Continuing our campaign against the public sector clock off, new TPA research this week has exposed the flaws and unrealistic expectations in South Cambridgeshire’s plan to improve productivity. 

If making such simple changes could unleash such a huge increase in local authority employees’ productivity, taxpayers will surely conclude that this underperforming town hall has been over staffed for years. Clearly the saving on staff should have been passed on to local ratepayers, particularly when council tax was raised by the maximum permitted this year.

Council claims about savings made are even undermined by their own report. As our research shows, using the council’s own figures, they’re saving just half of what they say. Local residents are facing reduced services and rising tax bills, whilst the people they pay for are given an extra day off every week.

The BBC was back in the news this week with fresh questions around trust and transparency. While many people were focussed on the headlines, our team was poring over Auntie’s latest annual accounts and making some alarming findings. Shockingly, the bigwigs at the broadcaster are really bringing home the bacon, with a £72 million bill for all BBC employees earning over £100,000. 

Adding insult to injury the average salary at the BBC for all staff is a handsome £49,305, 78 per cent more than the average salary for the rest of the country.

The problem with all of this? The BBC is funded through the licence fee, an effective TV tax. No matter what you think of the Beeb, you have to cough up if you own a TV whether you watch the BBC or not. 

Our chief executive, John O’Connell, was quick to call out this latest kick in the teeth for licence fee payers telling Express readers: “If the BBC wants to pay these huge sums, they should move to a subscription model and axe the tax.” A point that Elliot also made live on GB News, “the BBC is not going through a good time… and people who want to opt out do not have the choice to do so.” 

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. Our research has shown just how the BBC can be reformed and the licence fee scrapped. 

You can stay up to date with our campaign to Axe the Tax by clicking here!

Plane silly 

We all want to see our nation’s leaders flying our flag on the world stage, but it takes the biscuit that the government blew nearly £800,000 painting a flag on a second prime ministerial plane, which we revealed this week. Is one not enough?

Venting the frustration felt across the country, our media campaign manager Conor Holohan told the Mirror taxpayers would be livid, and added: “Ministers should rein in their love of luxury.”

We’ve warned before of the woke NHS network events that take staff away from the front lines. This week, our investigation revealed that these networks put on almost a thousand events between January 2022 and March 2023, which has lost the NHS a whopping 26,000 working hours.

It continues to shock taxpayers that meals served on the parliamentary estate are subsidised. Surely parliamentarians on generous taxpayer-funded wages can afford to feed themselves?

Our digital campaign manager, Joe Ventre, told the Sunday Express: “While Brits grapple with high food inflation, parliamentarians tuck in to cheap meals at their expense. These catering subsidies should have been scrapped long ago." 

As part of our Global Quangos Uncovered campaign, TPA intern Callum McGoldrick has taken a long look at the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), which receives millions from taxpayers every year, £7 million in 2021/22 alone.