Not often I’m shocked but to discover, thanks to a Freedom of Information request, that the council in West Devon allowed an employee to work in Ibiza from the beginning of lockdown in March 2020 until February of this year was a stunner.
Imagine the Zoom where the team were in Tavistock on a grey day while a tanned colleague in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts joined in from a villa just outside San Antonio.
Doubt if that call created much team building. Without a FOI, nobody, including the council taxpayers who are funding this scandal, would have known anything about it. I trust the CEO did. They do have 570 employees, but you would think somebody working from the Balearics would be of interest at the top table.
How much more of this kind of nonsense is happening in our councils without any scrutiny? Due to a disturbing piece from the Times columnist Robert Crampton today, I fear that the situation in local government is so much worse than we feared.
In his column today he tells of a pal who is a Labour supporter but more importantly, is coming to the end of a long career in local government administration for a district council in the North.
That friend told Crampton: “Imagine what the most rabid Right-winger says about public sector working practices. Well, it’s even worse than that.” That quote should give you a clue.
He says much of his time is spent negotiating with council employees, young and old, blue and white collar, unionised and not, to come into work and do the job they are paid for.
And this is what he faces; many are off sick, without any proof of incapacity. Others have unilaterally decided that since the pandemic they don’t come in on either Monday or Fridays.
It’s time we flexed our muscles over public sector employees working from home, writes Kelvin MacKenzie
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Then there’s the compassionate leave, persistent family emergencies, car trouble, train trouble, childcare trouble and the brazen, “I’m just not feeling it today. Sorry”.
I suspect something similar happens every day at every council in the land. I contacted my local council at Elmbridge (it covers Weybridge, Walton and Esher in Surrey) to discover what percentage of the workforce were working a majority of their week at home. They said they wouldn’t give me the number, but said the council had adopted “modern working practices”.
What they meant they knew the percentage would infuriate taxpayers and were going to keep it secret. They have no right to keep that number to themselves. We are paying their wages, from the receptionist, who I do hope has to come in, to the CEO, who I hope is coming in every day, but knowing how the WFH virus works, I fear he/she won’t be anywhere won’t be in the office at least one day and week and possibly two.
With council taxes likely to go up this Spring, it’s time we, the voters, started to flex our muscles. The first thing we need to do is contact our councillors and get them to find out what working practices exist. Then we need to put pressure on them to change the pension arrangements which mean that £1 in £4 of your council tax goes into staff pensions. You may discover, especially if the councillors are Labour or Lib-dims that they support these working and pension arrangements.
If they do, then you can vote them out at the earliest opportunity and put yourself in. Democracy does matter. The argument coming back from vested interests – the CEO and other council officers – is that WFH and the pensions help recruiting. Untrue.
The average pay is already £40,000, substantially above equivalent jobs in the private sector. It’s time to be tough on your council. Good luck and use social media to make your point.
