Monthly Archives: July 2009

The surveys so far of departmental budgets all reveal the same characeteristics. Far too much is spent on overhead. The error rates are too high, quality is too low. Too much time is spent on spin, PR, advertising, recruiting people to do non jobs, needless regulation, and endless bogus consultation. Given the imperative to curb [...]

In 2009-10 the education budget runs to £66,700,000,000. £10,000,000,000 of that goes on teachers pensions. £6,500,000,000 is spending on new and improved buildings. The Education department itself spends £182,000,000 on administration, with 2,842 staff. All this in what is meant to be a decentralised service, run by Local Education Authorities, Boards of Governors and Headteachers. [...]

The government we hear thinks it wrong that elite universities should discriminate in favour of students who achieve the best results. They point out there are others who might be able to achieve whose backgrounds have prevented them. Some of us think it would be a better idea to sort out the worst performing state [...]

The Cabinet office weighs in as one of the cheapest departments. Its total spend for 2009-10 is an apparently modest £7,500,000,000. £360,000,000 of this is the administrative cost of the place, whilst the bulk, £7,140,000,000, is the civil service pensions bill. The Cabinet Office employs 205 higher paid employees, and a total staff of 1279 [...]

The total spending of this department is in the budget at £3,157,000,000 for 2009-10. The department for the Environment, food and rural affairs, is a dab hand at spending on consultants. Last year its spending on professional services and consultancy reached the height of £573,000,000. This does include Warm Front spending which can do some [...]

The Department for Communities (and local government) has an apparent annual total budget of £39,686,000,000 including capital. This, however, leaves out the main financing of schools through the new centralised schools grant, another £23,000,000,000. There are other discontinuities and recharges in the figures which mean the budget does not capture the full picture of local [...]

The health department spends £116,900,000,000. £5,500,000,000 of that is on new buildings and equipment, and £12,500,000,000 is on pensions. The new GMS contract has cost an extra £8,000,000,000. The Health department has an administrative budget for itself and its helpers of £218,000,000. This buys us 2245 staff, including 17 staff paid more than £150,000 a [...]

The Department for Work and Pensions presides over the biggest budget by far, and unfortunately the fastest growing one, owing to rising unemployment. It is a huge clerical factory, employing 100,380 staff to give out a wide range of different benefits to a large number of people. There are another 12,000 staff identified as helping [...]

In 2010-11 the government is planning £35 billion of cuts as part of a value for money programme. After years of telling us all public spending was sacrosanct and there is no waste, in more recent years the government has come round to the view that there is considerable scope for reductions in spending to [...]