A representative of Bucks County Council admitted this week that they had had ‘too many managers…for a bit.’ This is like saying that ‘Vlad the Impaler had anger management issues.’ There are some forms of understatement that are verging on the downright euphemistic.

Mike Dearing, who made this admission, has the job title ‘Interim Head of Service Transformation’. Enough said. Apparently his own job is also only around ‘for a bit’ too. And why do we always, nowadays, have to employ someone extra to do what should have been done already by the people already there?

I think there are very few taxpayers (council or national) who do not hold the view that the monoliths of government at all levels are grotesquely overstaffed at the management end and criminally understaffed at the sharp end. This applies to local councils, government departments, the health service and even the good old BBC, where there used to be a joke about the new role of ‘deputy assistant head of paper clips’ – clearly ludicrous in the fine detail, but not in its indication of a culture of self perpetuating and constantly amoeba-like sub-dividing middle management.

When I first worked in television, the production team comprised a director, a producer (who might both have had assistants), a floor manager and an assistant floor manager. Over the years were added co-ordinating producers, line producers, production associates, production assistants, production unit managers, executive producers, casting directors – the list was endless. One is tempted to wonder how on earth they managed 40 years ago. But they did. So the budget now is already under stress before the ‘creatives’ come on board and there is less investment available for the writers and actors. The same is true at Bucks County Council. I heard an education chief addressing a group of head teachers and chairmen of governors recently.

She said current financial constraints had resulted in the necessity to make heavy cuts in administration expenditure at County Hall, but that school budgets would not be adversely affected. It doesn’t take an Einstein to realise how much more the school budgets might have benefited, had those apparently manageable and sizeable cuts been made a decade or more ago. And when there are schools, county wide, with leaky roofs and classrooms past their ‘teach-in by’ dates, it is disgraceful that they weren’t.