,439,333)
Adult Social Care – £41,889,801 – (43,176,763)
Schools – £76,730,326 – (76,386,663)
Lifelong Learning – £5,744,329 – (6,627,162)
Prevention & Social Care – £13,523,213 – (13,704,526)
Community Well Being & Development – £3,887,033 – (4,584,828
Assets & Economic Development – £4,570,725 – (5,088,289)
Finance – £3,604,416 – (3,974,098)
Corporate & Customer Services – £6,163,072 – (6,381,324)
Repairs & Maintenance – £2,167,623 – (2,167,623)Total Net Service Expenditure – £189,883,136 – (194,466,990)
Corporate & Central Expenditure
General – £26,959,059 – (27,180,150)
Council Tax Reduction Scheme / Welfare – £10,491,405 – (11,058,127)Total Net Expenditure – £227,333,600 – (232,705,267)
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