Sadly Maggie decided that she would "cut the civil service at a stroke". Two things I remember vividly - they sacked all our catering, security and cleaning staff who were employed and outsourced it. What it meant was that our leaders were paying the same amount for a poorer service and the sacked folks were re-employed without pensions, job security and at lower wages while the difference went to forming contract managers on both sides and profits for the businesses.
Then they downgraded certain jobs, so job centre and benefit counters were manned by clerical assistants and supervised by clerical officers - this worked OK for a while, as these good folks had experience and training so could do the work even though they lacked the educational qualifications all around, but as they retired there was nobody to help or pass on the skills and expertise they needed. Turnover became high - why would you learn if they career path was just one job for a whole centre.
The last govt then compounded the problem by centralising and trying to multiskill, to the point where there was no deep expertise in what are very complex cases. Then they outsourced - PIP went to Capita who got paid for every application, every review and every appeal, which made it profitable to refuse applications.
For every service that is no longer part of government there has to be a overhead of a service monitoring organisation, and a government accountability department within the separated/sold off service. For sold services, there has to also be a profit raised, and people providing performance figures, and a govt department using these figures to report to govt. Lots of jobs not actually DOING the work.
Sewage is not just a coastal issue though. I live 60 miles from the nearest coast, at the top of a "run" of pipes, but in building additional estate running in to this, it backed up 10 homes to fill my drains regularly until, because I had drainage cover, they got fed up coming out and did something about it. There are drainage plans on new developments, but there are not enough folks to ensure they are actually put in, and they only cover the development itself, and not the effects on existing streets, lands.
