The Reluctant Civil Servant: The unexpected importance of bin collection
This blog is the first in an occasional series from an anonymous civil servant who has volunteered to cast light onto some of the ways in which UK central government on a practical level is not working.
By The Reluctant Civil Servant
The insider account of the government’s “Review of Waste Policy” (yes, it really did happen)
Details how central government allocated £250 million to councils for bin collection through a complex, heavily bureaucratic bidding process
Surely bin collections should be a local matter? Why can’t councils decide for themselves how to fund and manage the bin collections that their local voters want?
We try. At least, most of us try most of the time. But it is demoralising. The machinery of government is bust. And we see it every day, from the inside.
I am a fairly run-of-the-mill civil servant who has moved around quite a bit between departments over the years. As we all do. I am writing these blogs as I want to give a sense of what it is like to live and work with the problems diagnosed in the Effective Government Forum’s two recent papers - on management in government and decentralisation. And I hope that my other colleagues may follow my footsteps. I write anonymously because I want to retain my job security and pension – valuable perks for everyone in my position.
I will start with an issue that might appear trivial but which encapsulates so many of the problems of how central and local government interact. Bin collection.
People care most about the public services that they actually use and for those in reasonable health and without children, bin collection is a powerful illustration of how government works.
When it doesn’t work well, people make waves – as happened in this area some years ago.[1] Then, the question of weekly bin collections suddenly shot up the agenda as some councils were raising the possibility of moving to a fortnightly rota. The press campaigned loudly. In response, Ministers wrote to councils to remind them that the public shouldn’t be separately charged for the household collection they’d already paid for.[2] Then, being keen to be seen to be seizing the initiative, and with no discernible sense of irony, they announced that they were conducting a Review of Waste Policy.[3]
It is worth noting in passing that this Review of Waste Policy was itself impossible to cost accurately or even monitor its effectiveness or whether it could be done better. Whitehall does not work like that.
But in any case Whitehall subsequently issued guidance criticising the ten principal excuses used by councils to avoid providing a weekly service.[4] That stick having been applied, they turned to the recyclable carrot of £250m of extra central funding through a Weekly Collection Support Scheme.[5] This in turn involved so-called ‘Barnett Consequentials’ which are the means by which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive credit for additional central government spending in England which they can use for other purposes.[6]
Administering this separate funding stream for bin collection involved at least three government departments and several external stakeholders or boards; a formal Prospectus inviting applications; 130 bids (of which 90 were successful, and with many local authorities bidding serval times).
In other words, in the face of bad publicity about reductions in collection services Whitehall created a complex, costly and centrally managed process backed by the one-off offer of £250m of public money. Surely the more effective and accountable solution is to give councils full responsibility, including financial responsibility, for bin collections in their area; and that local voters would reward or punish any new initiatives at the ballot box as they see fit.
I’m not sure if Cabinet ministers in other advanced democracies issue similar guidance to address the complexities of bin collection. But I doubt it. More worryingly, Whitehall’s pervasive controlling instincts and risk-avoidance are all on display:
Aspiration vs prescription – central government doesn’t want anyone to experiment or to fail because of the reputational risk to Ministers. But local delivery is distrusted and minimum regulatory standards are therefore often imposed. And Whitehall won’t wish to pay for results by exceeding these minima on a sustainable basis, which means performance will revert to the mean over time once no one is looking.
Delivering the goods – There’s a low probability that anyone advising the Minister really understands administration of waste management contracts. Whitehall is full of smart and suspicious people – but few of them will have set themselves the objective of mastering the details of bin collection.
The power of the purse – The main advantages of central government is money and its control over how other institutions may spend their money. Bins may be collected every week from your door – but if Whitehall officials think there’s an advantage in providing supplementary central funding then the sums involved are a rounding error for all involved. If it works, that’s great; if it doesn’t, it’s not their fault. And if you don’t expect your council’s temporary grant funding to last for the full forecast horizon then you won’t be disappointed.
The blame game – If your bins are rotting on the street who are you likely to blame? Probably your councillor; your MP and Ministers are likely to feel safe. Conversely, if those same people provide a fund for temporary improvements in service standards then there’s a fair chance you’ll hear about it. This is the fundamental asymmetry: Whitehall is going to win over time at the expense of those actually doing the leg-work by collecting your bins. But if they manage to do a better-than - expected job then you won’t ever know.
And never expect continuity of government. Despite being intended to be assessed over five years, the bin funding scheme only lasted one; the Department which issued the guidance no longer exists and the great eye of Ministerial or public interest has since moved on. Meanwhile, hundreds of local government officials responsible for refuse collection carry on their thankless work.
Inevitably, subsequent legislation will have changed everything again so that the current experts in bin collection may well disagree with my brief historical summary in light of a more recent Resources and Waste Strategy.[7] The Whitehall machine never stops – and it often doesn’t pause to reflect on whether a strategy or policy has succeeded before trying a new one.
And remember that where you read ‘bins’, you can substitute almost anything. Certainly ‘potholes’, which were provided with a £200m fund in the last Budget to assist with urgent repairs in England, with associated Barnett Consequentials.[8] As with bins there was a process, funding allocation and some trumpeting of Government largesse (this being an outcome particularly relevant to the home counties).[9] Maybe it will be repeated; but probably not. These sums are, in the context of central government expenditure, so small that they are rounding errors.
If you’re more ambitious you can substitute education and skills for bin collection; or public health and social care; or transport infrastructure, or really any infrastructure project at all. The idea that local communities should control their own destiny is completely foreign to Whitehall. All the incentives for Ministers to be seen to be doing something about any particular problem are overwhelming. That is why EGF’s proposals are so important and must be listened to.
For so many areas of government involves this endless tug-of-war between Whitehall and Wivenhoe. But unlike that traditional game, although much energy is expended, no one ever wins: they play over and over. And we all pay over and over again – in poor services, higher taxes and lost local initiative.
If you are a serving or former civil servant who would like to publish, under full anonymity, blogs of similar stories of how the machinery of central government in the UK is not working, then please contact Tim Knox at the Effective Government Forum. tim.knox@egforum.org.uk. Or you can tweet us here: @effectivegovuk
Read our report on Decentralisation HERE
Read our report on Effective Management HERE
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-weekly-bin-collections-prospectus--2
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/6265/ 1884691.pdf
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-review-of-waste-policy-in-england-2011.
[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-government-guidance-on-weekly-bin-collections
[5] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/15037/Weekly_Collection_Support_Scheme.pdf
[6] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/barnett-consequentials-and-the-barnett-guarantee/barnett-consequentials-and-the-barnett-guarantee
[7] https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/sharpeedge/801-sharpeedge-environment/48910-environment-act-2021-what-does-it-mean-for-waste-authorities
[8] The Potholes Fund at paragraph 3.135 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1144441/Web_accessible_Budget_2023.pdf
[9] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-maintenance-funding-allocations/additional-budget-2023-highways-maintenance-and-pothole-repair-funding-2023-to-2024