The Gray Monk: Economies of scale

November 14, 2003

Economies of scale

Ever since the late sixties the Civil Service mantra has been that "bigger is better" and provides "economies of scale". Well, that is at least partly true, provided you are selective in how you measure these things.

If you close all the small schools in a district and combine them all on one site, you certainly have economies of scale in the maintenance of the buildings as you now only have one set to maintain instead of several. But this is one of those "cost" versus "value" equations which accountants, civil servants and politicians hate. You save money on the one hand by centralising everything, but then you discover that a bus service is now needed to bring all the kids from the schools you closed. Wastage goes up because, with a bigger inventory to manage, little things slide off the scale and get lost in the big numbers elsewhere. Then you have the breakdown in relations between teachers and pupils to deal with, because, where in a small school, the teachers know all the pupils and vice versa, in a big one drawing pupils from everywhere, you don't. Result is breakage due to vandalism rises, and so do maintenance costs. The problem is that no one is in a position to actually measure the REAL cost because the figures weren't kept in the same way in the past and cannot therefore be checked against what is now happening.

This argument has raged for some time, but the Civil Service are an arrogant and powerful bunch and no argument prevails against them. The Minister may have a different view, but what happens is what the Civil Service causes to happen. The Minister takes the can if it goes wrong and the Civil Servants responsible get promotion.

Now it is being done to the fire services in the UK. The same "economies of scale" argument is being trotted out to defend it, but now there is a small problem. You see the fire service is good at numbers. Especially at numbers involved in running the service - and we have had to be, because this same bunch of parasites have been short changing the service for years. I just hope that someone with more political clout than I can bring to bear stumbles across the information I am about to share with whoever reads this tirade.

In the last seven years in Wales, the former seven brigades have been crunched into three. "Economies of scale" trumpetted the new Regional Assembly. Ah, well now, perhaps they would care to explain this little "economy". In one of the "new" brigades, the cost of the three that have now been combined was, prior to merger a combined figure of �35 million for all three. Since the purpose of the combination of services was to save money, you, the tax payer would quite reasonably expect that the new figure would be less than that. Wrong. It went to a cool �70 million and is still rising. Are you getting a better service? No, it is the same service as before, it just has a lot more "administration" than was previously needed to run three independent brigades, and a lot more politicians with their snouts in the trough, and even more civil servants with their featherbedded and highly paid posts.

Now they want to do this all over Britian. Its such a success isn't it? God help us, we voted for them! Count de Magpyr and his vampire army is alive and well and living in Whitehall. Where is Granny Weatherwax when you need her?

Posted by The Gray Monk at November 14, 2003 10:28 PM