Is it public money down the drain?

Barely a day goes by without some story of obscene waste hitting the headlines.

On Thursday it was the Ministry of Defence in the dock over its MkIII Chinook helicopters.

The MoD ordered them in 1995 but asked the company to modify the on-board computers to cut costs.

The aircraft have been grounded ever since after the MoD failed to get access to the software it needed.

The choppers initially cost £259 million. But the ill-fated project has ended up costing an eye-watering £422 million.

Cut to the Ministry of Justice where, last month, Jack Straw’s department spent £170,000 of taxpayers’ money on modern artwork.

And it’s only two weeks since the government was advertising for a £160,000 “director of digital engagement” – to blog, Facebook and Twitter to the rest of us, presumably.

Down in Sussex the local constabulary has been getting it in the neck for lashing out £10,000 on head massages – not for stressed bobbies but for call-centre staff. Over in Torquay, the police force was pilloried for handing out flip-flops to revellers in a bid to stop them twisting their ankles after drunken nights out. The “initiative” was part of a £30,000 “safer communities” package.

Serial offenders on the wasting money front, Lambeth Council, have lavished £30,774 on an “enviro-crime”officer while Braintree in Essex forked out a kerrchinging £38,556 for a “climate change manager”.

That’s the national picture where, the campaigning Taxpayers’ Alliance claims, a staggering £101 billion is being squandered.

However locally public authorities have not been immune to charges that they have been too free with the taxpayers’ money.

In October last year the Daily Echo reported that Poole and Bournemouth borough councils were to spend almost £3 million between them on consultants as part of a plan to improve local schools.

“The bill for ‘external support services’ is almost as much as the original administrative budget for the project,” we said.

In the same month the council advertised for a £101,000-a-year “director of transformation”, although it later put the job on hold after the Taxpayers’ Alliance described it as “a totally inappropriate luxury”.

In January we reported how Poole council wanted to spend £65,000 on consultants... for advice on how to save money.

A few months before that the council’s cabinet was agreeing to splash out £40,000 on a feasibility study for the unpopular solar pyramid project.

But is this all as dire as it seems?

Not really, according to Bournemouth council’s deputy leader, John Beesley.

He puts up a spirited defence of his council against allegations of money-wasting.

“In the 20 months we’ve been in office we’ve been concentrating as our highest priority on an efficient council and finding ways of running Bournemouth more efficiently as part and parcel of our day-to-day work,” he says.

“A lot of these projects are long-term and involve changes that can only be planned for in the long-term.

“They’re not things where you can pitch up and say, ‘Well, we’ll cut this or cut that’.

“It doesn’t work like that and if it did we would have howls of protest from across the borough that they had services removed unfairly and we wouldn’t want to do it like that.”

He feels there is frequently “background information” that doesn’t get reported in appalling waste stories.

“To give you an example, over the last year we will have made savings of almost £5.5 million, cashable savings; savings which relate strictly to cash,” he says. “This was not made out of frontline service reductions, more to do with encouraging more efficient working practices and that the council were planning more efficiency drives.”

He acknowledged that saving money was a priority for everyone and if any council taxpayers had spotted areas where sensible reductions could be made, “we’d be interested to hear from them”.

• Do you have any wise ideas of how any local authorities could painlessly cut costs? Email newsdesk@bournemouthecho.co.uk