QUOTE (Simon Kirby @ Jan 13 2015, 07:26 PM)
Hmmm, I'm pretty sure I remember you arguing strenuously that I was wrong to apportion back-office administration costs to direct service costs in order to arrive at a true market cost of a service (my doing so was one of the reasons NTC declared me to be a Vexation Complainant). Anyhoo, what you say here is right.
IIRC my argument was that inferring that on costs will simply disappear if a service is abolished is specious. For instance they will still pay a CEO and the Town Hall will cost as much whether or not NTC directly manage allotments or pass them over to self-management schemes.
Similarly, while it might cost WBC £60k to run the Thatcham toilets they will not save £60k by getting shot of them. The loss of one cleaner from the payroll is extremely unlikely to result in a reduction in WBC's HR staffing or the cost of heating the HR office. So everyone left at WBC will cost a couple of quid a year more for HR - unless they downsize far more drastically. To be fair they have downsized a fair bit and are rationalizing (reducing) office space usage - so they are doing something to keep overheads down.
But let's face it the toilet issue is simply one of WBC passing costs from the District Rate (Whitehall controlled) to the parish precept (uncontrolled). Are they doing the same with the Newbury toilets?