Council Watcher
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The problem with many of the ‘potential’ cuts is that they are mainly low levels and a piece meal approach – the high level of strategic overview of the whole Council seems to be missing.
The fact that the Environmental Department had such a large over spend is a disgrace and shows mismanagement- have a look you can’t find anyone yet giving a full explanation of what has happened- who and when should this have been spotted and what steps were taken to stop it escalating.
Although difficult to accept that Social care was also over drawn that service has a lot of variables with an increasing demand — with the refuse Department surely that was a static known demand at the beginning of the year so why the excess spends. You only need to drive around the areas on a bin collection day and the number of times the vehicles are static for hour plus is ridiculous and shows that no one in management is taking any notice of vehicles not working.
I am certainly not against people from England coming over the border to work her as the number of Welsh people going the other way is aprox the same. The point I was making was that with growth when there is high unemployment means there is an immediate benefit to the local economy the more fluid the workforce the more spread out the economic benefits turn out to be. In this region we are actually very fortunate there are large populations in Liverpool, Manchester etc. that work in our area – without them many of the local business would not stay leaving big voids – look at SAeropace in Broughton , if 50% of their workforce is from England – if they didn’t come would the factory remain- highly unlikely.
My overall expectation is that there will be more economic migrants but with uncertainty over the turns of Brexit these are still uncertain so bottom line is where are all these new people coming from to fill the new jobs…
Councilor x please enlighten us to know how many Councillors were apprised last year? And who was the independent person who conducted them
It wil make very little difference as many of the smaller independent shops alreadty receive various rebates- if you look at most of the announcments they all seemed to be England only- the £500million extra fior Wales seems totally dispropotionate to the England levels of spend.
Sorry to upset the Wales Independence thinkers but with these types of settlement we would all be better off under a Westminster Government and part of a whole UK budget- either this or a toital revamp of the funding formula to Wales.The North Wales Growth Deal looks good with all the investment but can someone tell me were the people are going to come from to fill the 5000+ new jobs being created- oh yes they will come from over the English border into North Wales as we do not have enough job hunting people to take advantage of the Growth Bid
MP — many people do have free car parking in work but why with the Council is it only the highest paid that get the ‘perk’ – as an income generation for the Council to save services being cut every ‘private’ business car parking space should have a levy tax — most private car parking spaces in Wrexham cost between aprox £1000 and £1400 a year — surely the land owner would not miss a 10/20% car parking tax!
Good pay for good work is a valid point — how come then there does not seem to be any appropriate check of ‘good work’ — many Councillors hardly ever turn up to meetings and even more appear to be struck dumb as their contributions are nil — perhaps a more structured performance pay system based on actual effort and contribution would be more meaningful — reward the more active and cut back on the non-performers.
Becoming a Councillor may be open to everyone but so many people are disillusioned with the arrangements that they don’t see any value in the role.
The largest element of the ‘bin collection’ overspend is due to a badly advised previous administration with officers who did not understand the complexity of the commercial PFI finance deal for the building and running of the recycling scheme. The contract was based on the Council making ‘profit’/payback against the management fee provided the value of recycling was above certain levels- however the contractor had a clause that meant they would get a fixed fee even if the recycle market price dropped – which is now the case. Instead of being paid by the contractor the Council have lost all profits/rebates and paying for a service that had not been budgeted.
The cost is likely to increase even further now that the market price for plastics from recycling has dropped due to restrictions being imposed by China. – there is something like 60+ years to run on the PFI.This whole project made no commercial sense for the Council – only the contractor was in a win, win situation.
Ratepayers of Wrexham will pay millions over the duration of the contract
This was not a Council decision but the tenants when they voted to remain with the Council rather than do stock transfer
I think the point to note on the last post is that it was safer and probably a lot more comfortable to be kept in the ambulance with very attentive staff — if he had gone into A & E his observations by staff would not have been as frequent due to staff pressures. Having a communal area for those discharged from an ambulance has a variety of medical reasons why this would not be advisable.
One of the key issues what I put in the very first post – there is a shortage of staff through not being able to attract them into Wrexham- the funding is there as the jobs are on the Betsi web site.
Regarding foreign visitors I do think people need to think very hard about this next time they go to hospital or a GP for treatment or examination – very many will be foreign who have lived in this country for many years or born here — and yes they will have relatives from abroad that come here for a holiday . Do you want to stop their relatives from coming here?
What is out at the moement is a draft the actual document and comments survey will be out next week after Council Member approval- gather your thoughts in the mena time
If you look back on the timing for the PFI you will see that there was a totally inexperienced group of Council Members and Officers who had never been involved with such contracts who tried to make out they understood what they were signing up to when all it was doing was saddling future generations for years to come with financial costs.
This was a typical case of people trying to punch way above their pecking order in what was a ruthless commercial market full of contracting staff who did the deals on a regular basis. Experts in the classroom vs the junior school pupils…
