Harrow Council, in London, is promising to cut back on jargon. STEPHEN LEWIS hopes York would too.


NEXT time you take your young people to the amenity green space to enjoy some recreational activities, think on. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just take the kids to the park to play?

Not if you’re a council worker, it wouldn’t. Something seems to happen to the most ordinary of people when they accept a job in local government.

Their ability to use simple language evaporates. Instead, they start talking about synergies, significant lacks of provision, and facilitating multi-agency partnerships.

Traffic wardens become civil enforcement officers, binmen are transformed into refuse collectors (any bets on how long before they become refuse collection facilitators?) and lollipop ladies morph into school crossing patrollers.

Now, one local authority has had enough. Harrow Council in London is waging war on council-speak. It has published a list of the “seven sins of jargon” most hated by the public, which it plans to ban and replace with plain English equivalents.

The “seven sins”, with their simple substitutes, are:

* Civil enforcement officers – to be known as traffic wardens.

* School crossing patrollers – lollipop men/ women.

* Stakeholder engagement – asking people what they think.

* Civic amenity site – rubbish tip.

* Multi-agency approach – different groups working on the same thing.

* Controlled parking zones – permit parking or double yellow lines.

* Public realm – open areas like streets.

To give City of York Council its due, it doesn’t actually believe in controlled parking zones. The buzzword in York is ResPark instead. And thankfully, we don’t refer to rubbish tips as civic amenity sites, preferring to call them household waste recycling centres instead.

But York is just as guilty as other local authorities in talking about multi-agency approaches and stakeholder engagement, civil enforcement officers and school crossing patrollers.

And the council has a few choice phrases of its very own. “Amenity green spaces” comes from a recent agenda, as do phrases such as “the outer fringe of the walled city” and “this development…. will complement and operate in synergy with the recently-opened student accommodation adjacent” (see panel). No wonder so few people are interested in local politics.

So is it time for York to do a Harrow and cut out the jargon?

Ian Gillies, the leader of the Conservative group on the city council, certainly thinks so.

“It is horrendous!” he said. Plain language is immensely important if local authorities are to encourage more ordinary people to take an interest in local affairs, he says.

“I’m not for spending money unnecessarily, but perhaps we could find a budget to create a department for common sense.”

Inflated job titles particularly get his goat – the wealth of facilitators and co-ordinators that clog up the council ranks. He’d like to see job titles reflecting what people actually do – such as binmen and street sweeper.

“And we should start at the top. Why not call the chief executive the town clerk?”

Other groups on the council agree that jargon is bad. As an IT worker, Green councillor Dave Taylor spent 15 years battling IT jargon. Clarity and simplicity is even more important when you’re talking about public services, he says.

Labour group leader David Scott agrees. There are reasons for saying school crossing patroller instead of lollipop lady, he accepts: it is gender neutral and avoids stereotyping.

And some council jargon is undoubtedly introduced to enable council staff to be precise and technically correct in what they say.

But when jargon takes over, local authorities run the risk of alienating people.

“It is particularly alienating for those who need most help – and what I fear is that it is exactly those people that we end up forgetting about.”

He himself, when he first became a councillor, was given reports to read that he simply couldn’t understand, he admits.

“So I would like to see more clear language.

“We have a duty to the public to use it all the time. We should be actively looking at it every year.”

So perhaps the authority should appoint someone with specific responsibility to monitor council language for jargon.

They would need a good job title, though. Anybody interested in being the council’s new Public Communications Interface and Comprehensibility Facilitator?


Prime examples of York’s council-speak:

* From a recent Local Development Framework Working Group agenda:

“Overall, the current provision of open space in the Urban East analysis area is insufficient. The typologies with a significant lack of provision are natural and semi-natural open space, amenity green space, provision for children and young people, allotments and outdoor sports facilities.”

* From a planning committee agenda: “It is envisaged that this development, if approved, will complement and operate in synergy with the recently-opened student accommodation adjacent.”

* From another planning report: “The application proposes to erect a building with a footprint of approximately 42m x 67m.”

* From a report by a ‘Sustainability Officer’ on a university planning application: “This is on the whole a good Sustainability Statement. In particular I welcome the university commitment to achieving BREEAM very good with a target of achieving excellent for the scheme.”

* From an education scrutiny committee report: “There is a public perception of inequality in life chances because of background and differential service provision. There is also a perception that teenage kids are not properly provided for and that there is not enough affordable things for them to do.”


Some silly job titles:

Some bonkers York Council job-titles:

* Assistant director for partnerships and early intervention. Eh?

* Director of learning, culture and children’s services – or education director, as the job used to be known.

* Democracy officer. Sounds important – but what on earth does this person do?

And finally, just to prove it’s not only councils who are guilty, last year First York boss Richard Eames said his company had “taken on 20 customer hosts.” Um, so those will be conductors, then?