There was a whistle-blowing insider article in the Daily Mail (note: proceed with caution) a few months ago. A graduate who had been working for a council plann

There was a whistle-blowing insider article in the Daily Mail (note: proceed with caution) a few months ago. A graduate who had been working for a council planning department in London for a year decided to spill the beans. Basically they only worked a few hours per day (some actually took their phones off the hook and took naps), it was impossible to fire anyone, they went to lots of nice catered 'workshops' for traning, and despite the terrible inefficiency they had absolutely no budget problems: whenever someone wanted to build sonething in the borough, they had to pay £2000 for a simple 'consultation' (basically just a meeting, no research beforehand) and then wait months and incur more fees for their application to be processed. Apparently architects new their game though so they would respond more promptly to them.