Eric Pickles is fond of his attacks on town hall workers, standing in judgement of those public servants he regards as being in non-jobs. But before he denigrates those making a real difference in their communities, maybe Eric should think about the beam in his own eye.
Pickles’ glass-and-steel Department for Communities and Local Government employs no less than 2,100 staff, not one of which can be described as a front line role. Despite attacks on local government spin, Pickles himself keeps a whopping 43 press officers on the payroll, presumably to maintain the fiction in the right wing press that it is local government with too many non-jobs.
Other members of Pickles’ senior team include the Deputy Director for the Big Society, who adds value by “leading on the corporate secretariat and performance”. Meanwhile the Deputy Director for Knowledge Management is busy with the “provision of records management”, also known as, erm, filing. Overall, Pickles has 111 Directors and Deputy Directors, all on £65K+ and many of them earning far more than the PM.
Eric’s administrative budget alone is £262m, far greater than Manchester’s entire adult social care provision. And despite all their talk of cut-backs, the Ministers and their staff are still spending over 10 grand a month on vehicle hire from the much-bullied Government Limo Service.
If any out-of-work council staff are reading, there’s a vacancy for “Deputy Director of Marketing and Channels” , in charge of critical national matters like the CLG Twitter Feed.
5 Comments
Yes, yes, quite terrible. Are you going to pay your losing bet?
While I have no time for Mr Pickles this is a bit unfair. The information in the links is dated as at 30 June 2010 – meaning that he would have been in post for around 6 weeks! These were all Labour appointments – what was he masnt to do – sack the lot of them in the first month (lets not give him ideas!)
Len – Nope, all the key staff data ( http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/dclgstaffdata102010 ) is dated 29 October 2010.
Do you really think Labour appointed the Deputy Director for the Big Society?
hi Polwarth
Polworth – sorry, my friend but it is you that is (kind of) wrong. The data was published on 29 October but if you look at the pdf (which sets out the Big Society roles), it is dated 30 June 2010! I know because I work there.
Granted, some of the roles might have changed names but there were no new appointments due to the recruitment freeze. All these staff were in post before the Condem government.
It is an open secret in the Department that a lot of the work it is doing on the Big Society is a natural progression from some of the work under the last Government (but presented very diferently).
A policy colleague tells me that the continuing work but presented somwhat diferently was under Hazel Blears – not John Denham. I no nothing of these things. I make the sandwiches.
Attacks on the Department for having lots of non jobs only makes it harder for the unions to fight management’s desire to slash the numbers of staff.
Thanks.
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[...] Eric Pickles is fond of his attacks on town hall workers, standing in judgement of those public servants he regards as being in non-jobs. But before he denigrates those making a real difference in their communities, maybe Eric should think about the beam in his own eye….. Read more at http://politicalscrapbook.net/2011/03/eric-pickles-has-43-spin-doctors/ [...]
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