Shropshire Council axes sandwiches to save cash
Tuesday 22nd June 2010, 8:00PM BST.
Free sandwiches are being scrapped before the start of Shropshire Council committee meetings in a bid to save thousands of pounds.
Last night the ruling Tory group unanimously agreed a series of measures they want to introduce to tighten the authority’s belt.
There will be an end to free buffets or sandwiches before the start of various meetings at the Shirehall and councillors will no longer be supplied with bottled water. Instead a water fountain will be placed in the upstairs foyer.
Lunch will no longer be served to members on the day of full council meetings – apart from twice a year when the authority holds its annual and budget meetings.
Council leader Keith Barrow said the action “was just a start” but would not elaborate on other hoped for cost cutting measures.
He said: “We are examining every aspect of council spending.
“I think the public expects us to look at ourselves first and foremost before we start looking at the services we provide.”
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At long last about time too. Looks like the ride on the gravy train is pulling into the station and the biggest spongers of all having to get off.
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All well and good. Will council officers and councillors who are undertaking ‘trips away on business’ be travelling cut price? No first class tickets and so on? Will budget accomodation be utilised?
I’m betting that it won’t. Doing away with free sandwiches and buffets comes under the heading ‘gesture politics’ – the moment they think they aren’t being scrutinised, the council credit cards will come out easily enough, as usual.
I see that the Welsh Local Government Association members met in Llandudno last week. In the midst of all the complaining about council funding being cut, nearly all the members were apparently staying in one of the most expensive hotels in the town – rooms at around £85 a night.
And this is the sort of thing that you can bet they will protect right to the bitter end.
So Mr Barrow – think again. I’m sure you can do better (a LOT better) than just cutting free sandwiches to save us a few quid.
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that takes the micky they should have stopped that years ago!!! talk about wasteful they should stop the golden sandwhiches of 2 hour lunch breaks and final salary pensions first
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Read the article properly Aaron – the free sandwiches were not for staff, but for councillors.
As for two hour lunch breaks, the only people entitled to take an extended lunch break would be those on ‘flextime’ terms and conditions – under these terms staff can take extended lunches etc. but all the hours have to be made up to balance this. Such schemes are often of great use to employers as they allow for extended cover etc.
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I presume that councillors claims for their sustenance allowance will increase then!
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The unimaginable hardship of forgoing a round egg and cress! Sorry..this hair shirt blather from the underworked overstaffed council PR bunker just won’t wash. The country can no longer afford the index-linked pensions for life nor the accompanying lump sums that go with it, neither still the golden handshakes nor the golden hellos. Quite frankly fairy stories like this insult our intelligence..so Public Sector..get real, get in line, do your bit to help to bail your country out of it’s debt crisis and stop whinging while Dr. Osbourne administers the neccessary medicine.
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Yes, it is of course PR nonsense dreamt up by all those ‘communications officers’ employed – at the moment – by the council.
Tell them to cut what actually NEEDS to be cut and they will come back with an excuse as to why they can’t or won’t do it. They’ll still keep spending when they think they’re away from the county and can’t be seen. It happens all the time.
The notion of stopping sandwiches and buffets to save money is an insult to the intelligence of taxpayers.
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Why can you people not read the article!
The free sanwiches were for meetings of Councillors – not for the paid staff of the council.
The vast majority of public sector ‘golden’ pensions amount to just a few thousand pounds per year.
The maximum that can be achieved in the Civil Service for example is a pension of 50% of salary after a full 40 years’ service, so the suggestion of wild generosity, or that all public servants autmatically get a huge pension is simply nonsense propagated by rags such as the Daily Mail for the consumption of morons.
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And why can’t you accept that the bloated public sector needs to bear the brunt of some serious and vital savings trimming. I personally make something which I export {skating legally around the usual tangle of cloying red tape – again more ‘jobs’!!} thereby bringing new money into the UK. What I don’t do is recycle other peoples taxes from often superfluous ‘services’.
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Bigbeast – well done you on managing to make something.
Unfortunately you blow all that by recycling tired myths and general rubbish which shows your ignorance about the public sector. I hope you run your business with more attention to detail than you use to base your comments about the public sector on.
Many facilities provided by the public sector support business and enable it. They also purchase from the private sector too so we are going to see an awful lot of private sector businesses going to the wall as well. The country needs a strong public and private sector. Unfortunately what we get is the typical ill informed ignorant rubbish about pensions and perks.
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‘And why can’t you accept that the bloated public sector needs to bear the brunt of some serious and vital savings trimming’…
Well, firstly I don’t accept the description of ‘bloated’. Having worked in both the Civil Service and for large private sector employers, I can assure you the levels of bureacracy in large multi-national private sector employers leave the public sector in the shade.
Interestingly the biggest single influx of workers to the public sector was the transfer of 250,000 bank staff at the point of bank nationalisation!
Secondly, we need to look at the size of the current debt in real terms, and consider whether the planned cuts are necessary or are driven by dogma. Our current debt is some 62% of GDP, almost half of which was caused directly by the banking crisis. So the net debt is something like 32% of GDP, provided that the banks are forced to pay back their loans with interest (and with the Tories in power, that’s in doubt).
The debt to GDP ratio at its lowest through the ’80s until now never dropped below about 25%, regardless of part in government. In the ’50s and ’60s it was often over 100%, and even now other countries, the US and Japan amongst them have considerably higher levels. So it looks as though there’s a significant degree of exaggeration going on for political ends.
Finally, given that public servants didn’t cause the debt, why are they being punished, whilst the truly bloated fat cats at the top of the private sector get off scot-free?
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Peter,
Because public taxes don’t pay private sector fat cats but they do pay the wages of public sector employees. No one buys my sarnies for work so they can damn well pay for their own!
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No one buys my sandwiches and i work in the Public sector !
The Sandwiches being bought are for Councilors, you know the voted in types of which i believe the majority in shropshire county council are Tories.
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duh – you are wrong- my taxes (earned through my employment in the public sector) pay your wages boy! the private sector gets subsidies galore off the taxes I PAY – subsidies for industry, grants for small businesses to set up, tax breaks for investment banks, export subsidies for manfucaturers, i mean look at farmers with the billions in grants from the EU Common Agricultural Policy for example, rememebr farmers are private sector, yet we pay their wages, look at banks now too, we pay their profits from my hard graft earning taxes
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Okay to broaden my comment I don’t care who you are or work for, buy your chuffin lunch!
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They’ve stopped it to save money, what are you all complaining about? Do you want them to flog themselves in public with birch branches as penance for consuming bready delights in the past?
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Perhaps the council will also stop spending money on wasteful ideas like trying to promote Shropshire as something unique in food terms. The foodie lobby are full of their own importance yet do very little in creating real jobs for ordinary people.
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but port hill boy this helps the private sector earn more profit, so its helping local farmers and foodies make money – surely thats a good thing and theres environmental benefits to local food- shropshires food IS special!
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Well, the sarnies wern’t much cop anyway
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I hope they have stopped all First Class Travel too as well as switching to ‘Budget Accomodation’ when staying away.
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hahahahaha LOL they need to think a bit more than that me thinks
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this is important though to demonstrate leadershiup, it makes it easier to achieve change if “we’re all in this together” now they can cut the pay of the street sweepers and librarians without feeling like hypocrites
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i think this is peanuts its the big ticket items that need to be axed like the flaxmill the releif road and the incinerator for starters – after that stopping construction of all new social housing and all new schools, and merging old schools needs to happen along side a pay freeze, jobs freeze, reduction in pension and NI contribution for employers and cutting rural bus routes, this will get the first 10% of cuts out of the way, then the real pain can begin, automation of all benefits, payments and admin systems and removal of associated staff, rationalisation of offices and pulbic buildings to cut to half the number of public sites the council operates, privatisation of existing council housing stock and remaining art galleries, libraries, museams and leisure centres all contracted out to private and voluntary organisations to run – that might get you to 15% cuts, next half the senior management team, cut pay and perks for directors and councillors, stop provideing certain public services which are no longer needed because times have changed e.g. offering public toilets in a town full of resteraunts and cafes. Also add 10% to any service the council charges for such as commercial waste collections, theatre tickets etc, it may even need to be more like 20% that should bring in some income. another thing that should be done is to have a single team of legal, HR, payroll, PR, call centre and IT section and typing pool / secretariate for the whole of the Shropshire, telford and herfordshire public service, including NHS fire the lot, most large UKL PLCs do that that might get towards 20% cuts – after than the final few millions will be harder to find but efficiency on procuremnt, vehicles, stationary, energy etc should make some start. Rising council tax is finally probably the only solution after that assuming the government is not going to offer any more grants to councils and of course as the government really needs to realise the best way out of all of this is to have a good proactive strategy for economic growth to bring in more business rates, planning fees, taxes and jobs for the area
thats just my opinion but i think all valid
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Councils don’t do commercial waste collections, companies have to pay for a private company to collect their waste.
Business rates really are money for absolutely nothing
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yes they do i pay telford council twice, once business rates then again for the waste collection, i have invoices to prove it too
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councils have a legal obligation to collect commercial waste where requested to do so
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Sounds like the USSR about 1953.
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[The foodie lobby are full of their own importance yet do very little in creating real jobs for ordinary people]
Are you Port Hill Boy or Portly Boy? ;)
Joking aside, as Peter said this article is referring to councillors, NOT COUNCIL OFFICERS or WORKERS.
Now, if we had all had a 100% rise or 150% rise in income/allowances last April as did our councillors when we went unitary, then we might well be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of not also being catered for. As I said earlier, we can always increase our sustenance claims allowance to compensate.
Originally being a councillor was regarded as a public service and was mainly undertaken by folk with businesses or private incomes ie: generally the well off.
Later, out of pocket expenses were introduced which encouraged a wider social class to take the role and to be more representative.
It was considered only fair that these upright members of society giving up a lot of their free time to the community should be fed and watered.
This has evolved into a very different situation today. Councillors are supposed to take lessons in widening their knowledge of areas of services and some do. They are supposed to attend meetings but unlike a job can be absent. They are supposed to abide by rules of conduct. They have usful access to legally trained council officers to tell them what they can and cannot do.(get away with)
It is now really a part time job but with no line manager, no set targets to meet and no personal finacial outlay. It has quite a lot of perks including an income so it can be very handy for early retirees who need to supplement their pension.
There are many council officers who would like to see the back of this system so they could get on with their jobs as professionals without being manipulated for political or personal gain by what can be interfering busy bodies!
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Here is a question that needs to be asked to the council what is the cost for all the school transport that is profided to chikdren that are transported to schools out of there catchment area . Why should we the tax payer pay for transport that should be paid for by the parents that can not control there own children. Plus the cost for a school for them to do nothing all day!
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I don’t think taxpayers really care *who* the buffets and/or sandwiches are for, do they?
The fact is they’d rather not be paying for them at all.
Councillors volunteered to stand for election, supposedly to represent the community and for entirely selfless purposes. Of course, most of us probably don’t believe that these days, do we!
They should pay for refreshments out of their own pockets – after all, no one put a gun to their heads to stand for election did they?
I see that Telford and Wrekin councillors have just published their expenses and you can see just from a few glances how well some of these selfless community servants are doing – some getting better remuneration than actual council employees who probably DO deserve their pay.
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Why is it so may of the contributions are from people who are clearly demonstrating their ignorance about the subject.
As pointed out by one poster the whole purpose of providing lunch at full council meetings was to save money. If lunch is not provided, Councillors due to the length of time they will be spending at Shirehall are entitled to claim for sustenance allowance, which if claimed by the majority of members would work out more expensive than the provision of lunch.
On the provision of sandwiches there is more of an argument to get rid of them, however it should be remembered that many members can be at Shirehall for hours on end with very limited options for obtaining any food.
Also regarding first class travel for members, this was got rid of by the Labour/Liberal administration as a right and was only available with the permission of the Chief Executive the vast majority of members do travel standard. Now that would be an interesting question “Which Councillors ask for first class travel??”
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This is all “gesture politics”. Wonder for how long we have been feeding our well-paid councillors?
Could find them an immediate £3m saving if they would junk the proposal to spend that amount on a new primary school for max 90 pupils (all except 2 brought in by car) at Ashford Carbonell. Surely £3m could be better spent on improving some existing schools?
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I SUPPORT THIS BECAUSE A FEW PENNIES ADDS UP TO LOTS OF POUNDS as they say ” every little helps”
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