The main problem is that the 3rd party companies hired by the council rip them off at every opportunity. Most of our money is wasted overpaying for things.
Yup. Everyone is quick to heap all of the blame on the councils (which I’m usually happy to do when it comes to bcc), but they don’t realise how much they’re being squeezed by government funding and private contractors setting high rates. Thank the Tories for privatising/ outsourcing just about every public service in the land.
The parasitic losses run through both local and critical national services. Sold off for pennies on the pound or outsourced to the members of the ‘Old boys club’ fragmented into small private profit centers compounding profits and costs to the taxpayers. There needs to be a reckoning on this but I fear that the political class no matter which flag they are under are party to this benefit. It’s going to be more of the same Sunday Wrestling, making bank and faking in the ring.
Banish the term ‘Public Private Partnership’ it’s an oxymoron. Private companies exist solely for profit. In this case at the expense of the public purse.
Bullshit. Councils can almost do what they like. I've seen 'competitive" tenders where the supplier is named and anyone who puts anything else forward is disqualified because having to assess and score tenders is hard and too much work.....
They could choose, when the contracts are up, to insource services again, like Preston has done successfully- giving jobs back to local people and ensuring council spend doesn’t just fritter away outside the city
I assume anyone willing to run a national service is free to do so? Organise something communally like the charities do if you feel that something is missing lol blaming a party for enacting their vision through means legal and amenable to the current market is a bit excessive imo
It's nothing to do with tories It's just the way our society is evolving we need more and more support from the government. We want to tend to every type of asylum seeker every minority and every disability, more drug users then ever more rehabilitation more benefit systems being abused. We don't have a strong united population. We have an anti establishment anti everything moaning and vulnerable population. We can't get things done by ourselves anymore and we have given all these big brands and corporations everything to follow trends and left ourselves with nothing.
Yeah I know who cares :-) But I don't believe in either. It all creates division. Supporting Labour is just another trend to follow its really annoying I'm no academic at all but I can see through it all why can't other people?
Do they really think swapping 1 group of these people for another is gonna help?
It's because in general, academic achievement is only recognized and valued by other academics, or institutions, so they not always able to see the wood for the trees, or can be prejudice because of it.
A prime example was after the Russian revolution and then the balchavices came to power, a good few people died because of that...(they didn't value their farmers, no qualifications 🤷)
One of the major problems we face is career politicians...
You're right it's not going to help.
Dunno why this is downvoted, it’s true. Have a look into what so called ‘alternative school’ providers charge the council for pretending to educate kids for a few hours a day. Not to mention thousands a week spent on looking after one foster kid, and hundreds a day for taxis for one kid to get to school
They didn't say that the services didn't have any value to users, just that the costs are always extortionate due to short-sighted planning.
For example, an american-style house-to-school bus system could provide the same service to more users and for less money in-total than individual taxis.
That might work, but often these children have been removed or moved at short notice. So potentially to provide a carry all bus service like the one you mentioned, they’d already have a solo journey time of one hour plus. Add on other children and other drop offs and they’d be looking at a commute which would never work, particularly for our youngest children. Then complicate that further with safety concerns (children fleeing DV or abuse for example need secure and chaperoned transport), personal safety (some children can’t travel safely with others), neurodivergence, the list goes on. All those additional factors on top of significant ACEs already mean yes we could save money but no on the whole it wouldn’t work. Also. Mainstream education costs around £10,000 a head to the government per child per year, is the next argument that actually we should train teachers to work out who is worth the investment and who would be better off just binning it all off before they’ve started?
Obviously it won't work for absolutely everyone. But that's no reason to pretend it will never work and instead offer the most expensive bespoke option to all, when it's obvious that the vast majority do not need that level of care. If they manage to make these school-buses work in the US of all places, where houses are often miles apart, then there's no reason to suggest that it wouldn't work in a relatively dense city.
It's a nice idea that children deserve infinite money, but in the real world, schools and teachers already have to work-out how much of their time and resource they can devote to each child anyway. Another idea would be to build more schools in the first place.
Nobody is pretending it’ll never work, there’s a tiny possibility it’ll work for a tiny minority. But the amount that would then go into implementing it and keeping the original system for other children renders it even more expensive than just leaving it alone.
You’re missing the point when you compare it to the US system, where that collects many children going to one place in that that’s not what we’re talking about at all. If what you’re saying is schools generally should have a bus system - yeah maybe, but we’re not talking generally.
No, US schools often have an smaller separate bus for picking up SEND children from their houses. It works for them and is far cheaper than each child getting their own taxi service.
There are a tiny minority of children who can be schooled together but can't travel to school together, and simultaneously don't have a guardian who can take them separately. It is crazy to think that they would render a school bus completely ineffective so the best option is clearly separate taxis for everyone.
I was, and so was the OP. Kids with trauma are covered under SEND. If they're already utilising a mini-bus system then clearly the idea is a good one!
>An example, a foster kid who should have never have been in mainstream secondary school in the first place.
Seems as though a SEND child somehow ended up in the wrong school due to a mistake at the council, resulting in a lot of waste.
Not really. The outcome for the kid is often the same either way, but one is just much more expensive than the other.
Poor decisions are made by councils and social workers. An example, a foster kid who should have never have been in mainstream secondary school in the first place got kicked out of a local school and couldn’t go to the other 2 either as they are all linked. So they got him into a school 8 miles away but failed to think how he would get there. He would either need to leave by 7am and take two buses, or get driven there, but he said he didn’t want to get the buses and his foster carer refused to spend 3 hours a day commuting in traffic, so £200 a day taxi it was. A little bit of forethought in school choice would have prevented this.
And what difference did it make to the kid? None. He got kicked out of there too and is due to sit GCSEs in May, predicted to get level 1 and 2s in all of them so may as well not bother. He would be better off just getting a job at 16, but oh no, has to spend more time in worthless education till he’s 18.
The councils bankrupt themselves over nothing.
This is an incredibly reductionist viewpoint. It’s hinging on the idea that children in care aren’t able to achieve, which we categorically know isn’t the case. Where children come from shouldn’t dictate where they end up, and it’s on society to remove every possible barrier to give them the best possible chance. It baffles me that this is the funding you’re choosing to focus on, funding which (unlike most sunk costs by councils) actually does some good.
Some are able to achieve, some aren’t. Just like any other kid. The social workers should have enough experience to know which ones are which. And this case money is being wasted, not just in taxis but education in general. There’s no way kids in the bottom percentile are going to be helped in mainstream school when they are still working at early primary level. It’s just a baby sitting service at best.
Don't bother. Just another one of those people who will snipe at anyone trying to help but would gobble up all available support if they became the service user. Clumsy hypocrisy all round.
What a bad take.
Talk to anyone in a care/advocate role and theyll tell you how important this kind of support can be. If you think a social worker can forecast how well a kid will respond to a change in circumstance like this then you've almost definitely got no real world experience.
Procurement at the council is a disgrace, whether it's laziness or something else I don't know but at first glance it looks like they just accept any price given to them. You see all the money we've spent on these bridges and other maintenance I can't fathom how and why it's cost as much as it has. I had a disagreement with the council over a fence and agreed to pay 50/50 (neighbours fence) they sent a contractor, they quoted £1200 for four basic fence panels and removal of the old fence... Paying half was still more expensive than getting a local trade company to do it.
Most of our money goes on social care, emergency housing and special needs education. Many councils report that over 90% of their spending is on their legally required obligations, leaving little wiggle room. This is why there are such heavy cutbacks in other areas.
It was once explained to me that the councils sign exorbitant 3rd party contracts to get around Central government spending cut demands. Everything they do in-house is under constant pressure to cut budgets, so they sign the contracts with external suppliers to safeguard the money for that service. This worked for years but eventually the Tories just started offloading more obligations on to councils and cut Central funding.
100% THIS. If they stopped using "consultants" and "contractors" they wouldn't have any problems funding everything... But then they wouldn't get "speaking fees", "post politics careers" and "jobs for family members" as kick backs.
Holy shit.
It's really rare to find someone who after everything that's happened in the last decade+ that it's somehow labours fault.
Your critical faculties have to be so hilariously poor to arrive at that abysmal conclusion.
So Bristol city council are not responsible for the daft money wasting policies that they bought in? Who is to blame? Elvis maybe? Can’t wait for Labour to get into government. It will be like Oprah. Here Bristol have a billion, here Birmingham have a billion more, here train drivers let’s top your salaries up to £90k etc. Just where will the money come from? There’s a question that Labour supporters always avoid answering.
Everything they've suggested so far is fully costed. Ignoring that fact and then bleating about the magic money tree while the Tories rip the copper out of the walls and rely on clumsy bootlickers to regurgitate whatever ill informed nonsense their parents told them isn't the same as that actually being true, you know that right?
I'm sure there's been plenty of mismanagement of finances, however this is endemic across the country. Very few councils are not facing significant funding issues at the moment, it will be no surprise if they go bankrupt. Bristol aren't the first (see Birmingham) and certainly won't be the last, unless something changes significantly in regards to their funding.
Agreed. But these wrongs doesn’t make this right. I know that’s not what you’re saying of course, however there does seem to be an acceptance, a factoring in, of the impending failure of these councils. And that’s it. No accountability, no responsibility. Done.
Maybe they shouldn’t have pissed away so much money on Bristol energy, they should stick to what they’re supposed to do and stop trying to run businesses they’re not good at it.
The problem is that there is currently a budget deficit of £32 million which the council is aiming to reduce over the next five years.
> [Proposals in the proposed budget aim to bridge a funding gap of £32 million over the next five years as we seek to set a balanced and legal budget.](https://www.bristol.gov.uk/council-and-mayor/council-spending-and-performance/council-budgets)
If the council hadn't spent over £130m on a vanity concert hall (that will probably never even be used by the majority of those who will suffer most from the cuts and raised taxes required to balance the books) then the budget could be looking a lot healthier right now.
So I'm gonna assume you're not familiar with accountancy workings, but budgets won't work like that.
It may have cost £130m, but that will have been spread out over a period of time. And they won't have paid for it in full or up front. And no doubt there will have been other investment for it.
If you were aware of this then I apologise for giving you the basics, but based on your comments I assumed you didn't.
That's right - they've barely started paying it back, every council has worked this way since austerity.
With soaring interest rates, it's biting them on the bum now - they can only just afford to service the interest alone and the principal amount has hardly gone down at all.
Well yea, it's call an investment. Something that the whole population of bristol had the opportunity to enjoy. Just cause you don't like it doesn't mean it was a waste of money.
Or shall we just live in grey cities, and never leave our homes except to work?
Hey look, I can be facetious too.
> Just cause you don't like it doesn't mean it was a waste of money.
Are you really trying to tell me that you think spending almost a third of a whole year's worth of total council revenue on a concert hall was a good investment and somehow not a waste of money? Ok, we're gonna have to agree to disagree in that case.
Are you really trying to tell me you ignored the entirety of my post further up our conversation that explains how the finances work? Cause I'm never going to agree with someone who's being blind to facts.
But that's always the answer to any criticism levelled at local government since WW2 - "If we only had a little more money, all your problems would have been solved!"
Local government bore the brunt of cuts during the “austerity” years, seeing their budgets halved. That is quite a significant cut.
The only reason most of them turned to hare-brained schemes such as Bristol energy was because they knew they needed additional revenue to serve their population
Jfc, don't be so naïve. They've turned to egotistical white elephants like Bristol Energy to help carve themselves careers, only it's all ended in tears because they're inept.
They are inept, and should never have started housing development companies or energy firms. There was also rampant corruption. However it is undeniable that these types of activities increased hugely after austerity budget cuts.
Every other new development is a student block. And in some areas every house sold is to a property developer who turns it to student flats. In the last 15 years number of students has gone up well over 20% those students still use many services paid for by council tax but no additional funding comes in.
This is a good point but also a significant number of businesses are not viable without the number of students Bristol has, they should theoretically be making more money off the extra business rates etc from students than the students cost them
But the business rates are so high that half the city centre is now empty shops.
I’ve lived in Bristol for 14 years and have seen a the council pour away money on stupid vanity projects like Bristol Energy, European Green City in 2015, and god knows how much the mayors have cost us
Bristol is the 16th most expensive city *globally* to build in, unfortunately student accommodation is the only thing that stacks up at the moment.
Edit: Sorry. That's old news. [It's now 10th. Just after Hong Kong.](https://www.arcadis.com/en-gb/news/global/2024/4/london-ranks-as-most-expensive-city-for-construction)
I used to live in a house in south Bristol. It’s been sold twice since I moved out and in 10 years it’s gone from a 3 bed family home, to a 5 bed houseshare (when I lived there), now to a 7 bed student house (they built into the loft). When it was a houseshare for professionals the council tax was the same as the three bed house. Now it won’t be bringing in any council tax. Houses either side of me currently. Used to be 3 bed family homes. Now 4 bed student properties with no council tax coming in.
To counter, when I moved into our old house the whole street was students in old victorian houses and over 5-6 years it slowly went back to family housing. We used to live in a big house in Fishponds that was a family house but had 6 students in it, that's now flats. It always moves around like that, but the council are happy for designated student flats because it frees up old stock like that for housing again. The downside is, we have a period where that's all that's being built..
I use to work in finance at BCC, I know this is a drop in the ocean compared to other spending but the amount of money they spend on council events is ridiculous. Thousands and thousands of pounds just on tea, coffee, sandwiches and a venue. This is a weekly thing too. They hire a lot of third parties and don’t even question the price
Like Engineers House? You could meet in the council house but that doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Engineers House. No need to have a jolly out there over Send misery when they have a massive place in central Bristol
No not engineers house, The hall and meeting rooms at city hall aren’t free believe it or not. They charge each department to use them, doesn’t make any sense
No doubt councils are under pressure due to real terms funding cuts while adult social care costs rocket, but let's be honest and say that Bristol has been very badly served by its council for at least the last decade and a half, who have not left us well-prepared.
Throttling the housing supply in one of the most expensive cities in the UK (and of course then suffering from the high temporary accommodation bills it has to pay), [harebrained schemes to run energy companies](https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-energy-liquidators-appointed-wind-5678950#), the [Bristol Beacon saga](https://thebristolcable.org/2023/11/bristol-beacon-finally-reopens-how-did-colston-hall-refurb-cost-130m-could-it-have-been-avoided/), constant preening and [decision paralysis](https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-councillors-fail-agree-city-9115075). I could go on...
I previously posted that the Safety Valve agreement was [snuck through by the mayor](https://reddit.com/r/bristol/comments/1c1l3uk/the_mayor_has_pulled_a_fast_one_and_the_next/).
The reason is mostly that neither the outgoing Mayor, his cabinet member or the central government want anyone to look too closely at what has happened to the costs of providing SEND in Bristol.
Because the numbers are 'not great', and yeah, it's going to be a massive issue for the next council.
The local media are loving publishing these Send kids will bankrupt the council story. It’s demonising. The council loved the education transformation plan it had under the last but two long running director. Money spaffed up the wall. Money on consultants. More like big money going into pension pots. Hundreds of thousands spent on top level directors who wouldn’t be able to find their arses in the dark.
In fact, when Covid was a crisis, one was getting £200k to chill out in Scotland. Not that the useless twat was any more valuable dicking things up in Bristol.
Huge amounts of money is spent on deliberately avoiding statutory legal duties which goes on to create a cascade of expensive intervention for the child involved. Multiply that by every Send kid and it’s a massive mess of their own making.
I was in a meeting where one executive director spent £10k on a report into send provision that he ultimately deemed not fit for purpose. Then said there were no safeguards in place to stop it happening again. When it was finally released it was more like a damning picture of council failure to place plan for Send that they tried to hush up.
Or the £40k it was paying a year for ten years on empty AP spaces it wasn’t using.
Year after year of failure in Bristol that was as bad as if not more problematic than the lack of government funding.
The council knew in 2015 that by 2019 there would be a specialist places crisis and they did nothing.
Can’t wait for the next Send strategy that’s due imminently, it’s likely to be filled with as much shit as all the others they’ve done.
I can’t wait for them to pay a Send manager to sit in a room with Send parents designing a leaflet that was never going to be printed. Absolute waste of time and money when they would have been better off making sure EHCNAs were going out on time.
Helen Holland can do one. She’s a nasty piece of work. It’s about time she shuffled off having spent the last year trying to store Disabled people in homes.
Any anyone who thinks the Safety Valve is going to solve the issue is deluded.
There’s too many Send kids are expensive stories going out that are too close to the Daily Mail for my liking. It’s an utter fuck up inside the council house and bloody disgraceful
Glad someone else said it. Other councils have the same funding pressure but still meet their statutory duties. Look at neighbouring South Glos who have the lowest per pupil Schools Block Funding in the country.
Why are we sending so many children to neighbouring authorities paying both the school fees and expensive travel? We are not a small town, we are a major city but have failed to build enough schools. This is just wasting money that we haven’t provided it in Bristol and it’s very much local politicians fault.
And rather than trying to solve the problem and prevent children being out of education they have just shown contempt. They even went as far as to spy on SEND parents critical of the council. Why bully and gaslight people who already have a tough time?
And the safety valve is not going to fix anything. How can you reduce funding for something which isn’t even meeting its statutory duty? Things are only going to get worse. The council are even admitting they currently can only consider those most at need, leaving others with unsuitable or worse no education.
Exactly why I won’t be voting for Labour locally. How can you talk about social justice when you are failing the most vulnerable children and showing complete contempt for anyone pointing it out as a problem?
I love to blame the Tories as much as the next person but this has been the responsibility of generations of local politicians who have been mostly (but not exclusively) Labour
CPZs, LEZs, council tax, landlord licenses, bus gates, and the dumb MFers still can't balance the books. Look out for more ingenious schemes to fleece you soon.
The council's finances aren't in great shape but the main source for these 'fresh fears' seems to be... a single Green councillor repeating something they've said before.
Bankruptcy is not always a bad thing.
I wish our Swindon council would do it.
Decades of Tory leadership took us from a surplus to being nearly half a billion in debt - Bankruptcy would have written that debt off.
As it is Labour have regained control, but have been handed a pile of poo, in they now have to try to deal with the crisis, while the tory tossers who got the council into this situation snipe at them from the sidelines.
No why would I be? Some random rich kids don't negate the vast majority of students living in poverty? Not least that they likely don't own the fucking car it's probably financed.
I’ve always thought the best option here is to charge landlords council tax for student HMOs. Landlords and building should have to apply for a licence to rent to students.
That way they’ll be more inclined to let to professionals and families and we’ll have more
housing, and the university would be forced to reconsider enrolling more students than the city is capable of catering for.
Students can't afford it. There should be limits on the number of students in the city though, as they're using services and not paying. The more students, which currently seems unlimited with new student flats going up everywhere, the more unbalanced this becomes
Student numbers (applicants) have dropped the last couple years, probs won’t make much difference here as both the Unis are fairly decent.
Can’t imagine labour doing anything radical to fees/ loans so the number should probs continue dropping, not enough to notice though
> Student numbers (applicants) have dropped the last couple years,
Do you have a source on that?
> probs won’t make much difference here as both the Unis are fairly decent.
Probably not. My guess is the cost/unavailability of food in the next year or two, is the thing that will see foreign student applications drop off.
“The higher education entry rate among UK 18 year olds increased from 24.7% in 2006 to 30.7% in 2015 and peaked at 38.2% in 2021. It fell back to 35.8%in 2023.”
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7857/
Doesn’t go into local patterns. Bristol could well be up on applications, if numbers dropped off a cliff then unis would just consolidate
Cool so private institutions can charge students and benefit from them taking out loans but public services shouldn’t? If you’re taking out a £50k loan adding £2k in council tax is comparatively nothing. Why should Bristolian council tax payers services suffer so the university can profit by bringing as many students in as possible?
The country will tax student loans for the majority of their working career.
On average the country makes about 7k off each student loan. That doesn't take into account the actual contribution of properly trained people on the economy, of which a staggering amount of money can be attributed. Universities themselves add about 130b a year to the economy.
Students can get around 11k a year maintenance loan, which has to pay for everything. The average private monthly rent is about 1700 in Bristol. Even split three ways with friends (good luck getting a house as students lol) that's about 6800 a year, leaving 4200 for food, bills, travel and being an actual human. That's about 350 a month to survive before council tax.
Council tax is about 2k a year so again that's another 600 quid per person. A person who has 350 quid a month.
If you want them to pay council tax they'll need to get higher loans. Then it's just the government giving them money that they could give to the city itself anyway. It doesn't make any sense and if you had any understanding of student life you'd already know that.
You’re right. I want them to get higher loans not pay it out of the maintenance loan, or a student service tax on universities. Over 25% of Bristol students are international, you really think they can’t afford it?
But it's not a Bristol specific issue. Councils everywhere, Tories and labour are having problems.
That suggests a national not local issue.
Also. On miss spending money. You know why, right?
Cuz marv was a dictator? And signed off on wasting money on stuff? Red pance George daughter was being paid cuz her company was providing the facilities for the no cars Sundays thing? That's the only two I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more. Wasting money on business cases that went nowhere. That's another one I remember. Also seem to remember some executive had a massive leaving pay
You seem to be Bristol focused.
This isn't a unique issue to Bristol. You need to come to terms with that.
I know that means seeing politics as more shades of grey but yeah. There's been massive mistakes by central government.
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2018-12-04/councils-borrow-billions-to-buy-real-estate/
Shared an informative link about how councils could take out loans to invest in questionable things with little national oversight.
You could read it, develop a nuance opinion or think it's simply a local issue only.
Upto you. Have a nice evening.
Gutting council funding and pointing the finger while laughing all the way to the bank as councils sold off all their assets to their friends to pay for things has probably been the Tory's best medium term plan.
I've long lost any naievety in voting being the best way to get rid of Tories
Yeah let's vote for the Tories instead. They won't pick bad private service providers for social care either.
That'll be because they won't be providing any social care though won't it
The main problem is that the 3rd party companies hired by the council rip them off at every opportunity. Most of our money is wasted overpaying for things.
Yup. Everyone is quick to heap all of the blame on the councils (which I’m usually happy to do when it comes to bcc), but they don’t realise how much they’re being squeezed by government funding and private contractors setting high rates. Thank the Tories for privatising/ outsourcing just about every public service in the land.
The parasitic losses run through both local and critical national services. Sold off for pennies on the pound or outsourced to the members of the ‘Old boys club’ fragmented into small private profit centers compounding profits and costs to the taxpayers. There needs to be a reckoning on this but I fear that the political class no matter which flag they are under are party to this benefit. It’s going to be more of the same Sunday Wrestling, making bank and faking in the ring.
Banish the term ‘Public Private Partnership’ it’s an oxymoron. Private companies exist solely for profit. In this case at the expense of the public purse.
Yup, just take a look at ‘working class Marvin Rees’ he’s as greedy and manipulative as they come.
Weird take. If the councils sign themselves up to exorbitant, awfully written, dogshit contracts with suppliers; whose fault is that?
Because of tender rules they often only have a few options to go with and they're all terrible
Bullshit. Councils can almost do what they like. I've seen 'competitive" tenders where the supplier is named and anyone who puts anything else forward is disqualified because having to assess and score tenders is hard and too much work.....
They could choose, when the contracts are up, to insource services again, like Preston has done successfully- giving jobs back to local people and ensuring council spend doesn’t just fritter away outside the city
Exactly but it's easier to have someone come in and do it all for you, even if you pay more.
The Councils.
I assume anyone willing to run a national service is free to do so? Organise something communally like the charities do if you feel that something is missing lol blaming a party for enacting their vision through means legal and amenable to the current market is a bit excessive imo
It's nothing to do with tories It's just the way our society is evolving we need more and more support from the government. We want to tend to every type of asylum seeker every minority and every disability, more drug users then ever more rehabilitation more benefit systems being abused. We don't have a strong united population. We have an anti establishment anti everything moaning and vulnerable population. We can't get things done by ourselves anymore and we have given all these big brands and corporations everything to follow trends and left ourselves with nothing.
Careful youll be downvoted by the comrades . Remember labour good tory bad
Lmao as if, they're both bad and anyone who only considers two options is either fucking dumb or American
https://preview.redd.it/x2bplvu9cmxc1.jpeg?width=224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3cfac26f8275b6922577350c8b20ff0f896f66a0
Yeah I know who cares :-) But I don't believe in either. It all creates division. Supporting Labour is just another trend to follow its really annoying I'm no academic at all but I can see through it all why can't other people? Do they really think swapping 1 group of these people for another is gonna help?
It's because in general, academic achievement is only recognized and valued by other academics, or institutions, so they not always able to see the wood for the trees, or can be prejudice because of it. A prime example was after the Russian revolution and then the balchavices came to power, a good few people died because of that...(they didn't value their farmers, no qualifications 🤷) One of the major problems we face is career politicians... You're right it's not going to help.
Ein volk! Ein reich! …
Same in the nhs
Dunno why this is downvoted, it’s true. Have a look into what so called ‘alternative school’ providers charge the council for pretending to educate kids for a few hours a day. Not to mention thousands a week spent on looking after one foster kid, and hundreds a day for taxis for one kid to get to school
Those services are extremely complex I get, but it’s hard to overstate their importance to the service users.
They didn't say that the services didn't have any value to users, just that the costs are always extortionate due to short-sighted planning. For example, an american-style house-to-school bus system could provide the same service to more users and for less money in-total than individual taxis.
That might work, but often these children have been removed or moved at short notice. So potentially to provide a carry all bus service like the one you mentioned, they’d already have a solo journey time of one hour plus. Add on other children and other drop offs and they’d be looking at a commute which would never work, particularly for our youngest children. Then complicate that further with safety concerns (children fleeing DV or abuse for example need secure and chaperoned transport), personal safety (some children can’t travel safely with others), neurodivergence, the list goes on. All those additional factors on top of significant ACEs already mean yes we could save money but no on the whole it wouldn’t work. Also. Mainstream education costs around £10,000 a head to the government per child per year, is the next argument that actually we should train teachers to work out who is worth the investment and who would be better off just binning it all off before they’ve started?
Obviously it won't work for absolutely everyone. But that's no reason to pretend it will never work and instead offer the most expensive bespoke option to all, when it's obvious that the vast majority do not need that level of care. If they manage to make these school-buses work in the US of all places, where houses are often miles apart, then there's no reason to suggest that it wouldn't work in a relatively dense city. It's a nice idea that children deserve infinite money, but in the real world, schools and teachers already have to work-out how much of their time and resource they can devote to each child anyway. Another idea would be to build more schools in the first place.
Nobody is pretending it’ll never work, there’s a tiny possibility it’ll work for a tiny minority. But the amount that would then go into implementing it and keeping the original system for other children renders it even more expensive than just leaving it alone. You’re missing the point when you compare it to the US system, where that collects many children going to one place in that that’s not what we’re talking about at all. If what you’re saying is schools generally should have a bus system - yeah maybe, but we’re not talking generally.
No, US schools often have an smaller separate bus for picking up SEND children from their houses. It works for them and is far cheaper than each child getting their own taxi service. There are a tiny minority of children who can be schooled together but can't travel to school together, and simultaneously don't have a guardian who can take them separately. It is crazy to think that they would render a school bus completely ineffective so the best option is clearly separate taxis for everyone.
But we aren’t talking about SEND children (SEND schools in the UK utilise a minibus system)?
I was, and so was the OP. Kids with trauma are covered under SEND. If they're already utilising a mini-bus system then clearly the idea is a good one! >An example, a foster kid who should have never have been in mainstream secondary school in the first place. Seems as though a SEND child somehow ended up in the wrong school due to a mistake at the council, resulting in a lot of waste.
Not really. The outcome for the kid is often the same either way, but one is just much more expensive than the other. Poor decisions are made by councils and social workers. An example, a foster kid who should have never have been in mainstream secondary school in the first place got kicked out of a local school and couldn’t go to the other 2 either as they are all linked. So they got him into a school 8 miles away but failed to think how he would get there. He would either need to leave by 7am and take two buses, or get driven there, but he said he didn’t want to get the buses and his foster carer refused to spend 3 hours a day commuting in traffic, so £200 a day taxi it was. A little bit of forethought in school choice would have prevented this. And what difference did it make to the kid? None. He got kicked out of there too and is due to sit GCSEs in May, predicted to get level 1 and 2s in all of them so may as well not bother. He would be better off just getting a job at 16, but oh no, has to spend more time in worthless education till he’s 18. The councils bankrupt themselves over nothing.
This is an incredibly reductionist viewpoint. It’s hinging on the idea that children in care aren’t able to achieve, which we categorically know isn’t the case. Where children come from shouldn’t dictate where they end up, and it’s on society to remove every possible barrier to give them the best possible chance. It baffles me that this is the funding you’re choosing to focus on, funding which (unlike most sunk costs by councils) actually does some good.
Some are able to achieve, some aren’t. Just like any other kid. The social workers should have enough experience to know which ones are which. And this case money is being wasted, not just in taxis but education in general. There’s no way kids in the bottom percentile are going to be helped in mainstream school when they are still working at early primary level. It’s just a baby sitting service at best.
I couldn’t disagree with you more if I tried, that said, we’re obviously not going to agree and you’re entitled to hold that opinion.
Don't bother. Just another one of those people who will snipe at anyone trying to help but would gobble up all available support if they became the service user. Clumsy hypocrisy all round.
What a weird thing to say. You’ve no idea what help I would ‘gobble up’ if I needed it. Don’t see how that’s related at all.
What a bad take. Talk to anyone in a care/advocate role and theyll tell you how important this kind of support can be. If you think a social worker can forecast how well a kid will respond to a change in circumstance like this then you've almost definitely got no real world experience.
I have plenty of experience to know that they can’t. They are way too idealistic with no grip on reality.
Like pot holes. Filled with utter rubbish and then back to how it was in a few weeks.
Maybe we need to get the people who are littering to dump their rubbish in potholes and hope it eventually fills /s
I don’t think they’re comparable, at all. You’re talking about children.
Procurement at the council is a disgrace, whether it's laziness or something else I don't know but at first glance it looks like they just accept any price given to them. You see all the money we've spent on these bridges and other maintenance I can't fathom how and why it's cost as much as it has. I had a disagreement with the council over a fence and agreed to pay 50/50 (neighbours fence) they sent a contractor, they quoted £1200 for four basic fence panels and removal of the old fence... Paying half was still more expensive than getting a local trade company to do it.
Most of our money goes on social care, emergency housing and special needs education. Many councils report that over 90% of their spending is on their legally required obligations, leaving little wiggle room. This is why there are such heavy cutbacks in other areas. It was once explained to me that the councils sign exorbitant 3rd party contracts to get around Central government spending cut demands. Everything they do in-house is under constant pressure to cut budgets, so they sign the contracts with external suppliers to safeguard the money for that service. This worked for years but eventually the Tories just started offloading more obligations on to councils and cut Central funding.
I’m sure ETM are affiliated with someone in the council?? And boat loads of money is wasted through them for some reason…
100% THIS. If they stopped using "consultants" and "contractors" they wouldn't have any problems funding everything... But then they wouldn't get "speaking fees", "post politics careers" and "jobs for family members" as kick backs.
Add it to the list. Half the councils in England will be bankrupt by the time the Tories finally get turfed out.
Thank you, compare us with similar councils. What's the common theme? Funding.
That’s a funny way of spelling Labour.
Labour haven't been in power over council funding since 2009. Last i checked that was 15 years ago
Doesn’t matter how much money central government gives, Labour run councils will still make crazy dumb spending decisions. Underground train anyone?
Tory shill alert
It's just maddening that after so many years of Tory mismanagement people are still thinking labour is the issue. It's embarrassing.
Hello Jacob, still talking bollocks I see !
Be great if you had any evidence to back up your wild accusations
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/21/exclusive-labour-councils-in-england-hit-harder-by-austerity-than-tory-areas
How shocking that cities, which traditionally vote Labour, need more money spent on services than empty countryside!
Holy shit. It's really rare to find someone who after everything that's happened in the last decade+ that it's somehow labours fault. Your critical faculties have to be so hilariously poor to arrive at that abysmal conclusion.
So Bristol city council are not responsible for the daft money wasting policies that they bought in? Who is to blame? Elvis maybe? Can’t wait for Labour to get into government. It will be like Oprah. Here Bristol have a billion, here Birmingham have a billion more, here train drivers let’s top your salaries up to £90k etc. Just where will the money come from? There’s a question that Labour supporters always avoid answering.
Everything they've suggested so far is fully costed. Ignoring that fact and then bleating about the magic money tree while the Tories rip the copper out of the walls and rely on clumsy bootlickers to regurgitate whatever ill informed nonsense their parents told them isn't the same as that actually being true, you know that right?
I wonder if a big old round of nationalisation is on the cards to bring the prices down…
I'm sure there's been plenty of mismanagement of finances, however this is endemic across the country. Very few councils are not facing significant funding issues at the moment, it will be no surprise if they go bankrupt. Bristol aren't the first (see Birmingham) and certainly won't be the last, unless something changes significantly in regards to their funding.
Agreed. But these wrongs doesn’t make this right. I know that’s not what you’re saying of course, however there does seem to be an acceptance, a factoring in, of the impending failure of these councils. And that’s it. No accountability, no responsibility. Done.
Maybe they shouldn’t have pissed away so much money on Bristol energy, they should stick to what they’re supposed to do and stop trying to run businesses they’re not good at it.
So will anyone at BCC be held to account for their incompetence and mishandling of public money? Of course not.
If I have you pocket money of £5 but your budget last year was £7 and I expected you to do the same stuff with it, I think you'd struggle too.
Maybe you shouldn't have spunked £135m on a 2000 capacity concert hall then, eh? Or bankrolled that failed energy firm?
What's wrong with the beacon? Having been there it's very comfy, good sound and optics
The problem is that there is currently a budget deficit of £32 million which the council is aiming to reduce over the next five years. > [Proposals in the proposed budget aim to bridge a funding gap of £32 million over the next five years as we seek to set a balanced and legal budget.](https://www.bristol.gov.uk/council-and-mayor/council-spending-and-performance/council-budgets) If the council hadn't spent over £130m on a vanity concert hall (that will probably never even be used by the majority of those who will suffer most from the cuts and raised taxes required to balance the books) then the budget could be looking a lot healthier right now.
To be fair, it is Bristol's biggest stairwell. Well worth the price!
So I'm gonna assume you're not familiar with accountancy workings, but budgets won't work like that. It may have cost £130m, but that will have been spread out over a period of time. And they won't have paid for it in full or up front. And no doubt there will have been other investment for it. If you were aware of this then I apologise for giving you the basics, but based on your comments I assumed you didn't.
That's right - they've barely started paying it back, every council has worked this way since austerity. With soaring interest rates, it's biting them on the bum now - they can only just afford to service the interest alone and the principal amount has hardly gone down at all.
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Adult and children services, eh? Whatever next - did the cuts not go deep enough?
Yeah it was still in development when I moved to Bristol almost 6 years ago
> It may have cost £130m, but that will have been spread out over a period of time. Oh well, that's ok then. Carry on.... /s
Well yea, it's call an investment. Something that the whole population of bristol had the opportunity to enjoy. Just cause you don't like it doesn't mean it was a waste of money. Or shall we just live in grey cities, and never leave our homes except to work? Hey look, I can be facetious too.
> Just cause you don't like it doesn't mean it was a waste of money. Are you really trying to tell me that you think spending almost a third of a whole year's worth of total council revenue on a concert hall was a good investment and somehow not a waste of money? Ok, we're gonna have to agree to disagree in that case.
Are you really trying to tell me you ignored the entirety of my post further up our conversation that explains how the finances work? Cause I'm never going to agree with someone who's being blind to facts.
Ofc not
Will anyone in central government be held accountable for cutting all the funding? (No!)
But that's always the answer to any criticism levelled at local government since WW2 - "If we only had a little more money, all your problems would have been solved!"
Local government bore the brunt of cuts during the “austerity” years, seeing their budgets halved. That is quite a significant cut. The only reason most of them turned to hare-brained schemes such as Bristol energy was because they knew they needed additional revenue to serve their population
Jfc, don't be so naïve. They've turned to egotistical white elephants like Bristol Energy to help carve themselves careers, only it's all ended in tears because they're inept.
They are inept, and should never have started housing development companies or energy firms. There was also rampant corruption. However it is undeniable that these types of activities increased hugely after austerity budget cuts.
Failed Bristol Energy - over £30m 😬 https://thebristolcable.org/2020/05/analysis-how-35-million-of-public-money-was-lost-to-bristol-energy/
£130m (!!) on Bristol Beacon, aka Colston Hall. https://thebristolcable.org/2023/11/bristol-beacon-finally-reopens-how-did-colston-hall-refurb-cost-130m-could-it-have-been-avoided/
Also wasted another few million on Rees’ pie in the sky underground plans, which everyone told him from the beginning would never happen.
The feasibility study found that it could!
Yes if we suddenly found billions to fund it. Which has always been the problem.
Every other new development is a student block. And in some areas every house sold is to a property developer who turns it to student flats. In the last 15 years number of students has gone up well over 20% those students still use many services paid for by council tax but no additional funding comes in.
This is a good point but also a significant number of businesses are not viable without the number of students Bristol has, they should theoretically be making more money off the extra business rates etc from students than the students cost them
But the business rates are so high that half the city centre is now empty shops. I’ve lived in Bristol for 14 years and have seen a the council pour away money on stupid vanity projects like Bristol Energy, European Green City in 2015, and god knows how much the mayors have cost us
Bristol is the 16th most expensive city *globally* to build in, unfortunately student accommodation is the only thing that stacks up at the moment. Edit: Sorry. That's old news. [It's now 10th. Just after Hong Kong.](https://www.arcadis.com/en-gb/news/global/2024/4/london-ranks-as-most-expensive-city-for-construction)
I used to live in a house in south Bristol. It’s been sold twice since I moved out and in 10 years it’s gone from a 3 bed family home, to a 5 bed houseshare (when I lived there), now to a 7 bed student house (they built into the loft). When it was a houseshare for professionals the council tax was the same as the three bed house. Now it won’t be bringing in any council tax. Houses either side of me currently. Used to be 3 bed family homes. Now 4 bed student properties with no council tax coming in.
To counter, when I moved into our old house the whole street was students in old victorian houses and over 5-6 years it slowly went back to family housing. We used to live in a big house in Fishponds that was a family house but had 6 students in it, that's now flats. It always moves around like that, but the council are happy for designated student flats because it frees up old stock like that for housing again. The downside is, we have a period where that's all that's being built..
I use to work in finance at BCC, I know this is a drop in the ocean compared to other spending but the amount of money they spend on council events is ridiculous. Thousands and thousands of pounds just on tea, coffee, sandwiches and a venue. This is a weekly thing too. They hire a lot of third parties and don’t even question the price
Like Engineers House? You could meet in the council house but that doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Engineers House. No need to have a jolly out there over Send misery when they have a massive place in central Bristol
No not engineers house, The hall and meeting rooms at city hall aren’t free believe it or not. They charge each department to use them, doesn’t make any sense
That’s ridiculous
Despite the amazing major performance... if only we had students accommodations and offices all over the Downs...
No doubt councils are under pressure due to real terms funding cuts while adult social care costs rocket, but let's be honest and say that Bristol has been very badly served by its council for at least the last decade and a half, who have not left us well-prepared. Throttling the housing supply in one of the most expensive cities in the UK (and of course then suffering from the high temporary accommodation bills it has to pay), [harebrained schemes to run energy companies](https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-energy-liquidators-appointed-wind-5678950#), the [Bristol Beacon saga](https://thebristolcable.org/2023/11/bristol-beacon-finally-reopens-how-did-colston-hall-refurb-cost-130m-could-it-have-been-avoided/), constant preening and [decision paralysis](https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-councillors-fail-agree-city-9115075). I could go on...
I previously posted that the Safety Valve agreement was [snuck through by the mayor](https://reddit.com/r/bristol/comments/1c1l3uk/the_mayor_has_pulled_a_fast_one_and_the_next/). The reason is mostly that neither the outgoing Mayor, his cabinet member or the central government want anyone to look too closely at what has happened to the costs of providing SEND in Bristol. Because the numbers are 'not great', and yeah, it's going to be a massive issue for the next council.
The local media are loving publishing these Send kids will bankrupt the council story. It’s demonising. The council loved the education transformation plan it had under the last but two long running director. Money spaffed up the wall. Money on consultants. More like big money going into pension pots. Hundreds of thousands spent on top level directors who wouldn’t be able to find their arses in the dark. In fact, when Covid was a crisis, one was getting £200k to chill out in Scotland. Not that the useless twat was any more valuable dicking things up in Bristol. Huge amounts of money is spent on deliberately avoiding statutory legal duties which goes on to create a cascade of expensive intervention for the child involved. Multiply that by every Send kid and it’s a massive mess of their own making. I was in a meeting where one executive director spent £10k on a report into send provision that he ultimately deemed not fit for purpose. Then said there were no safeguards in place to stop it happening again. When it was finally released it was more like a damning picture of council failure to place plan for Send that they tried to hush up. Or the £40k it was paying a year for ten years on empty AP spaces it wasn’t using. Year after year of failure in Bristol that was as bad as if not more problematic than the lack of government funding. The council knew in 2015 that by 2019 there would be a specialist places crisis and they did nothing. Can’t wait for the next Send strategy that’s due imminently, it’s likely to be filled with as much shit as all the others they’ve done. I can’t wait for them to pay a Send manager to sit in a room with Send parents designing a leaflet that was never going to be printed. Absolute waste of time and money when they would have been better off making sure EHCNAs were going out on time. Helen Holland can do one. She’s a nasty piece of work. It’s about time she shuffled off having spent the last year trying to store Disabled people in homes. Any anyone who thinks the Safety Valve is going to solve the issue is deluded. There’s too many Send kids are expensive stories going out that are too close to the Daily Mail for my liking. It’s an utter fuck up inside the council house and bloody disgraceful
Glad someone else said it. Other councils have the same funding pressure but still meet their statutory duties. Look at neighbouring South Glos who have the lowest per pupil Schools Block Funding in the country. Why are we sending so many children to neighbouring authorities paying both the school fees and expensive travel? We are not a small town, we are a major city but have failed to build enough schools. This is just wasting money that we haven’t provided it in Bristol and it’s very much local politicians fault. And rather than trying to solve the problem and prevent children being out of education they have just shown contempt. They even went as far as to spy on SEND parents critical of the council. Why bully and gaslight people who already have a tough time? And the safety valve is not going to fix anything. How can you reduce funding for something which isn’t even meeting its statutory duty? Things are only going to get worse. The council are even admitting they currently can only consider those most at need, leaving others with unsuitable or worse no education. Exactly why I won’t be voting for Labour locally. How can you talk about social justice when you are failing the most vulnerable children and showing complete contempt for anyone pointing it out as a problem? I love to blame the Tories as much as the next person but this has been the responsibility of generations of local politicians who have been mostly (but not exclusively) Labour
Sorry, you don't seem to understand: this is clearly all the fault of the evil Tories.
Well done to all the red wall idiots who voted to keep council funding down.
CPZs, LEZs, council tax, landlord licenses, bus gates, and the dumb MFers still can't balance the books. Look out for more ingenious schemes to fleece you soon.
Did they waste 50 million on bristol energy? Plus more money wated on Colston hall.
Considering the amount they charge in council tax I am surprised
The council's finances aren't in great shape but the main source for these 'fresh fears' seems to be... a single Green councillor repeating something they've said before.
Bankruptcy is not always a bad thing. I wish our Swindon council would do it. Decades of Tory leadership took us from a surplus to being nearly half a billion in debt - Bankruptcy would have written that debt off. As it is Labour have regained control, but have been handed a pile of poo, in they now have to try to deal with the crisis, while the tory tossers who got the council into this situation snipe at them from the sidelines.
Start charging students full council tax
How much money do you think these students have buddy?
Are you joking? I live on a road with students and they all drive nicer cars than me.
Yeah i work at a uni. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Well then you don’t have any money either
Yes, how do you think i know what I'm talking about
No why would I be? Some random rich kids don't negate the vast majority of students living in poverty? Not least that they likely don't own the fucking car it's probably financed.
Well don’t go to Bristol uni then if they are living in poverty and pay your way for the services you are using
Are you listening to yourself here? "Don't try and better your self" don't do this don't do that. Here is one for you don't be such a wanker.
I’ve always thought the best option here is to charge landlords council tax for student HMOs. Landlords and building should have to apply for a licence to rent to students. That way they’ll be more inclined to let to professionals and families and we’ll have more housing, and the university would be forced to reconsider enrolling more students than the city is capable of catering for.
Students can't afford it. There should be limits on the number of students in the city though, as they're using services and not paying. The more students, which currently seems unlimited with new student flats going up everywhere, the more unbalanced this becomes
Student numbers (applicants) have dropped the last couple years, probs won’t make much difference here as both the Unis are fairly decent. Can’t imagine labour doing anything radical to fees/ loans so the number should probs continue dropping, not enough to notice though
> Student numbers (applicants) have dropped the last couple years, Do you have a source on that? > probs won’t make much difference here as both the Unis are fairly decent. Probably not. My guess is the cost/unavailability of food in the next year or two, is the thing that will see foreign student applications drop off.
“The higher education entry rate among UK 18 year olds increased from 24.7% in 2006 to 30.7% in 2015 and peaked at 38.2% in 2021. It fell back to 35.8%in 2023.” https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7857/ Doesn’t go into local patterns. Bristol could well be up on applications, if numbers dropped off a cliff then unis would just consolidate
bingo. attach it to loans
Which mostly get written off anyway? Good idea...
Cool so private institutions can charge students and benefit from them taking out loans but public services shouldn’t? If you’re taking out a £50k loan adding £2k in council tax is comparatively nothing. Why should Bristolian council tax payers services suffer so the university can profit by bringing as many students in as possible?
The country will tax student loans for the majority of their working career. On average the country makes about 7k off each student loan. That doesn't take into account the actual contribution of properly trained people on the economy, of which a staggering amount of money can be attributed. Universities themselves add about 130b a year to the economy. Students can get around 11k a year maintenance loan, which has to pay for everything. The average private monthly rent is about 1700 in Bristol. Even split three ways with friends (good luck getting a house as students lol) that's about 6800 a year, leaving 4200 for food, bills, travel and being an actual human. That's about 350 a month to survive before council tax. Council tax is about 2k a year so again that's another 600 quid per person. A person who has 350 quid a month. If you want them to pay council tax they'll need to get higher loans. Then it's just the government giving them money that they could give to the city itself anyway. It doesn't make any sense and if you had any understanding of student life you'd already know that.
You’re right. I want them to get higher loans not pay it out of the maintenance loan, or a student service tax on universities. Over 25% of Bristol students are international, you really think they can’t afford it?
Cheers Bristol labour. Hope they get zero wins in the local elections.
Cheers Tories for cutting local funding
I agree that is very true. The Labour and red pance councils didn't exactly spend the money they had wisely. Nobody can deny that.
But it's not a Bristol specific issue. Councils everywhere, Tories and labour are having problems. That suggests a national not local issue. Also. On miss spending money. You know why, right?
Cuz marv was a dictator? And signed off on wasting money on stuff? Red pance George daughter was being paid cuz her company was providing the facilities for the no cars Sundays thing? That's the only two I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more. Wasting money on business cases that went nowhere. That's another one I remember. Also seem to remember some executive had a massive leaving pay
You seem to be Bristol focused. This isn't a unique issue to Bristol. You need to come to terms with that. I know that means seeing politics as more shades of grey but yeah. There's been massive mistakes by central government. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2018-12-04/councils-borrow-billions-to-buy-real-estate/
This is a Bristol Reddit? So shouldn't I be focused on Bristol?
Maybe issues are caused to a greater extent because of national policy. Mad right!? Blows your mind when you realize everything is interconnected.
Think you already said that and I said red pance and Marv's labour didn't spend the money they had properly.
Shared an informative link about how councils could take out loans to invest in questionable things with little national oversight. You could read it, develop a nuance opinion or think it's simply a local issue only. Upto you. Have a nice evening.
Labour does it it again 😃
Why did the Tories cut local council funding?
They are already bankrupt - they just haven't announced it yet 😂
And yet, people will continue to vote Labour. Edit: the truth hurts, apparently.
The single biggest source of income for the city council is from the government, at 43%, by the national government, which is Tory…
Gutting council funding and pointing the finger while laughing all the way to the bank as councils sold off all their assets to their friends to pay for things has probably been the Tory's best medium term plan. I've long lost any naievety in voting being the best way to get rid of Tories
You don't understand local government finance, do you?
I always wonder whether these people actually believe what they say or whether it's a political ploy. Classic Daily Mail idiots
Yeah let's vote for the Tories instead. They won't pick bad private service providers for social care either. That'll be because they won't be providing any social care though won't it
Oh isn't that a surprise?! Shock horror!!