How many useless council bureaucrats does it take to turn off one tap?

Thursday blog

You’ll all know about lightbulb jokes. They’re a classic style of joke that use the question “How many [group] does it take to change a lightbulb?” to make fun of the traits or habits of different people. Well. I’ve got my own version now: “How many useless council bureaucrats does it take to turn off one tap?”

This story from my boring little life is going to sound trivial. But please bear with me as perhaps this story indicates why our taxes keep increasing while public ‘services’ keep getting worse?

A shower on the local beach promenade has been leaking water for at least 9 weeks. The leak is quite small and I estimated that water is being lost at a rate of about 100ml every 30 seconds. Doesn’t sound like much? Well this equates to 288 litres of water a day, 2,016 litres a week – 18,144 litres in the 9 weeks I know the shower has been leaking:

I have reported this leak to the council beach employees at least six times. But they just laugh and say it’s nothing to do with them. So nothing happens to stop the leak

I also have reported the leak six times on the council’s on-line leak reports form and got just one automated response a few weeks ago. But nothing happened to stop the leak.

I reported the leak to a Dorset Water leaks repairman I saw ‘working’ at a beach toilet block. His answer – there was nothing he could do until he had the correct paperwork and a job number. So I naively suggested he could at least report the leak to the relevant department at the council. He looked at me with total astonishment and then explained very slowly, as I was clearly an idiot, that his job was not reporting leaks but only repairing leaks and he obviously couldn’t do that without the correct paperwork and a job number.

On Monday I reported the leak to a local councillor and she reported it to some operations manager at the council. Then on Tuesday I got an email from someone at the council acknowledging my report of a problem with a beach hut and an assurance the council was developing a strategy to deal with the beach hut problem. I had never reported any problem with a beach hut, so this email was complete gibberish.

Then yesterday, there was finally a breakthrough. My phone rang and some council employee said they were contacting me about the water leak I had reported. ‘Eureka’, I thought. Finally some action. Then the council employee said that he was standing outside my home and couldn’t see any sign of a water leak. I was incredulous at the incompetence and asked why on earth he was standing outside my home when I had reported that a beach promenade shower was leaking. This was one of those moments when you despair about the future of the human race. Apparently nobody had told this individual that the leak was from a beachside shower and not at my home.

I thought Britain was facing a water shortage and therefore preventing a beachside shower leaking 2,016 litres of precious water a week would be a priority for my council. Clearly I was mistaken.

Moreover, all that someone needed to do to stop the leak was to turn off the nearby tap controlling the water to the shower. I could have done it. But I was concerned that the tap looked quite corroded and, if I tried to force it, this might make the situation worse. That’s why I believed someone from the useless council should do it. It just never occurred to me that getting a council to turn one simple tap off would require 9 weeks, 13 reports and heaven knows how many utterly incompetent local council employees.

Perhaps this is why nothing in Britain works anymore?