Save the back offices at all costs

I was thinking about the back office costs and why they aren't shared with other authorities. I thought to my self, it must be political. Then I checked and actually every single county that surrounds Oxfordshire has a Tory administration. This is very disappointing because I presume via the LGA and the party all of the county leaders actually know each other. The MLA has suggested that authorities sharing the back office can save up to 25% of costs to the library service. I think in borough's this is probably true as they sit right next to each other. In shire counties I appreciate that because of the distances involved not all back office functions can be shared. The fact remains though, if you don't physically touch the books as part of the role there is no requirement for that role to be within the actual area of the libraries you manage. I don't know the full situations or have the detail on the other authorities but to get a rough idea I have used the OCC back office costs and did a few calculations on how much the savings would be if Oxfordshire became a back office hub for the surrounding counties. The officers would argue that the counties are too big and the distances are too great. I'm sorry but for office based jobs this point doesn't hold water. Some back office functions do require a physical presence, for this reason I have pushed the library hub cost up to a generous amount so the percentage savings would be 15%. This coupled with the self service savings in large libraries would mean Oxfordshire would save 30% of the cost of running the library service. I am aware there would be start up issues and it would take a while to setup but I am certain it would be easier than trying to manage a thousand volunteers in Oxfordshire alone. Obviously these are all based on the spend in our county, some may have higher some lower but its worth further looking into further. I suspect the officers haven't consulted with their colleagues in the shires on this and give a "no it won't work" when asked by their political masters. The services are provided for the benefit of the taxpayers not the staff. If this is the case then they are destroying the library service to save their own skins and I find that very sad. If councils were FTSE250 companies as they keep telling me, there is no way they would be so close together in the private sector and not have shared staffing costs, Sir Humphrey wouldn't like this though, his empire is only allowed to grow.

 Below is the data:

Officer leaves, gets 110k pay off

It has been widely reported that a strategic director at West Oxfordshire District Council parted ways with the council and was given 110k for loss of office.

The latest twist here is that in minutes from a meeting it was said that she had decided to leave of her own accord. Obviously because of this it is very peculiar that a staff member can leave of their own accord and also receive a hefty financial payment.

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/9357393.Council_official__left_job_of_her_own_accord_/

Without transparency on this people have been making up their own conclusions about a cover up to protect councillors.

I emailed the leader of WODC Cllr Barry Norton and put the question:

"Again I have to ask why if someone leaves of their own accord do they have to be paid off? If you still cannot tell me can you give me your assurance that no elected official was involved in the reason for her leaving? Its all very murky and taxpayers have a right to know."


And to his credit he did come back with a straight answer:


"I can assure you that to the best of my knowledge no elected member was involved in the reason for Miss James leaving the council.

Best wishes

Barry Norton"

Since he has categorically said it isn't anything to do with a elected member then I think that is probably fair enough not to push further. I am of course annoyed about the 110k which could have been put to better use. I hope that if another officer(s) has acted in a inappropriate manner that necessitated Cath James having to leave then that person or persons has been disciplined appropriately. 

Letter to Keith

Dear Keith,

As per my constant stream of tweets, will you please set out the reasons why this proposal is the only one on the table? I agree completely on the need for cuts within the library service but obviously disagree with the way the cuts are being made in the mainly rural libraries. I have no idea if you have been reading my blog or not but I have tried to show other areas that I don't personally thing have been explored. I want to understand the real arguments for this proposal. The QA isn't worth the paper it is written on, it is misquoted and the data derived from it uses a faulty premise that is biased against rural areas.

I cannot speak for the library groups but the feeling I get is there isn't the volunteers to sustain this, even if they tried all the other good work they do which makes Oxfordshire's library service one of the best in the country would be lost. Not only that, the nonsense of health and safety would mean the training costs would cancel out any savings by making staff cuts, on top of that the volunteer coordinated on 60-70k salary would further erode any savings.

There are plenty of other arguments that I could list but don't want to send you a email that would run to pages and pages. Not only is it obvious the cuts could be made in the management and support and the internal recharge, a back office share (full or partial) with other authorities could easily make the savings required. Other things unanswered are why the good work in Hillingdon that has seen massive improvements to the service (and increased issues and visitor numbers) within existing budgets been ignored? They have half the libraries of Oxfordshire and have made 250k savings alone on letting the local libraries purchase the books they want directly from the suppliers. I don't know all the detail, I presume you do. But this way forward has been completely pushed aside. The other avenue where we weren't given detail on was why it wasn't pursued to get a private company to run the service, I have no issue personally with this but would imagine your "leftie" friends in Oxford City wouldn't be pleased. 

Also why do the city libraries not have to join the big society? They are densely populated and it would be a lot easier for them to find volunteers. Not only that the CRB, first aid, fire marshal etc wouldn't be required because professional staff would always be onsite (unlike in the case of the small libraries under this proposal). Most of the existing volunteers in the rural libraries are retired, I don't think it is fair for retired people to have paid taxes all their lives to then be asked to provide front line services to themselves.

I think I and the other library groups would welcome you setting out the position on why OCC are pressing ahead with this proposal and ignoring other possibilities. Since most of the cuts in the proposal are to rural libraries I would imagine it is going to be a hard sell to your own side, in quite a few seats where libraries are being cut your colleagues have very slim majorities. Cllr Fateman, Cllr Heathcoat and Cllr Rose in the cabinet alone look very vulnerable come 2013.

With kind regards,

Trevor Craig,

p.s good luck with whatever you decide to pursue after May, maybe you can get your piano grades up and audition to join the Oxford Philomusica? :D

p.p.s you are welcome to put this on your blog, I am going to put it on mine.

p.p.p.s you could get volunteers to do the cleaning instead of Quest and save more money than under this proposal

Yet more places to look for savings

There was a Oxfordshire County Council good news story in the Oxford mail today:
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/9361573.A_bright_idea/
The basic gist is they have spent some money on replacing schools lights new energy saving LED lights. This has saved them (or in fact us) 40% on their electricity bills. 


In a totally unrelated article, Keith the other day quashed any suggestion of spending the five million released from the Icelandic banks on libraries saying:


“It could go into a capital project such as a school or a road scheme, but it will not fund youth services or library services because it is one-off money.

“Given the current state of the finances, if there is a bit spare we have to hang onto it for a rainy day, because it is going to pour down for the next years as far as I can see.”

Now here is a mad idea: why don't you use the five million and put those same lights in all the libraries? That way you could save money each year on the library budget and would be using the money in a way you suggested. This one off money would make savings each year and decrease the councils carbon output. The prices are only going to continue to rise so it is a very sound investment. Here is a link to the data:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6dU0yhpP-MUZjYzMzY3ZTUtY2YxMS00OWJhLWJkZWQtOTFiNGNhZDFlNjI4

If the 40% figure is correct, the actual savings on electricity costs would be £51,721.09, this is based on 09/10 data . Since then electricity has gone up quite a bit. If their electricity has gone up as much as most peoples has, the saving could be up to 60k. Since OCC have the cash, why not put these lights into as many other buildings as the 5 million will stretch too? Obviously I don't know the electricity costs for all the buildings but I would imagine with a initial one off investment of our cash from the Icelandic banks then the 350k to save all the rural (and one city) library would be easily achievable. 

The problem is are they listening at OCC? Yes it is a representative democracy but they are supposed to listen to our views not just ignore them. You are allowed to change your mind Keith, Thatcher once famously said "The lady is not for turning" but in reality when the facts change she saw reason and changed her mind, don't try and push this through. It won't save money, there isn't the volunteers and you are going against your own policies.  

Replacing staff with volunteers isn't what the big society is supposed to be. The big society stuff we already do and it will be lost because we will be too busy stacking the shelves and trying to teach the elderly how to use the stupidly expensive self service machines. 

There are lots of other options, if one of the assistant county librarians left and wasn't replaced for example, that would save around 70ish, depending on the pay grade, pension and other perks.

There are 32.11 staff in the management and professional, the top 15 of them are on 700k salary between them.  Below is the structure:

No leaning out here? Or do you need every one of the customer service people or all those principle librarians? They cannot be shared with another county? It wouldn't take much sharing to save the front line. Then there is the 3.2 million internal recharge, this cannot be leaned out either? The only option is the one on the table, take it of leave it? I will leave it if its all the same. When the volunteer thing doesn't work and you come to close my library down,  I will be the one handcuffed to the heating pipe in the toilet in our library. You send your boys down and try and move me.

Breaking: Democracy breaks out in Oxfordshire. Maybe

Keith intends to leave in six months, to give his replacement 12 months before the local elections. I expect the new leader with need more time than that to detoxify the Tory brand in Oxfordshire. 


My first experience online of Keith was him to correcting the sytax on one of my tweets. I didn't warm to him it has to be said. I then saw him at the "Big Debate" in Witney and neither him or the Chief Exec impressed. Despite my almost constant dismay at the poor representation we have politically in this county I have been routinely shocked by the contempt with which Keith Mitchell holds the voters in Oxfordshire.


Here are a few Keef quote highlights:


"A dangerous infection in our country which needs to be stamped on"
On students protesting about the university cuts



"County Hall like a mini St Pauls today with a gaggle of deficit deniers parading around outside. Do they have jobs or are they on benefit?"
On Sacked youth workers who dared to protest outside of county hall on losing their jobs.


" I have led the County Council since 2001 and, during that time, I have put Oxfordshire on the map locally, regionally and nationally."
From the bio on his blog


"Sorry - taxis are public transport.  When I go to London for meetings, I use taxis to get from one part of London to another quickly and in comfort.  I have not the slightest intention of getting on a bus or a tube train."
In response to one of my early blog posts on waste at OCC.


"I was saddened that, deficit deniers apart, these largely well-heeled worthies refused to accept that reducing library cuts would add to the cuts to other services – most likely social care and highways."
His response to people who dared to voice dissent on the library cuts.



The list goes on, it basically amounts to insults, emotive obfuscation of the argument or simply accusing people of being "lefties" if they don't agree with him. In my six years living in Oxfordshire he has poisoned political debate and reduced it to playground insults. Interestingly despite "putting oxfordshire on the map" his greatest achievement according to his leaving letter is to have put a road through the middle of a roundabout. <stands and claps>


 I sincerely wish him well in his new life, the next six months of his lame duck period will be a very long time for the people of Oxfordshire. If he wasn't pushed by Cameron as I suspect he was, he has at least done his party a massive favour by going before the election so the electoral damage can be repaired, will one year be enough time for them to do so? It will be interesting to see if he suddenly gets a new found appreciation of quango's, or if he hasn't upset Cameron too much to get a place in the Lords. I hear the libraries and youth centres have had their funding cut, maybe he can join the big society and finally do something useful for the people in Oxfordshire?




p.s its only early days but this speaks volumes:

Save the back office at all costs

I got the data from one of the other friends groups on the savings being made by the roll out of self service across the larger libraries. No staff are being sacked (unlike the rural libraries) but natural wastage is being used to cull the numbers. It still means less front line staff in libraries though. What confirmation of these figures means is we can see how the cuts are spread within the service with the actual data. My last post on this was projected on the data we had available at the time. It is more or less as expected though. The library service is being cut by 25% and of that 25%  almost all the cuts are to the front line 86.22%.  Keith clearly doesn't understand Tory policy:

So not only are the rural libraries taking a bigger proportion of the cuts to their existing spend 66% & 33% to the 15% in the city libraries and 15% of back office. The back office is only taking 13.78% of total cuts. How this fits with Tory policy and ideology I have no idea.

It does get worse though, this doesnt include the internal recharge costs of the library service. We know OCC are very inefficient compared to other shire authorities as I showed in a previous post:
http://questioneverythingtheytellyou.blogspot.com/2011/09/where-oxfordshirecc-should-be-looking.html

This is the costs of IT, HR, admin, payroll etc to OCC that are not part of the library service but are incurred costs of running it. Compared to Staffordshire and Notts, Oxfordshire CC are performing woefully. You would imagine they would be bearing down hard on these costs. But no, according to the CIPFA submissions they are only estimating this going down from 3.2 million to 3.1 million:

This is only a 3.1% decrease. This is estimate, but the total has gone up since 2008 and they are only projecting it to decrease very slightly. They have had plenty time to sort out their back office, this is really poor when you consider bigger library services in other shire counties can do it for considerably cheaper.

As a proportion of the total spend the back office is going to increase if this is how Keith does efficiency. In fact under the proposals it is likely the back office spend will end up bigger than the front line spend if you include the internal recharge in the total.

Keith will keep spouting the social care v libraries nonsense to wind the voters of Oxfordshire up and muddy the waters. He should get the back office sorted before a single front line service gets cut. By the time voters get a chance to have their say on his competence in 2013 he will be long gone as his division will have disappeared.

I think any Tory that votes for this proposal should think very hard about what their party stood for at the election, what their party policy is on cuts and should we pay taxes then have to provide services to ourselves.

This is an issue of right and wrong, the savings can be made without touching the front line. OCC hasn't tried.

What would you cut 4.0

Update 24/Oct/2011
Even though OCC are supposedly cutting the back office to save front line services, on top of the 8 new policy officers they are also hiring two deputy directors:

http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=jobs.item&jobid=7556&partnerid=0

Social care is taking 31 million pounds worth of cuts they can still afford to hire two directors on 98k each. Totting up the pension contributions and the numbers below for the new policy officers the total spend on back office will be going up by approximately  £467,153.75.

I'm sure the youth centres, elderly and library users will be pleased.

Despite the supposed savage cuts and back office efficiencies Oxfordshire County Council OCC still have enough spare cash to recruit 8 new policy officers. I think in the modern political vernacular they call them SPADS. I don't know if these are new roles or replacements. Either way it sounds like a entire new department being created:

I have totted up the numbers based on the average of the roles and the numbers are below:

They obviously need all these new policy officers to drive through the policies of cutting youth centres, cutting adult social care and cutting rural libraries.  Below is the "Main Purpose of Job" bit from each of the roles:


 Senior Policy & Performance Officer X2:
"The purpose of the job is to work as part of a small central team providing a 
framework within which the council can function effectively. The post holder 
will be required to work in a fast paced environment to deliver organisational 
improvement and policy development, driving through business efficiency and 
cultural change. The post holder will lead by example, promote the values of 
the organisation, facilitate others to deliver their objectives and facilitate a 
joined up holistic approach and culture across the Council.
The post holder will lead on the delivery of a range of high profile projects that 
are critical to the organisation. They will work alongside the service areas to 
write strategies and implementation plans, providing support, advice and 
challenge on a range of important issues. They will work flexibly and function 
within a within a matrix management system. 
This post holder is responsible for ensuring that all relevant County policies 
and procedures are adhered to and concerns are raised in accordance with 
these policies"



 Policy & Performance Office X3:

"The purpose of the job is to work as part of a small central team providing a 

framework within which the council can function effectively. The post holder 

will be required to work in a fast paced environment to deliver organisational 

improvement and policy development, driving through business efficiency and 

cultural change. The post holder will lead by example, promote the values of 

the organisation, facilitate others to deliver their objectives and facilitate a 

joined up holistic approach and culture across the Council.

Working to a project manager, the policy officer will be responsible for 

delivering wide-ranging projects and vital functions in support of the Council’s 

Business Strategy and corporate priorities, based on a matrix-management 

approach. This is likely to cover a wide-range of issues, and will extend from 

early formulation of policy ideas through to a role in delivery and supporting 

others to ensure that change is embedded in the organisation. 

This post holder is responsible for ensuring that all relevant County policies 

and procedures are adhered to and concerns are raised in accordance with 

these policies"

 Policy & Performance Support Officer X3:

"This is a training post and the expectation is that whilst the post holder would 
contribute to the work of the Policy Unit, they would do so whilst learning on 
the job.  The purpose of the job is to work as part of a small central team 
providing a framework within which the council can function effectively. The 
post holder will be required to work in a fast paced environment to deliver 
organisational improvement and policy development, driving through business 
efficiency and cultural change. The post holder will lead by example, promote 
the values of the organisation, facilitate others to deliver their objectives and 
facilitate a joined up holistic approach and culture across the Council.
Working to a project manager, the policy support officer will be responsible for 
supporting the delivery of wide-ranging projects and vital functions in support 
of the Council’s Business Strategy and corporate priorities, based on a matrix management 
approach. This is likely to cover a wide-range of issues, and will extend from early
 formulation of policy ideas through to a role in delivery and supporting others to ensure
 that change is embedded in the organisation. This post holder is responsible for 
ensuring that all relevant County policies and procedures are adhered to and
 concerns are raised in accordance with these policies"

With the prevailing wind at OCC of getting the communities to provide the services for themselves, its clearly vital we have these brave men and women providing "frameworks", "joined up holistic approaches" and "cultural change".  Clearly needed when communities get the one off Big Society grant and have to provide services they have already paid for themselves:

We can all be happy knowing OCC has a top team of policy officers taking up the back office slack. The OCC definition of the big society is to have a expensive team of back office administrators with the plebs delivering the front line services to themselves as volunteers. Remind me what I pay my taxes for again? Below is a OCC run hospital waiting for the volunteer clinical staff to turn up and deliver the services they have already paid for.

P.S it is cut libraries or cut social care. Keith said so.

http://intranet.oxfordshire.gov.uk/wps/wcm/connect/occ/Insite/HR/Internal+vacancies