Job titles put city in line for best Bull award

Prior to the shake-up at Hull Council, Rachel Roberts had been Assistant Head of Sports Development, but is now “Assistant Head of Service (Universal Offer)”.

Her boss in the children and young people’s services directorate is Ken Sainty, the acting “Head of Localities and Learning”, and the department also has an “Assistant Head of Service Safeguarding (Central Duty, Assessment and Localities)”, and three people who each share the title “Assistant Head of Service Integrated Locality Services”.

The authority says the titles reflect the broader responsibilities managers now bear as a result of cost-cutting.

But the changes have, however, provoked the ire of the Plain English Campaign, which is considering the council for a Golden Bull award, an annual prize for the “best” examples of gobbledygook.

A spokeswoman said: “This ‘universal offer’ is internal jargon for local government that suits their purposes. What the public are being offered is not clear from these words. It sounds like a ‘one size fits all’ solution to providing public services. We pay our council taxes for services we understand. How can I benefit from this ‘universal offer’ if it means nothing to me?”

She added: “This job title will be a prime candidate for our 2011 Golden Bulls. It does everything we are fighting against and would appear to give us nothing we are paying for.”

The council said in a statement: “The council has got a significantly reduced budget available for this year, which means that, as a responsible organisation, we have reviewed our senior management structure to realign services to make service delivery more effective, and to reduce costs.

“We were in consultation with the trade unions for three months from January about how we could best shape our future organisation to deliver services and avoid compulsory redundancies.

“As a result of this we have reduced the number of assistant heads of service and expanded their roles and responsibilities. For some this means that they have much wider responsibilities than before, which is reflected in the more generic job titles.

“The number of managers across children and young people’s services has also reduced by 30 per cent in order to ensure that resources are targeted at front line services.”

Comment: Page 10.