There is an interesting (no really) phenomenon with public sector budgets whereby if you are a department or organisation that works hard all year, provides a good service and manages due to efficiency to finish the year under your budget, you are penalised. The excess is likely to be reclaimed to pay for another department/organisation’s inefficiencies and you are likely to meet the new financial year with a reduced budget – after all, if you can do it one year, surely you can save even more the next.
Somewhere along the line you can see the logic in the above. You can see the young scamp that had the idea and you can imagine the backpatting around the office. “Brilliant James, that’ll give us the chance to pay off our deficit”.
Unfortunately, it’s not actually a good idea: the result is that budget managers do not attempt to save money through efficiency to come in under their budget (efficiency savings are only made in the event of crippling cuts), this will just make their lives harder. Instead, they will ensure that in the final months of the financial year, they spend every penny – if need be, on pure rubbish. This is why you may see at the moment the end of your ‘perfectly good condition’ road getting dug up, or a sudden burst of speed humps appearing. You may witness the parks full of yellow jacketed malcontents digging holes and putting in fragile trees that are smashed down by the kids next month.
And obviously if you are a contractor for the public-sector, this time of year feels like the gravy train has come home.