Apr 2011 27

Non-job of the week4

Redbridge Borough Council is looking for a Carbon Reduction Officer, paying between £15-£19.62 per hour. As we highlighted in our report last year, it is possible for councils to reduce their energy consumption without resorting to employing new staff. Perhaps this is something Redbridge council should be doing before spending more taxpayers’ money?

Staying in London, Camden Borough Council is looking for a Project Coordinator (Healing Histories). Here is part of the job description:

This is an exciting role where you will be supporting the School Improvement Service within our Children’s School’s and Families directorate, and manage the development, implementation, performance and delivery of the ‘Healing Histories’ Project.

Healing Histories will interpret the rich history of herbal medicine by engaging children, young people and the local community in a unique and innovative learning project. Participants will be involved in research, design and the planting of a physic garden. They will produce a Healing Histories Trail and learn to become expert debaters on the subject.

This is the same council that, along with Lambeth, wasted money advertising that the government had cut its grant money so was therefore forced to cut services. I am not passing any judgement on herbal medicine; I’ll leave it up to you to make your own minds up on that issue. All I will say is, if Camden really is being forced to cut services, is paying someone to do this job really the best use of its resources?

Less whinging, more action

The winner this week though is Nottingham City Council who are looking or a new Head of Quality and Efficiency Services. This is the only council in the country that has refused to publish spending above £500. The leader of the council is being investigated for alleged misuse of taxpayers’ money in the run-up to the elections. Hardly a record to be proud of, but if the council is committed to getting the best deal for taxpayers why isn’t it being open and transparent? It’s all well and good creating new departments and new jobs trying to give the impression it is trying to save money, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. This council’s leadership is more inclined to spend our money on cheap political shots like the one pictured and spend its time arguing with Eric Pickles, rather than showing us it cares about quality and efficiency. Until it becomes transparent, can we believe anything it says?

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  • Anonymous

    As a self-employed person in a wealth creating business (I export British Made products) – this makes my blood boil. Just cutting funding to local authorities is totally ineffective – infact it is very bad for the public, because all that happens is a cut in services as front-line staffing is reduced – the parasictic beaurocracy remains intact. What is really needed is the creation of an independent organisation comprised of lawyers, accountants and most importantly business people from the private sector – charge them with the responsibility of entering each and every local authority to do a TOP DOWN pruning job – getting rid of all unnecessary staff and departments, starting with the Chief executive’s office and working down. I think that, in this way, the rates could be cut by 50% without affecting public services.

    • Blarg1987

      I partially agree with you however it should also be made up of industry experts who have knowledge in the fields as to many companies have had asset strippers come in saying they can save mony yet have no knowledge of the buisness. They then look at the bottom line as they are on short term contracts make the savings then a year after they leave the company goes bankrupt or faces severe resource problems because of the mantra of savings overcame what the compnay actually does.

    • Jenny

      Re: the project co-ordinator post, I can only think you haven’t read the job description properly. The focus is not the topic of healing histories, but the action of community engagement and outside of school learning, which can only be beneficial, whatever the subject.

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