Things that are wrong with local government...

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I attended a meeting of Bradford's Corporate Overview & Scrutiny Committee today where we looked at the new "Sustainable Communities Strategy" - incidentally something we no longer have to produce. I asked what I thought was a pretty straightforward question - how much did the strategy cost to produce.

I was informed that this couldn't be answered as it was all officer time and any way we'd probably have to do most of the work regardless. Appalling.

Not only did we have a strategy without quantified objectives, indeed one majoring on generalised wishy-washy 'outcomes', but the extensive process of producing the strategy is uncosted. The whole exercise involved hundreds of meetings, rooms filled with paper and thousands of hours of officer time (and not just from the council but from our 'partners' too), yet no-one thought to keep track of these costs and assess whether the benefit of producing the strategy outweighs the expense of that production.

So when they bleat about cuts in Bradford, perhaps you should ask why this pointless process was undertaken while swimming pools were closed, libraries shut and disabled works made redundant.

This really is typical of local government, not just in Bradford but everywhere,

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