With only 212 days to go until Christmas is upon us once more, the City Council are asking for your views on which services are available over the festive period.
At the moment only certain services are open such as waste collection, residential care and mortuary services. Officers are on-call for emergencies such as dangerous structures and pest control.
You might want the council to open the libraries, the museums and Local Centres or you may have your own views.
A council spokesman said, ‘It’s our job to serve the people of Stoke-on-Trent the best way we can over the Christmas holidays. This is an opportunity for our customers to tell us just what services they want to see provided.’
What services would you like to have available over Christmas & New Year?
Send your views & ideas by E-mail to communications@stoke.gov.uk or you can write to:
Christmas Working,
Communications,
Stoke-on-Trent City Council,
Floor 4
Civic Centre
ST4 1RN
Or maybe leave a comment below
“It’s our job to serve the people of Stoke-on-Trent the best way we can over the Christmas holidays.This is an opportunity for our customers to tell us just what services they want to see provided”…. Well thanks a lot for that! What about the services we want provided for the other 364 days of the year.Like asking the people who “it’s your job to serve” if they want everything in this city regenerated/destroyed? If they want to give interest free loans to football clubs? If they want to pay for the re paint job of the civic centre and to buy a new red carpet for Prince Charles visit (which then found it’s way to the skip at the back of the civic 48hrs later-It’s only OUR money you wasting so that’s OK) I could go on and on …. Give me the job i’ll do it with my eyes closed,in my dinner hour. “A council spokesman said” who are you? Never a name to give any blame is there?
Would not the councils position on multi-cultural society not mean that they should open as normal over this period ?
I don’t feel we need any more services open over the Christmas period – it’s not as if the services the council provides are, in the main, of life or death importance, are they? We can take out extra library books for the holiday, wait to report that old mattress left on waste ground or a burnt out street light. If there is anything important, there are contact numbers.
Don’t forget that if more council services are open, that would have to be paid for somewhere, in actual cash or in days off, so leave things as they are.
While I’m on, I am in full agreement with Denise the Menise and her sentiments. I’ve lived in the city all my life, and I feel the buffoons running the City now are completely out of touch with our needs and aspirations. We don’t need regeneration, we need work. If as much effort went into providing jobs for us, their wagepayers, as goes into the ridiculous posturing and maintenance of status that goes on in upper management circles, we as a City would have much lower tax bills.
If council management were really interested in us and what we think, not just in appearing to be interested, then can we have a panel of ordinary local inhabitants to oversee what is going on? Oh, sorry, that would be the councillors wouldn’t it.
Dunno, Andi. If they kept converting from one religion to the next they could have 12 months off a year for religious festivals!
Personally I don’t believe in any religion but I think the secular case for having a day off every week and shared holidays can be made. So I agree with weekends, and we might as well call it Christmas, even though right-wing businessmen doing anything they possibly could to cash in on the situation drained it of any content related to Jesus (who wasn’t even born in December anyway) long ago.
The fact is that no one cares whether rank and file council workers have a few days off like most of us private-sector employees do. I enjoy it myself. We object to the “elected” councillors, leaders and architechts ignoring the city’s wishes. The workers should not be blamed for something that was spawned by thieving scum in the City of London and Parliament.
Dave , the council employees are paid the same for the christmas break as they normally would. Therefore the wage bill would not increase. Some of those forced to have the said break might not want that holiday then and have the time off when it suits them ,ie:- in the warmer months when they don’t want to be stuck inside.
Nice one! Mr Withington, never seen truer words written!
Im with denise the menise – what about serving the public properly for the rest of the year. Services at Christmas are the least of our worries, in fact I am more worried about the council asking such daft questions at a time like this anyway. How many staff are being deployed to manage this question of such earth shattering importance. We are all being advised that cost saving cuts need to be made, and lets face it how important is it to have the local library open on christmas day, surely shutting services over this period and putting the council on as complete as possible a close down is cost effective in terms of manpower, utility bills etc. I’m afraid that preference of staff wanting to take time off in warmer months does not figure on my list of priorities – cost saving for all city residents has priority.
Dear Guest,I think you should be in that civic centre with me. Get a good dose of common sense down the lot of them ! What do they think they are `playing’ at? This is serious, for goodness sake when are they giong to wake up to the fact the people of this city are unhappy. Despair and desperation then turns to apathy but you don’t care do you? I’m alright Jack ! I say hit the road Jack…
Thing is Andi that if people have holidays – as they have every right to do and I would not deny anyone their time off – their work has to be done by someone somewhere.
If it makes no difference if a person is there or not then either you have too many employees, or the job is uneccessary. So if the work has to be done, extra staff are needed to cover the workload, which costs money in the long run. Best to have a good holiday to kill the old year, I reckon most staff would prefer that.
With regard to wage bills, the so called "Flexi" system which used to be in place, and probably still is, which effectively shortened the working week by giving time off if more than a certain number of hours were worked in any given week – and this was less than the working week the public expected council employees to work – probably increased the wage bill by about 10%. I was amazed that I more or less got a day off a month.
Denise, common sense left the building sometime in the Eighties about the time of Jimmy Westwood!
I’ve met a few councillors over the years, and I’ve never been too impressed with them by and large. Always seemed to be too much ego and not enough thoughtful care.
Problem these days (I’m starting to sound like my Grannie – must be more careful) is the fear of the pointing finger, which also afflicts the NHS, where I has also worked. Too much scrambling about trying very hard to be seen to be fair, using magic formulae like "consultation" and "involving the community". Wouldn’t mind if I thought that management took any notice of their own surveys and if I didn’t have a sneaking feeling that anything not in accordance with an agenda was conveniently ignored.
In general I agree with Denise although it would be nice to have gritter drivers and a couple of blokes handy to stop the salt melting away down the grid again ( as if that could ever happen)
Snow joke really
Dave you say “their work has to be done by someone else”(if a person is off on holiday) and then say if it makes no difference if a person is there or not…..the job is uneccessary.” so by your own logic the two week break when most council employees are on holiday they are not needed then ? – please explain
Andi, I feel you are being obtuse.
A planned holiday is just that, planned. Holidays at other times are unplanned, so extra staff are needed to cover.
Best to have all staff on holiday at a quiet time, except for essential services, and a lot of these can be covered by on-call employees (my son in law, who is a bin man, covers on gritters from time to time)
Dave if you consider me to be obtuse then surely you must think the same of the person who originally asked the question of christmas working. As you seem to have taken offence at both my comments and also someone proposing the idea of council staff working over christmas (just like many more of the population) it was not intended .
The subject of costs associated with fuel for running the buildings , there should be hardly any difference in use due to energy management systems that should be programmed for optimal “top hat” configurations , which include low occupier use and protective stand-by and also there would be persons doing maintenance work who would activate energy systems (all presuming that council buildings are energy efficient).
Are you sure that it is NEXT christmas they are talking about.More likely to be last christmas isn’t it?
Talk about trying to appear to be on the ball, When we disregard this suggestion as being a little premature, then we, no doubt will be blamed if the essential services are not provided over the festive period. You had your chance will be the cry. The fact that services need improving ALL the year round is not considered,I think it’s called diversionary tactics, and a highly paid consultant psychologist is probably on the payroll now.we will never know unless central television, or someone similar exposes it.