Quangos

[Shay HTFC]

https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/14/publicsectorcareers.localgovernment

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/opinion/Chris-Leslie-Power-failure-as.3777412.jp

Essentially states that London and the SE are highly overrepresented with Quango members. For those of you who don't know, Quangos count for 21% of public spending (£123bn a year - that's more than the councils themselves spend)

[Mister James]

Not really - this as always been the case, people were just too provincial to bother finding out.
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>Soultrader Mister James, I bet you are a copper
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[iooi]

What is more worrying is the amount of power these unelected bodies hold.
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[Mister James]

Again - they've done so for years, if not decades.
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>Soultrader Mister James, I bet you are a copper
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[Shay HTFC]

Does that mean its right?

[Kickstart]

[Robby]

Without going into significant detail, I have some involvement with the recruitment process for a couple of these boards.

The board members are selected by civil servants and ultimately the minister in the charge of that area, and selection is largely handled in the same way as recruiting someone for a normal job. You choose the best candidate for the job.

Attempts are made to have a decent regional selection, but quite simply you get a lot more applicants from London for a lot of these jobs - there aren't going to be a lot of Yorkshire businessmen with a great interest on sitting on the board for the national gallery, for instance.

The minister in charge of that area has the ultimate responsibility for that area, and the bodies in question answer to their parent government department, but they are arms length arrangements. The delivery bodies are set high level targets, and told to get on with it.

The system is in fact quite a good one. The public bodies are sufficiently detached from government to just get on with doing the work, whereas central government departments can be forced to change direction a lot more quickly depending on ministers changing their minds.

And on the point of the public bodies getting more funding than local councils, its because they do a lot more. Local councils are hell to deal with, we all know this, from great ideas like raising our council tax whilst cutting policing and rubbish collections. The environment agency, on the other hand, primarily delivers flood defence. Drive along the norfolk coastline, and you'll see endless flood defences. These cost an awful lot of money to build. Last year the environment agency spent over £425 million on flood defence. Then, as we saw, it held the sea back fairly well, but didn't work when there was some heavy rain.

[Shay HTFC]

[Robby]

They are advertised. I believe a recent advert from my lot was in the Times, and I'm fairly sure they all go in the London Gazette (which people only read in a professional setting, its hardly a gripping read).

The bodies look to have a board with a skill set that represents the various various functions the body provides, so for instance the National Gallery would want to have board members with a background in Art, Business, Comms, Advertising.

The positions are generally not very well paid, the higher profile ones would still pay less than the board members would make doing their day job, and many of the posts on smaller boards are unpaid, only reimbursing people for their travel.

[Shay HTFC]

[Robby]

I've had a look into it more - doesn't go in the Gazette. The Times is the main publication, and occasionally the guardian.

Have a look on the jobs section of Times online - quite a few of these sort of positions in there at the mo.

[Shay HTFC]