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What I wish I could tell my boss: 'You take money from people who have the least'

File photo dated 07/11/14 of bank notes in a wallet.
‘Our local council has seen its annual spending on services fall by around 40% in real terms since 2010.’ Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

You don’t understand that our work is hard. You ask us to deliver complex services, yet our work is undermined by budget cuts. Waiting lists for NHS hospitals have now hit a 10-year high. The level of assessed risk before we help a child in need has been raised. The charity Action for Children recently published a report that showed tens of thousands of children at risk of harm across the UK are not being helped by local authorities. We simply can’t afford to.

Government budget cuts bite deep. Our local council has seen its annual spending on services fall by about 40% in real terms since 2010. You have asked us to save another 15%–20% in the coming years.

Few realise that government has withdrawn so much funding from local authorities. You ask people to stretch themselves. You watch as many of the most vulnerable people in our community fall into crisis, with the safety net now gone.

In this mess, you ask us to do our best – and we do. Even though our pay packets are 20% lighter than we expected them to be. Even when we find ourselves unable to afford housing, or having to visit foodbanks ourselves.

I understand that being chief executive isn’t easy. To manage a council as budgets fall fast requires great skill. But if you can’t do it, you need to be honest with us.

If you cannot be good, be gone.

But of course you won’t leave. To resign you’d have to set aside your salary – paid at multiples of the people you manage; you’d have to forego the pension benefits you have cut from your staff; you’d have to face up to the fact that you are making a profit out of our community’s suffering.

Your bosses are the local political leaders of our time, and to them I say: step up. Fight for the most vulnerable people in society, fight for our local communities and the areas we all live in. Stop taking money away from those who have the least.

The public services that we all rely on are disappearing, the role of the state is eroding and the value it provides is diminishing in the heat of cuts.

To my boss I say: if you can’t resign, please use your position to do more for our community. It makes sense. If these services which we rely on suffer, we all do.