The Taxpayers’ Alliance’s lack of research beggars belief; it couldn’t be that the TPA are just a bunch of ideological zealots?
It was a classic Taxpayers’ Alliance story. The headline “Binmen get iPads to save on paper” ran across this morning’s Metro front page. The article detailed how supposedly-profiligate Bury Council was spending £9,000 on the Apple tablets so bin lorries could log details of collections.
The TPA weighed in:
“It beggars belief that a council making huge savings can find this money to splash out on iPads.
“Residents want bin services that are reliable and efficient, not council staff monitoring what they’re throwing out.”
The Daily Mail even lifted the “beggars belief” line for its own headline, topping off a fine day’s work for the TPA.
What actually beggars belief is the so-called alliance failed to do its research properly before commenting on something it knew very little about.
The initiative will actually save Bury Council money, the iPads just being a new form of efficiency-through-mechanisation. A spokesman for the council told Left Foot Forward the changes have the capacity to save the council more than £150,000 per year.
He added:
“This system should ensure that the number of missed collections is reduced to an absolute minimum, because any problems are reported in immediately to our Customer Contact Centre [rather than afterwards, meaning that houses would need to be revisited]. We collect from 83,000 houses each week.
“In the last financial year, we received 4,228 reports of missed bins – we estimate that it would cost £40 to revisit each house, equivalent to nearly £170,000 a year, so this new system should make hefty savings.
“Bury Council is consistently ranked as one of the country’s most cost-effective and efficient councils, and this initiative has been developed in-house in order to keep down costs.”
Honestly, one might jump to the conclusion that the TPA were not really interested in value for money for taxpayers, but on an ideological adventure to undermine public services and the public sector – in this case Bury Council’s directly-provided bin collection services.
92 Responses to “Crazy Taxpayers’ Alliance attack on council that’s *saving* money”
Warren EDWARDES
What other systems has Bury Council explored? Why did it reject open source Android based tablets or generic windows netbooks at half the price such as the one I bought from Medion (no connection) for £199. http://goo.gl/BQ1pg
Or even phone into the office using a hands free to allow an office based worker to type the data into an existing desktop.
This is expensive technology for its own sake. Many of us small business owners cannot justify iPads and use cheaper and better but less fashionable alternatives.
nonny mouse
Why do they need iPads instead of mobile phones, pen and paper?
They could text the driver and he could make a note of it on paper. Everybody carries mobile phones so they wouldn’t have to splash out on new hardware.
Lets look at it practically. iPads have glass screens and are actually quite fragile. Not something you want when you are hauling tons of dirty rubbish.
>>but on an ideological adventure to undermine public services and the public sector
No, they are questioning public sector spending. If everybody did that then we might be able to cut the deficit without cutting jobs.
The cost of the iPads has to be about the cost of an extra bin man for a year. Which do you think they should spend their (actually our) money on?
Steve
What a load of rubbish nonny mouse. Pardon the pun
John Slinger
RT @leftfootfwd: Crazy Taxpayers’ Alliance attack on council that’s *saving* money http://t.co/ywiM2is
Alal Uddin
Shoddy work from the TaxPayers’ Alliance as they attack Bury Council for saving money: http://t.co/V4T6kDj (via @danielelton)