Who to cull, that is the question.

I was talking to somebody yesterday who is employed by a local council and they were unsurprisingly bemoaning the impending cuts that most if not all councils will soon have to implement. Naturally I suppose their focus was on the likelihood of potential job losses and the likely impact on “front line services”. When I raised the subject of so-called non-jobs I was surprised by their answer which was to the effect that these are amongst those least likely to be affected. I was naturally sceptical until the rationale was explained to me.

It seems that most of the normal council workers (housing, finance, IT, planning etc.) are paid for out of general council funds but most of the non-jobs are in fact usually fully funded by central government under a plethora of initiatives, so axing the horde of diversity officers etc. will save the council nothing at all. If they lose the post they will lose not only the salary of the former employee but also the additional money that goes with it to help fund their office costs, HR costs and so on. By simply axing one of these jobs paying say £25,000 pa the council will probably lose another £5,000 to £10,000 of central government money as well.

Cutting this army of LGBT outreach workers etc. will have no impact on general fund expenditure; it will in fact only serve to reduce the amount of money available to pay for front line services. There is no incentive for councils to cull these jobs; in fact there is a positive disincentive because by doing so they will lose the additional funding that comes with them.