Where the money goes?

Re: From the defra website

To put this into perspective...

Defra have about 10,000 staff, so we're talking around £430 per person (1.7% of salary bill). Not a huge amount of money.

As a Government department, they're bound by Treasury rules, and HMT are very keen on performance-related pay. It sound to me like these bonuses are the performance related pay; this money is part of the salary bill - it isn't extra money coming in. A lot of the staff presumably won't be getting inflation-level rises this year, to pay for these "bonuses".

Now we may all have opinions about how well Defra as an organisation are meeting our requirements. We might also have concerns about how fairly performance related pay might be allotted. But I don't think it's fair to imply that the low level civil servants on the ground are rolling in money.

It might be reasonable to ask whether the chief exec of the Rural Payments Agency fully deserved a £21,000 bonus in 2004/5. But don't run away with the idea that it's fast cars and luxury villas for everyone else.
 
Re: Performance related pay

Since no one has ever paid me to campaign for the Thames, I guess I don't need to pay anything back.
My payback for working to improve developments can be seen wher ewe have sucesses. Just go to Bishops Park in Fulham and look upstream, or Charter Quay in Kingston and look at the wetland or the boats moored there. Hopefully in the future you will be able to look on Lots Road and smile. That's my payback.
 
Re: Performance related pay

Interesting you mention Charter Quay at Kingston. Yes, i does look nice but I seem to remember the short stay/overnight mooring price on the pontoons was extremely expensive! Possibly why they are usually empty? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
Aggred

The mooring prices at Charter Quay are too high, but that's true of the whole of the Thames.
Fact is that Kingston were willing to lose these moorings (the UDP had 12 listed for the site) as St George, the developers were bitterly opposed to allowinng them.
So, I guess expensive is better than non-existent.
 
Re: Aggred

"The mooring prices at Charter Quay are too high, but that's true of the whole of the Thames."

Not true of teh whole of the Thames...most bankside overnight mooring is around £4 to £5 a night with places like Marlow and Henley charging £8 to £10 (except during Henley regatta when its £40!) Can't remember the exact charges at Kingston but there are municipal moorings on both sides a tad further upstream which are free wheras the St George pontoons are VERY expensive...seem to remember even a daytime stay was £10 or more.

"Fact is that Kingston were willing to lose these moorings (the UDP had 12 listed for the site) as St George, the developers were bitterly opposed to allowinng them.So, I guess expensive is better than non-existent."

Seems like St george have actually achieved their objective for the cost of the pontoons......mooring charges so high they might as well not be there and not used so they are happy. Pyrrhic victory for Kingston I would say and boaters nil!
 
Re: Aggred

Copied from UK REC Waterways newsgroup;

Those who have read this week's *Private Eye* Muckspreader column will
have been heartened by the good news about the Rural Payments Agency.
I reproduce the article in full below.

===begins=====
A quick way to assess the performance of any organisation is to look
at both ends of it: what goes on at the top, what goes on at the
bottom.

When the MPs on the public accounts committee (PAC) decided to look
into why the Rural Payments Agency had made such an unholy shambles of
handing out EU subsidies to English farmers, they naturally wanted to
interview Johnston McNeill, the formerly high-flying Northern Irish
thug who until last March presided over this sea of chaos until he was
suspended from his £114,000-a-year post as the agency's chief
executive. When the day came, however, McNeill sent in a sick not. He
couldn't appear before the committtee because he was at home suffering
from "stress".

The committee's chairman, Edward Leigh, could scarcely restrain a
sneer as he explained why McNeill was unable to help the MPs with
their inquiries. He recalled that he had recently attended a seminar
on "rural stress", where it was suggested that one of the chief
reasons for misery in the countryside these days is the strain
inflicted on farmers by the chaos into which McNeill allowed his
agency to sink. So great was the stress caused by the agency, Leigh
observed, that the seminar heard it had even caused three farmers to
commit suicide.

Stressful the agency's boss may be finding life these days in his
semi-retirement, after a dizzying climb up the ladder of public
service in which the taxpayers showered him with a succession of ever
fatter pay cheques. But at least he can take consolation from the fact
that he is not only still receiving his full salary but has just been
handed a £60,000 bonus, for "meeting his 2005 targets". This was the
year when he somehow found it virtually impossible to organise the
sending out of farm payments: the very job for which [he] was
receiving his £2,200-a-week wages. In addition to this, lest the
stress of sitting at home prove too much for the poor fellow, he can
look forward to a £42,000 pay-off when he finally relinquishes his
post, and after that a pension of £12,000 a year for life (in addition
to all the other pension rights he has totted up in his years of loyal
public service).

Switch attention now to how the agency over which he so skilfully
presided performs at the bottom of the heap, in its day-to-day
dealings with the farmers it likes to describe as its "customers".
When Clive Coward, who owns two small farms in Surrey, recently wished
to notify the agency that he was changing his office address to new
premises just up the road, he wrote to tell them so. Back from one of
McNeill's underlings in the agency's Newcastle "customer service
centre" came a letter headed "Incorrect empowerment for request".

"Unfortunately", the letter explained, "your current empowerments do
not authorise us to make this change". Mr Coward would have to fill in
the requisite form, 18 pages long. To assist him they helpfully
enclosed a 36-page booklet advising how the form should be filled in.
All this just to notify the agency of a simple change of address. It
is hardly surprising the agency finds it so difficult to pay farmers
the money they are owed, or that some farmers might even be driven to
suicide. But at least Mr McNeill gets his money on time, even if he no
longer has to work for it.

(c) Private Eye
===ends=====
 
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