Private v Public
July 14, 2012 1 Comment
I read with interest this evening that John Dix writes on his blog that,
“Conservative Councillors labour under the belief that all private companies are good and all public sector staff are bad”
http://reasonablenewbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/lessons-barnet-need-to-learn-from-g4s.html?m=1
This is simply not true.
I can’t speak on behalf of all Conservative Councillors but this one believes in this tough economic times – better services for less money. Hence why the One Barnet project is looking at all our services and looking at better and cheaper ways of running our services.
The library service is a classic example of this.
By making changes to the way our service is run, moving Friern Barnet library and North Finchley library into the Arstdepot and letting the community run HGS library ( an offer which friern residents were given in Friary House) we are able to,
Spend more money on books
Put literacy at the heart of everything we do
Open our libraries longer
And make every primary school child a library member.
Other services will be outsourced and some will be merged with other boroughs – all to make the services better, cheaper and keep council tax down.
And our recycling service has been outsourced for years with out any problems!
But you will not read that on his blog!
Robert Rams 
If what you say is true why did Barnet Council expressly preclude an in house bid for the two massive outsourcing contracts? Without a public sector comparator how can residents be assured we are receiving best value? Given the massive costs of implementing the contract so far, the huge redundancy costs and the experiences of other public sector outsourcing contracts which have gone horribly wrong I remain extremely concerned that this outsourcing project will simply not deliver the objectives which I am sure all residents want, an effeicient and effectively run council. As you know Robert I have no idealogical problems against outsourcing. My issue is the scale and complexity of this contract without a pilot and which cannot be reversed should it go wrong.