From the Local Government Chronicle:
Furious senior Liberal Democrat councillors have labelled communities secretary Eric Pickles “incompetent”, called for the abolition of his department, and urged the sector to take its concerns about his recent conduct to the top of government…
The comments were matched by their Labour counterparts with Salford City Council leader, John Merry (Lab), calling on Mr Pickles to relinquish his post…
Conservative councillors at the executive meeting were less vociferous but not one defended ministers during an hour-long discussion on the local government finance settlement, while LGA chairman, Dame Margaret Eaton (Con) said she was “saddened” by some ministerial behaviour.
The Northern Echo brings this news:
A SENIOR Tory councillor has quit the day after he called David Miliband a w****r on Twitter.
Coun David Potts, the South Tyneside Conservative leader who represents the Cleadon and East Boldon ward, attacked Mr Miliband on the social networking site after it was announced the former Foreign Secretary was in talks to become a non-executive vice-chairman at Sunderland football club.
But Mr Potts insisted today that the decision to quit had no link to the Twitter row.
In a statement today, the councillor says that he is a recovering alcoholic.
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11 Comments
I am glad to see criticism of the government’s direction of travel being levelled from the junior coalition partners.
Are Liberal Democrats levelling the same criticism at Eric Pickles’ junior Communities Minister Andrew Stunell? Mr Stunell has keenly defended Eric Pickles’ spineless, petty, illiberal and unfair attack on local government, with upcoming cuts crippling many authorities’ ability to invest to make further efficiencies for the future, or to deliver services to society’s poorest.
The damage Eric Pickles is doing to local government is shocking. And he and Grant Shapps just demonstrate how out of touch they are when they come out with statements like local authority chief executives taking a pay cut to save front line jobs or sharing backroom services as a way of protecting frontline services – while there may well be a case for that, there is no way that is going to compensate for the amounts of money the govt is taking away. The whole policy is based on the premise that there are massive efficiency gains to be made. But after many years of targets and performance management the scope for such savings is much more limited. In that sense govt ministers show themselves as lacking in understanding. So the LibDem councillors have a point.
Sharing services and managers seems to be the opposite of devolving power locally, the two systems are at odds with each other. I suspect the aim is to allow wholesale privatisation of council services, which will end up being swallowed by large outsourced private companies who will claim to be cheaper but won’t deliver and will end up not being very accountable.
An employee in a local authority, I don’t recognise the pared to the bone highly efficient and productive description that Alex M suggests to be the case; having worked in the private sector also, I’d estimate, in the head office environment at least, there are four to five people in the public sector doing a job that in the private sector would be expected of one.
@Andrew Tennant I’ve worked in both sectors too and see the picture as somewhere in the middle of where you and Alex M see them, some departments are squeezed to the bone, we recently had an auditing firm come in to see where we could make savings and they struggled badly to find any real cost savings.
On the other hand flexibility in the public sector is an issue, when one department is squeezed there’s a tendency to let them stay squeezed and another department whose workload has lessened, carry on being overmanned.
There is of course the nonsense of budgets whereby one is encouraged to spend or lose funding the following year, when you probably need the full budget, it’s a silly situation that should have been addressed years ago.
As I said a while back, a tub of lard would be better and more Liberal at running CLG than Eric Pickles.
Abolishing the department might make a better way of doing it.
Gareth, surely two tubs?
And he’s right about public sector pay at the higher end.
Anyone who wants to understand what Pickles is all about should search for the info of how he performed as a councillor – don’t have the link at the mo – but easily found. Really, really scary reading so if you are of a nervous disposition don’t read it.
1980s: Eric Pickles delivers massive cuts to Bradford council, citing “the destruction of municipal socialism forever” as his aim.
2010s: Eric Pickles very quickly cuts a lot of money from a lot of Northern councils (and to be fair some shires as well), citing “the creation of the big society” as his aim…
Coincidence much?
Hope he gets reshuffled out ASAP, the man is a buffoon.
i agree with Gareth! True localism would come with the abolition of DCLG. I seem to remember supporting the abolition of BIS too!. I think Pickles would be much better suited back in his role as Conservative party chairman – ie he can concentrate on messing up his own party rather than the country. I have no problem with local government cutting back but this front loading plus his spinning of the figures is damaging.
As someone a bit closer to what is going on, I can say wihtout hesitation that Andrew Stunell is doing a heroic job in a less than easy environment.
Tony Greaves