by Needless bureaucracy is costing councils in England a mere £4.5bn a year – significantly less than anyone who has ever dealt with their local council, previously thought.
The report by the Local Government Association showed that the money wasted on unnecessary red tape was nowhere near as much as everyone believed, leaving stunned those people who have spent time trying to get their council to do absolutely anything at all.
Gerry Jones, 55, a resident in the Slough Borough council catchment area said, “£4.5bn? Is that all?”
“Hang on, you do mean that they waste that entire amount in just MY council, don’t you?”
Impressed
After being corrected and told that the figure was across all local councils in the country, Mr Jones was left bewildered.
“That’s impressive. I can’t believe the figure is so low. Are councils populated by volunteer irritants, is that it?”
“Do you know how many people I’ve had to deal with to get a paving slab fixed on our street? 47. And it’s still not fixed.”
“I conservatively estimate that paving slab will have cost a million pounds in effort when they finally get off their arses and fix it, so £4.5bn sounds very low indeed to me.”
The Local Government minister John Denham said this incredibly low figured showed the success of Labour policy over the last twelve years.
Denham told reporters, “Under a Conservative government your councils would spend billions desperately trying to avoid doing anything for you at all.”
“But successive Labour Governments have shown how that money is now wasted by incompetents who give the impression they are trying to help you for the benefit of reporting statistics, whilst simultaneously swallowing budget rise after budget rise on luxury biscuits and fancy teas.”
“And everyone feels better when they think we’re listening to them, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, thought so.”
