Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardCoulter
You forgot to mention your own vested interest in not wanting any further cuts to local Government funding.
Services classified as statutory can be reclassified or outsourced to the private/voluntary sector. They need not always be viewed as statutory functions, nor must they always be carried out by the local authority.
Didn't you learn anything from CCT/Best value/market testing?
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Yes I am employed in local government, however because I work in a specialist area our team also works in a consultancy capacity for other authorities/public bodies and many private companies and we actually make a net contribution to the budget. The surplus we make is directly fed back to support other functions of the authority, so I feel I'm in a situation which fortunately shields my team from the majority of cuts but the downside is the pressure we can be under to fulfill our primary role to the authority while at the same time still bringing in the expected income.
Services can be reclassified and moved from local authority's remits. However, changes like those you seem to want to see do not necessarily result in an improved service. There are many services that wouldn't benefit from the ideology of outsourcing for the sake of outsourcing - for example, I'd rather have food hygiene staying in the public domain than being turned in to a money making enterprise run by some massive PLC which has profit for shareholders higher up its list of priorities than public health.
How would you feel if your local authority announced it was knocking any disability related work on the head because the rules had changed and they were no longer responsible? How would you feel if your local authority sold all their on and off road parking spaces to Megaparking PLC who announced the end of free parking for Blue Badge holders because they could sell those spaces to paying customers to increase their profits? How would you feel if your local authority decided to stop it's adaptions sevices etc etc.
I think you'll find by now most services that can return a nice profit for the private sector are already there, and those services the council's can palm off to volunteers have been palmed off. Those left are pretty much unprofitable or of a type nobody would do for free.
Compulsory competitive tendering, best value or whatever you call it isn't the panecea you maybe think it is. I'd imagine a good proportion of services are tendered on a cost vs quality basis where the tender is scored for price and quality to ensure a good quality service because sometimes cheapest can be so poor the final cost is very high when the additional cost to make good the poor service is included. For small projects the additional administration costs of the tendering process can more than outweigh any resultant savings. Fortunately, most authorities have processes in place to enable them to avoid pointless competitive procurement procedures for example when there is only one supplier or if the service or item being procured is logically best from one supplier for reasons of say service continuity.
Anyway, this is moving away from the subject of the thread.