Personally, I think there's two issues here. The first is the sad fact that the expectations of the public at large and the reality of what local authorities can deliver are poles apart. And that fact isn't influenced by whether the Council is run by politicians or by little green men from Mars.That fact comes from two sources - firstly the ever greater reductions in funding being provided to local government. Yes sometimes a local authority gets awarded a large sum from a specific government initiative, but that amount is always ringfenced to only be spent on a particular function, rather than for the wider public good.I don't know many authorities that aren't having to make cuts, and yes I do wish local politicians would be more open about it - if a football team starts with 11 players and by half-time 4 of their players have been sent off, then the team performance isn't going to be as strong in the second half as the first.Secondly, local authority staff have to deal with an ever-increasing raft of legislation, regulation and targets. It is, in my opinion, impossible for targets to define 'quality' - because the quality of service can't be measured by whether the phone is answered 95 or 96% of the time within 5 rings, it's the content of the telephone call that matters.I take absolutely no notice of the whole CPA assessments etc. that are carried out to assess the quality of local government services, ironically the Council I worked for that had the highest 'rating' was undoubtedly the worst authority I ever worked for. Recently I have been dealing with two matters for a local authority that many residents would probably, based upon nothing more than the properties within the Borough, think is a 'good' Borough, yet I have found them to be at best stupid and at worst completely incompetent at all levels.Notwithstanding my previous points, I do think there is a real mixed-bag in terms of the skills, abilities and attitudes of local government staff. In my experience there's little doubt that the overall quality of employees has declined in the last 10 years. At the same time I find that the poor staff are in the minority, and I'd have the pleasure of working with some fantastic staff over the years. What I do find, and I think this is partly due to lack of finances and partly due to people not being suitably passionate about their jobs, is that people either don't take or don't get the opportunity to take training etc. to broaden their knowledge and experience.Sadly I don't think there is a solution, but I am regrettably certain the problems are only going to get worse :-(
Adam Beamish ● 6540d