JUNIOR council staff waste over two-thirds of their working day, according to research by a management consultancy.
The study indicated that 68 per cent of working time was not spent productively, usually as the result of poor supervision.
This was far higher than the equivalent non-productive time by private sector employees, which was 56 per cent.
Paul Weekes, the report’s author, said improving productivity in local government could ‘significantly offset’ planned cuts in the Government’s deficit reduction plan.
Consultancy firm Knox D’Arcy, which carried out the research, said if all councils improved to match the private sector, they could increase productivity by a third and do the same amount of work with 500,000 fewer staff.
The research also revealed that public sector managers spent just 15 minutes a day on average actively managing their staff.
Mr Weekes, principal consultant at Knox D’Arcy, told the Daily Telegraph that council managers lacked the skills to implement the scale of cuts requested and so were as likely to deliver chaos and reduced services as savings.
Knox D’Arcy carried out 1,855 surveys of managers and supervisors, including 173 from local government officers, as well as 376 day-long minute-by-minute observations of managers
Working in the Voluntary Sector but paid under a Local Council agreed pay structure I am appalled by the simplicity of how this report is being interpreted and applied. So far its biggest supporters the ConDems state it supports their 650,000 job massacre of the Local Govt Sector. Imagine however what £198 bn which bailed out the Private Sector in the last two years could have done for Local Govt. Remember the Govt’s repayment programme only raises £2bn a year to cover the £198bn. The Private Sector with a 100 year loan is laughing all the way to the Bank whilst piling misery and poverty onto the Local Govt sector and its dedicated not for profit workforce and their families.