The UK's councils could do the same amount of work with 500,000 fewer staff if they matched the productivity of private firms, a report has claimed. Junior staff in local authorities are, on average, productive only 32% of the time during working hours, said management consultancy Knox D'Arcy. It said this compares with an average of 44% in the private sector.
Knox D'Arcy, which carried out 1,855 workers' surveys, said firms had better systems to ensure targets are met. "Put simply, by matching average private sector staff utilisation levels, local government could increase its productivity by roughly a third," said Paul Weekes, the report's author and principal consultant at Knox D'Arcy. "This sort of dramatic increase would help significantly offset the cuts that are on the agenda as part of the Government's austerity package."
John Ransford, chief executive of the Local Government Group, which works on behalf of councils across England and Wales, told the Daily Telegraph that local authorities were "already looking at how they can protect vital front line services by delivering more for less. We realise that we must continually improve and apply lessons from all sectors of the economy to ensure local people have the services they require at a cost they can afford," he added.
