Using sheep and cows to mow council parks is one of the ‘ridiculous’ ideas put forward by a Tory councillor to help save local councils heaps of money.
Vulnerable children living in care should be sent to boarding school, art subsidies should be scrapped and groups which identify themselves by race should not get support from councils under advice from Councillor Harry Phibbs.
The Ravenscourt Park councillor and journalist came up with 201 ways for local authorities to curb spending in a report for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the lobby organisation pressing for lower taxes.
He also suggested scrapping chauffeurs for council leaders and mayors, getting rid of private health care for senior officers and ending excessive spending on management consultants and advertising.
He said banning bottled mineral water at meetings had saved Hammersmith and Fulham Council £36,000 a year.
Mr Phibbs said: “Some of these are obvious and common sense, but not always applied in local councils. I hope councils will see it as a check list, but also see the whole as the greater sum of its parts. It’s important to develop a mentality to provide value for money.”
Councillor Stephen Cowan, leader of the Labour opposition, criticised some of the ideas, and noted that Hammersmith and Fulham Council failed to heed some of the advice from one of its own councillors.
“Some of these ideas are good but some are really very peculiar,” he said. “However, the irony is that this advice has been written by a local Conservative councillor whose administration is gifting £70million of land to get £35m of unnecessary offices.
“They have employed eight of the 10 highest paid council bureaucrats in the UK and they squander £5m a year on town hall propaganda. And of all of that is just some of the local council wastefulness identified by the cost-cutting team I set up last May.”
However, council leader Nick Botterill said Hammersmith and Fulham was being ‘innovative’ in cutting costs while keeping council tax down.
He added: “We were the first council to suggest to the government ways of cutting red-tape and saving money. We have a slimmed-down town hall, which is now half the size it used to be, with excellent front-line services being delivered by fewer people.
“With town hall budgets stretched like never before, it is imperative we concentrate taxpayers’ cash on protecting the vulnerable, keeping our streets clean and providing top-class schools. There is no place for reams of red tape and officialdom if we are serious about cutting the nation’s debt.”
A spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents councils, said: “The Taxpayers’ Alliance seems to have lost its bearings. This is a list of things councils have been doing for years peppered with a number of frankly ridiculous ideas, some of which are downright dangerous.”
The Unite trade union said ‘unrealistic’ ideas like rewarding council tenants for carrying out their own repairs were irresponsible.
Do you have any ideas for how councils can save money? Please post your comments below.
