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The Public Sector Machine – Helping to Reduce Costs

The published 2017 spring budget Public Sector government spending and revenue for 2017-18 shows a spending total of £820 billion and a receipts total of £744 billion. As of March 2017, the Public Sector net debt stood at a colossal £1830 billion. The need for increased efficiency and cost savings is obvious when it is considered that this period’s debt payments alone will top £46 billion.

With 5.424 million employees as of March 2017, the Public Sector employs 17% of all employed workers in the UK. This is a massive enterprise and where a debt payment is almost the same as the current level of borrowing it is in the interest of every one to encourage thrift and supplier change where cost savings can be made, in order to keep this colossal machine running.

Public Sector management services are funded through the various receipts largely through Income and other taxes, VAT, Excise Duty, National Insurance, Business rates and Corporation tax. There are many sectors that it is spent on, the largest being Social Protection at £245 billion and Health at £149 billion. For a full breakdown take a look at the Spring Budget 2017 publication.

The services provided to the population of the UK are free or subsidised and with over 50,000 Public Sector organisations budgeted for, all cogs of the machine, varying in size, all being required to provide the essential services that the nation requires. The big spenders then come down to social protection and health and education. It is also interesting that the budget for the defence of the UK is just under a fifth of the budget spent on Social Protection. The other less costly sectors being, transport, housing and environment and public order and safety. Considering the value to the nation of industry, agriculture and employment, the budgeted spend for this sector comes last in the spending priority at just under a 10th of that budgeted for social protection.

At the local council or borough level, allocations from the national budgets are proportioned out, enabling delivery of the services required including the vital domestic services of fire and public safety, waste management, recycling and refuse collection. Small cogs connecting to the larger.

All of these cogs in the machine, large or small have to function together to maintain the status quo that all in the UK have come to expect from the Public Sector, funded by the UK population. Cost savings have to be a serious consideration for all managers within each organisation and department. With such a much needed large workforce delivering theses services, helping them to achieve their everyday work activities as efficiently as possible comes down to all kinds of considerations.

Many public services require fleets of vehicles for deliveries, collections, maintenance activities etc. The training and assessment of the employed drivers can reduce costs as discussed in the article in this news section “The Benefits of Driver Assessment – Putting the Pieces Together.” where it is demonstrated that training and assessment can lead to vehicle maintenance cost savings and increased life-cycles of vehicle assets and residual values, with added health and safety benefits to the employee and risk reduction to the employer.

Licence Link the online Driving Licence, CPC and Tacho Card checking service is currently helping various Public Sector organisations by providing a cost-effective way of helping with duty of care requirements. Reducing the administrative burden and the time involved with manual checking of driving licences, leads to departmental cost savings and greater time efficiencies. All of this helps to reduce the debt burden of the United Kingdom. Using suppliers such as Licence Link, working with and helping the Public Sector to deliver the necessary services required, keeps the cogs of the Public Sector machine turning.

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