Saturday, June 08, 2013

Food For Thought

Here is a thought-provoking piece. The massive reorganisations of recent years have piled resources into central management, while cheese-paring at a local level. I have never seen any credible figures for the net savings realised, if indeed there were any.

13 comments:

  1. And you never will, but if you did, you can be sure that the people who thought up the so called money saving scheme in the first place will be long gone. Doubtless they will have been promoted into a position in which they can wreak yet more havoc, without ever having to suffer the consequences of their stupidity. It's only in the real world, of business, where people can actually be called to account.

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    1. Really, like the bankers you mean?
      Kate Caveat

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    2. Anonymous John8 June 2013 at 20:40

      "It's only in the real world, of business, where people can actually be called to account."
      Like banking, you mean?

      Delete
  2. This is a view I have heard expressed frequently by Magistrates and indeed Legal Advisers. I well remember when the LCD (as it was then) operated out of a single building in Great Peter Street in London most efficiently. Stark contrast to the proliferation of buildings and vast increase in size which they now enjoy. Efficiency, cost effective? I don't think so.

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  3. Back in 2011, Stanley Brodie QC wrote a persuasive analysis of the costs of centralising the administration of the magistrates' courts for the centre-right think tank Politeia, entitled "Cost to Justice". He produced a detailed assessment of the additional annual cost, which he calculated at over £1bn per annum (that's right!). A PDF copy is freely available on the Politeia website.

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  4. I wonder why nobody ever seems to think beyond banking?

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    1. Because it’s a rather apt example. Up to the late 1980s banks tended to be run by people who knew banking inside out, then in the early 1990s they started bringing in CEO and chairs with no banking experience to enhance profits.

      It worked for a while, but only at the expense of customer service and common sense. Profits went through the roof but there came a point that you couldn’t go into a bank without being accosted to buy some product or other.

      Staff were employed who didn’t really know the systems and therefore couldn’t use discretion or judgement. If you go to a bank and try to do something out of the ordinary you may as well bang your head against a wall.

      This all ultimately led to the crash, with employees only motivated about profit, doing things they didn’t really understand.

      It’s this model that the government are trying to push onto the CJS and all public services. Its doomed to fail in the long run. Very slowly service will decline and people will slowly forget how things used to be. By the time everything crashes there will only be a few who remember how things used to be.

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  5. A case of "Hutber's Law" surely - Improvement means deterioration.

    You will never see figures which you can know to be accurate. Those in charge will always ensure that any fingure produced show savings.

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  6. I can see all the problems with the current situation. large govt depts are incredibly inefficient and are prone to growing empires but not growing effectiveness.

    However, her solutions are just as bad - putting admin of the courts under the police or the local crime commissioner is a bad idea. According to the Transform website, the author was a magistrate and I wonder if this a case of looking back 'to the good old days'.

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  7. Cheese-paring, yes. However, certain little bits remain, as the recent mouse infestation at a relatively modern courthouse demonstrates. Removal of the local highly efficient and knowledgeable maintenance manager now leaves such problems unresolved for long periods. Adjustment to heating or air-conditioning settings, previously the work of moments, now requires sending of emails to an office many miles away.
    Why does no-one insist that an audit be carried out following the ill-conceived decisions to produce paper cost reduction? I think that we can guess the answer.

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  8. And we have just had a letter informing us that the meagre Financial Loss allowance that some self employed colleagues claim is to be centralised and procedures for claiming to be more complex. I think we can see there that is going. Yippee!! #irony klaxon

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  9. Recent experience of a user group claiming a huge decrease in crime demonstrated how easily figures can be massaged to show what you want; no doubt the MoJ is more than adept at painting a glossy picture. What would be preferable would be an independent analysis of the true position - but how can that be achieved when the gatekeeper is the MoJ and is anxious to keep truth out of the argument. George Orwell got it right.

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  10. If South London JP knew about the (occasional but serious)abuse of FLA, he/ she might be pleased about this long overdue change.

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