How many people work in your Highway Maintainence Department

[Doon frae Troon]

Including yourself eh?? Council and related workers in my experience ( can I stress in my local areas only and I dont speak for them all) and are renowned for being a bunch of lazy so and so's where they all proove themselves to be complete jobs worth's!! Ive been patiently waiting for some feedback on a planning application for over 3 months now.... Ive done most of the searches and written polite letters and even helped them with information they could find themselves on line if they bothered to look... Im now waiting for the beloved Highways people to respond..... The thing is that they are all dragging every thing out because of the cuts thats happening from central government and trying to make out they are under staffed....:angry: and all its doing is exposing them for what an easy time they've had in the past. They dont answer their phones, respond to emails and the reality is that they work (I use that word loosely) 9 -5 (1 hour for lunch ) and 3.30 on Fridays at the most and do the absolute minimum then go on strike demanding more pay!!! My planning officer works 1.5 days a week????? Whats that all about??? How can she do a proper job on those hours? Compare them to the commercial sector and they wouldn't last an nano second!!! Sack them all and commercialise the whole set up in my opinion and lets get rid of these people and give the jobs to those who will work and get the economy moving FFS! Bloody joke the lot of them :sbox:

Mikee......Big generalisation.

When I first started working for a council my section was losing £150,000 a year.
We were breaking even within 2 years and within 5 making a £150,000 profit.
When I left after 20 years the courses were making a yearly profit for the council of over £350,000.
My staff were dedicated hard working folk who would shame the private sector. Many worked well over their remit and salaries.
None went on strike in 20 years even though their unions called some.

At the moment council staffing is cut to the marrow but the public still expect the same standard of service of years ago.

 

[mikee247]

Fair point but I did suggest it was my own personal experience locally. I can only support my argument with many other personal experiences. I have to say, when I headhunted for a good few months on an assignment that was interested in one coming from the public sector, the overall standard of exec level individual was far below the commercial sector but not with a huge amount difference in salary and benefits but a huge difference in expectation and work ethic! I agree these guys are good at handling tight budgets but the lack of motivation, bad management and opportunity internally has added a level of decay to this sector which has ended in people only bothered in doing a bare minimum to get though. Yes I agree its a larger picture issue and I suggest the main government must take the responsibility for this decline but the approach to a good work ethic has evaporated and we as the "customers" so to speak, feel the full effect.

I dont expect to much from these people but a basic response of any kind or a little general courtesy wouldn't go amiss. Again I saw 3 guys turn up yesterday to repair a road sign.... I swear to god they sat in thier van for 30 mins drinking tea.... fixed the road sign in about 10 mins sat back in the van again for 30 mins then drove off.... Answers on postcard please....

 

[Doon frae Troon]

Some councils have a tremendous work ethic others not so and others are a downright disgrace.
It is very obvious that the poorest performers are the large cities.
The South of England seems to perform much better than the North or Scotland.
Think trams..if any Scots guys disagree

 

[Blue in Munich]

Mikee......Big generalisation.

When I first started working for a council my section was losing £150,000 a year.
We were breaking even within 2 years and within 5 making a £150,000 profit.
When I left after 20 years the courses were making a yearly profit for the council of over £350,000.
My staff were dedicated hard working folk who would shame the private sector. Many worked well over their remit and salaries.
None went on strike in 20 years even though their unions called some.

At the moment council staffing is cut to the marrow but the public still expect the same standard of service of years ago.

I'd disagree, it's a huge generalisation. I currently work in a department where we should have 4 members of staff; 1 walked, 1 off sick, 2 left. Obviously when you are down to half strength things don't move as quickly. We are supposed to respond to roadworks issues using an electronic system. When people make their submissions late or improperly, and then they don't get dealt with as quickly as they like, they send in an e-mail to chase it. And if that isn't answered quickly enough for their liking then they phone up to chase it (and the record since I've been there is a phone call 15 minutes after the e-mail was sent!). So they triple the workload for one job and then wonder why things get slower rather than quicker. And if they don't like what they hear then they have a rant. And woe betide you rant back because then you get a complaint. And for peanuts in comparative terms.

There's good and bad in every job, I'll grant you that, but at the grass roots level in councils there's far more good than bad; don't believe everything you read in the Daily Mail.

 

[sev112]

I work with loads of private companies in the construction industry and over 25years, the private sector also has a lot of improvement to do too.
Have come across a lot of really good local authority staff in that time

 

[DappaDonDave]

My experience of some of our street scene and greenspace staff is that they are out to get as much money/hours for minimum effort. Some have very poor attitudes and do nothing more than their job description says. Often led by an argumentative and ill informed union 'rep'. The gardeners who are deemed to be 'skilled' pull in £20k+ standard pay thanks to the NJC job evaluation scheme. It's no wonder our Council are over budget, we never had a problem recruiting at £14-£15k per annum and they were happy with that!

 

[Doon frae Troon]

I would say that a gardener was more skilled than many keyboard punchers.
If your golf club is successful I would imagine that the course manager/head greenkeeper is the highest payed member of staff.