On Sunday I caught site of an advertisement, for Thanet District Council in one of the local papers, the advert itself was fairly bland, but what I found astonishing, was the admission in the advert, that the councils benefit service, employees more than 80 people.
Now this department deals with the assessment and payment of housing and council tax benefit. Given that Thanet has a population, of roughly 130,000 people and assuming that maybe 10 per cent of the population, require this type of benefit, this means that each member of staff is dealing with 160 people annually or weekly around three and-a-half claimants each week. This would seem to be excessive overmanning, if they could somehow boost productivity to maybe deal with seven cases a week, they could halve the work force and save the taxpayer a million quid.
Even better is the customer services department, this employees 160 staff assuming their average pay is around £22,000 this department in staff alone is costing us three-and-a- half million pounds, I know they are always helpful but do we need this many people?.
But for the potential employee, things get even better, if you can work out what a DIPS project manager is and convince the council to employ you, you can trouser a very handy £42,500 salary, I just wonder what would happen with only half of these people.
I notice, that the resources department, are a team of only 60, God knows that Thanet council, need resources, particularly money and lots of it.
And who pays for all this, well that would be me, and those of us who work in the private sector to provide very generous salaries and pensions, and why do we never hear any complaints from our local councillors, well I have a theory that they are too busy filling out expenses forms etc.
If you would like to fill your boots, from the public pocket. Click here and be my guest.
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