Crazy Taxpayers’ Alliance attack on council that’s *saving* money

Public Services

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.

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92 Responses to “Crazy Taxpayers’ Alliance attack on council that’s *saving* money”

  1. Rob Ballington

    @ns_mehdihasan @pollytoynbee @wdjstraw @psbook Crazy Taxpayers’ Alliance attack on council that’s *saving* money: http://t.co/IvsO7wl

  2. Andrew Ford

    Brilliant… Taxpayers’ Alliance attack council that invested in technology to save money – http://t.co/hZIw7j1

  3. nonny mouse

    Cost of iPad 500 (need 3G to stay connected)
    Cost of insurance/relacements 200 (guesstimate 40%?)
    Cost of 3G service ~200?
    Cost of software/training 20
    Cost per truck: around 1000
    Total cost of fleet of 20 trucks: around 20K

    Cost of asking drivers to use their own phones: 0
    Cost of pen/paper: 1
    Total cost of fleet of 20 trucks: 20

    The iPad solition costs around 20K more than the phone/pen&paper solution and does the same job.

    20K might just cover the cost of an extra bin-man, although is probably closer to half a bin man.

    >>who the hell cares anyway.

    The guy who lost his job through cuts.

  4. Junaid Alvi

    @ns_mehdihasan @pollytoynbee @wdjstraw @psbook Crazy Taxpayers’ Alliance attack on council that’s *saving* money: http://t.co/IvsO7wl

  5. Luke

    Brilliant… Taxpayers’ Alliance attack council that invested in technology to save money – http://t.co/hZIw7j1

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