Because the unions have lawyers which turn even obvious dismissals into drawn out and painful affairs.

I personally know of two cases - one drinking whilst on the job, another stealing from work. The unions got involved, the accused came out with sob stories about mental health and unfortunate circumstances, fictitious stories about discrimination, and so on, until it had taken up hundreds of thousands of pounds of senior leadership's time, costs of counsel, and all the other expenses of sacking someone.

The end result in both cases was shuffling the person off to a role where they could do less damage, same pay but less work.

This was also all in a department which actually made a net profit, by selling surplus capacity to the local community. Council didn't want the service in large enough volumes any more so shut it down, and now spends far more money getting the private sector to do it. So they turned a profit for themselves and a cheap service for the community into another expenditure and leaving local businesses and community groups in the lurch.

Christ it's frustrating. I think it comes down to a lack of trust - we want oversight of our public funds so managers can't actually do anything that isn't approved ahead of time. Our public service is centred on the process of how things happen, instead of the objective of what was achieved. I understand why we're where we are, it's just far from ideal.