17,000 complaints over council gobbledegook
Monday 21st February 2011, 11:30AM GMT.
Training in ‘plain English’ will be given to staff at a Staffordshire Council after 17,000 residents called in just one year to complain they were baffled by jargon in letters and publications.
Some £10,000 was wasted in officer time alone dealing with the avoidable queries so now the authority is to produce a top tips guide on the English language. Senior managers and councillors will be offered training workshops on how to keep their English ‘plain’.
South Staffordshire Council Staff will be urged to reduce the length of letters by cutting out unnecessary words and references to complex legislation.
It could herald the end of “partner agencies”, “community engagement,” “gateway reviews” and “holistic approaches” in the district.
Language used by councils in official publications has become notoriously wordy and is often packed full of references to legislation and ‘management speak’.
Council chief executive Steve Winterflood acknowledged that residents can be left perplexed by the jargon.
“People don’t want to read a letter full of jargon and council-speak when we could tell them exactly what they need to know in half the time” he said.
“We know that councils are big culprits in this. But being clear, concise and losing some of the local government jargon that nobody uses in real life is just common sense.
He added:”We deal with lots of complex issues such as benefits and planning applications, so making sure we get clear and concise information out to local people is crucial.”
It comes after lobbying group the TaxPayers’ Alliance spoke out about “council gobbledegook”, criticising authorities for frustrating residents with “a blizzard of indecipherable nonsense.”
Council spokesman Jamie Angus, whose communications department will monitor progress, said: “We’re by no means the worst council in the region and our level of avoidable contact has fallen each year over the past two years and looks set to fall again this year too.
“We want the information we produce to be clear and concise so we can make things easier for our customers.”
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“… our level of avoidable contact has fallen” – erm, I don’t think he’s quite got the point, has he!!
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Perhaps its the level of education of the people the letters are received by that also needs up grading!!Council Language is wordy? Oh Maybe its the recipients that can only understand a few sentences at a time. Like I said perhaps its time for these people to also get an upgrade in their education so they can understand whats going on.
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I would suggest that referring to street lamps as “lighting columns” and talking about a “civic amenities site” when they mean the tip does not indicate intelligence or education, but rather a lack of it.
And if such people think that using such ridiculous terminology makes them sound intelligent, they are even more stupid than we give them credit for.
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Like I said if people can’t understand that terminology..They need an upgrade in their education! Its not rocket science language is it now??
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Don’t you mean “It’s not rocket science”, with an apostrophe to denote an abbreviation for “it is”
That’s not rocket science language either, so perhaps there others who need to upgrade their education.
You do not say whether you work in local government yourself, but if you do, perhaps you will be so kind as to upgrade the education of some of your colleagues who incorrectly use initial capital letters when referring to job titles (eg Chief Planning Officer)and even buildings (eg the Police Station). These are common nouns, not proper nouns and should be lower case (chief planning officer/police station).
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You could understand it though couldn’t you? So don’t be so picky. Most council language is easy enough to understand as most people know. Stop being pedantic!! Answer to your question is..No I don’t work for the council, and I don’t know why you presumed I did just because of my comments. Like I said there are over 800K being looked after by Staffs council, so 17k must be those who are not quite up to the mark with their literacy skills.
Capitals are fine to use providing you use them constantly and don’t mix them with lower case.There are no fast rules on that one Boster.
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The Queen is capital T and Capital Q. Job titles are in capitals..I think you need to know where your nearest college is Boster!
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The Queen is not a job title, it is a courtesy title used as a given name for a specific individual.
It is the same with mayor/Mayor; if you are talking about, say, the Mayor of Wolverhampton, it is upper case as it is a formal courtesy title; if you are saying Wolverhampton’s mayor it is lower case as it is a job title that relates to a location. Likewise, if you are talking about Councillor Bob Bloggs, it is upper case as it forms part of his name, whereas if you say Bob Bloggs, councillor for Anyville ward, it is lower case, because it is merely a job title. I could go on, but I sense it is getting a little boring now. But I will just say there are hard and fast rules, and I have spent some years studying them.
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By the way, I’m not suggesting you need to go back to college – just spend £60 on a decent dictionary (say Oxford or Chambers); you should find it all explained in there
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What a typically public sector response. They need to go on a course to learn how to speak English.
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Me thinks Brian 66 is employed by the Council by sticking up for the same whilst their emploees abrogate their duties and circumlocute blabbernonsense, coupled with inane banality, at the same time as patronising the local council tax payer.
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Perhaps you should read your own response..Makes my point exactly!!If you can’t write it properly perhaps thats why you can’t read it eh?
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Shouldn’t that be: “that’s why you can’t red it, eh?”
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Okay, I made a prat of myself there with a typing error.
Should have said “that’s why you can’t read it, eh?”
But the point remains the same. Correct spelling punctuation and grammar is the mark of a good education; contrived, long-winded terminology is the mark of a second-rate worker with a chip on the shoulder.
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Staffs council looks after a population of over 800k and only 17k of them complain??Speaks for itself. The other 770 odd thousands must be the intelligent ones!!Or the ones who understand English.
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“… our level of avoidable contact has fallen” – erm, I don’t think he’s quite got the point, has he!!
that has made my day
Mind you his name should have given you a clue
OOps or is that not thinking in the box and maybe racist
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Maybe “avoidable contact” could also include axing the expensively printed full colour “news” letters sent out on a regular basis? Should save something off the budget and a little off the inevitable council tax rise?
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To help ordinary people understand local authority gobbledegook, I will provide the following translations.
partner agencies – bureaucratic quangos that charge vast amounts of money to provide services we can often do without
community engagement – going through the motions of consultation once a decision has been made
holistic approaches – ideas dreamt up by spaced-out hippies who believe the weather forecast is proof of global warming
gateway reviews – what the park keeper does at closing time
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So if you and Me understand it Boster, why can’t the 17,000 who complained??
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1. Regardless of the intelligence of the 17,000 who complained, they are taxpayers who the council is supposed to be there to serve. If the council does not communicate in a manner they understand, it is failing in its duties.
2. The first time I heard “civic amenities site”, I didn’t know it meant the tip. Let’s face it, civic amenities can mean anything
3. Of the 783,000 who have not complained, how many would you say share your view? I’ve never gone to the trouble of making a formal complaint, but I still feel very angry every time I see such abuse of the English language.
4. The art of good communication is making complex subjects easy to understand. The hallmark of bad communication is making simple things sound more complex than they are.
When I was at university, it was always the less-able students who thought they would get better marks if they threw in a few big words and long-winded explanations. Needless to say, they didn’t.
After all, who would you say was the best communicator – Winston Churchill, who used simple, clear concise language, or John Prescott, who spoke gobbledook as his first language?
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