What HS2 are really doing.

In my experience it happens even at local Government level that the paid staff act contrary to the wishes of the elected members and the electorate.

Just a few examples we had a recruitment freeze, HR blocked all Departments except themselves from recruiting staff
We had a streamlining exercise to reduce the number of levels and number of managers, both HR and Social services ended up with more managers.

I was part of a team looking at processes and removing unnecessary steps, We asked Departments to identify some processes and how many steps it took ( eg from receipt of an invoice to the supplier being paid) one department responded by saying all the processes had the minimum number of steps needed. when we investigated the processes in that department were very cumbersome and designed to give the head of department control of the whole process. The manager had designed the processes.
We rolled out new processes across the authority with the approval of Senior Managers and councillors, but within weeks we were getting reports of issues, it turned of that staff whose role was was abolished or who now had a significantly reduced workload had inserted new steps into the streamlined process to give themselves a role.
Another we found was that every Monday road repair etc teams were very unproductive, it turned out the team leaders and foremen were collecting the previous weeks timesheets then driving to the Council HQ to hand them into payroll whilst they were doing that the teams didn't have a vehicle to get to site.
We changed it for them to go to the local office and have them faxed to payroll, then the originals were posted in. This caused an issue as someone in payroll decided faxed or emailed documents were not acceptable as they didn't have a "wet ink" signature, just an image of a signature.

Yeh, that's the way it works. Almost all planning decisions are in the hands of officers. It's only contentious stuff that goes to the planning committee. Individual councillors get no more say than anybody else.


The "executive" (your council has a cabinet?) makes some decisions, but a lot is voted by full council - which is the role of councillors... Their other job is simply lobbying.

Basically, think of councillors as the local equivalent of MPs, with the cabinet members being ministers.

Umm, yes, the party in control of the council appoint the cabinet.

Our county council went from Indie control to Tory-led NOC at the last election - all the cabinet members changed.