A Freedom of Information request has revealed that a stunning £450,000 worth of mobile phone bills belonging to employees of Notts county Council are being paid by taxpayers.

Why?

Councillor Reg Adair, the county council’s cabinet member for finance and property, said the mobile phone was an essential tool for day-to-day work for many council employees.

He said they were particularly necessary for those who work from home, travel around the county or need to be contacted in an emergency.

“Ten years ago, staff would have been travelling many miles every week back to the office between appointments.

“Now mobile technology means that we can extract virtually every minute of value out of every day. Unnecessary travelling time is dead time”.

OK, that is a good enough reason to supply 4,860 (39%) of your staff with a mobile phone, and some with a pager, you can then contact them when you need them in an emergency.

That accounts for the initial cost of supplying the phone, and a economical business tariff to keep the lines open.

Are you really saying, Councillor Reg Adair, that your employees clocked up half a million quid in call charges every year for the past three years making calls back to the council once alerted to the need for their emergency presence? Don’t they know how to text a simple ‘OK – on my way?’

Councillor Adair also said said ‘they were particularly necessary for those who work from home’.

Don’t they have home phones?

‘travel around the county’

How many of the 4,860 employees travel round the county?

or ‘need to be contacted in an emergency’.

It’s called a pager, Councillor Adair, and doesn’t run up bills for outgoing calls.

Apologies for the ‘less than normal’ blogging today, but OH and I are still fully engaged in ensuring the release of Nick Hogan – it has turned into a full time job for both of us.

1
elephant never forgets March 8, 2010 at 16:58

Not excusing the size of the bill but having dealt with pager networks the costs of the “outgoing” messages and having to have TWO sets of infrastructure support can mean that it is cheaper to only use the mobile phone network.Also the “all inclusive” cost of paying back expenses incured in using home phones for work purposes can also mean a mobile is cheaper overall

2
lenko March 8, 2010 at 18:26

So is it £450,000 (which averages £92 for each of 4860 employees?
Or 500,000 (which averages £102 ?)

Though I’m guessing that maybe the canteen workers and toilet cleaners are probably NOT given phones, so that the phone-endowed employees are probably only half of the 4860, so the true average is £204 pa.

Sorry to sound like an accountant/idiot… but I used to be an accountant/idiot.

If only this scheme could be extended to MY council.

3
Anna Raccoon March 8, 2010 at 19:12

lenko,
The 4,860 is the total number of employees with phones, which represents 39% of the workforce.

Details revealed under the Freedom of Information Act show the total bill – including tariffs and call charges – was £444,195 in 2007/08, £524,480 in 2008/09 and £395,000 from April to December 2009.

4
Joe Public March 8, 2010 at 19:22

If a pager is so useful Anna, I trust they’re standard issue in your family.

Of course not, because the phone allows two-way communication, not just an instruction to return to base.

[Think of the productivity increase when an operative phones in to get details of his/her next job, rather than returning to base to find out.]

5
Bugger (the Panda) March 8, 2010 at 19:38

Can’t they get a deal whereby all calls fro the Council’s exchange and the individual mobile phones, and vice-versa, in the UK are free, ss are calls phone to phone.

Thereafter normal call charges apply and the phone holder is liable unless they can detail why?

Networks would give their eye teeth for a near 5,000 unit contract.

It works in companies I know about.

6
Alan March 8, 2010 at 19:58

If performance has improved beyond what about 30-40 extra council workers could provide, or the council is managing the same workload with a similar number less staff, it would be worth it wouldn’t it?

How you would discern whether or not the mobiles have had the desired value adding effect I have no idea.

7
Bugger (the Panda) March 10, 2010 at 10:34

Alan

Pick a “mobile” worker and have him executed.

If the work rate of the others goes up, it has worked.

8
Andrew Duffin March 10, 2010 at 12:40

In principle using mobiles is fine, as the Elephant points out above.

All businesses, from the smallest to the largest, use them very widely and find them effective.

What’s wrong here is probably just the good old “Simple Shopper” (H/T Wat Tyler). A marginally-competent procurement department would probably have got the same service for half the cost.

9
bil March 10, 2010 at 19:42

give them all BlackBerrys and be done with it. Not that I used to work for BlackBerry or hold any stock. Course not.