Suffolk county council voted last week to contract out many of its services to the private sector, a step that will mean all but a few hundred of its 27,000-strong workforce losing their jobs. The Tory-run authority plans to redefine itself as an “enabling council”, employing only people to manage and monitor contracts with its private providers. Highways, libraries, children’s centres and even the council’s records office are expected to be offloaded during the first phase, due to start in April next year. Jeremy Pembroke, the council leader said “bold, imaginative” thinking was necessary to cope with the 25% cut in the council’s £1.1 billion budget that is expected to follow the government’s comprehensive spending review next month.
The public service union Unison was outraged. It said the council had “leapt headlong into a gamble with services and jobs” in its rush to slash more than £300m from its budget and claimed service providers would be unaccountable to voters. The plan has implicit backing from the Conservative party in Westminster, though. Last year, in opposition, David Cameron told the Local Government Association that councils might do “literally whatever they like, as long as it’s legal” to cut outgoings. The plans also resemble proposals made in the 1980s by the late Nicholas Ridley, then a Tory minister. He said councils should have just one annual meeting “to award all the council service contracts to private firms”.
Suffolk is just one of a number of Tory-led councils to announce radical privatisation plans in recent years. Brighton and Hove council is to start restructuring its services in November, outsourcing them to the voluntary sector where possible. In August last year Barnet council in north London announced plans to sell off libraries and outsource elements of its environmental health and planning departments in an attempt to cut £15m a year in spending. The plans were dubbed “easyCouncil”, because householders would be able to pay supplementary fees for improved services, much as the budget airline easyJet charges for extras: applicants could pay extra to jump the queue for planning permission, for example.
Other creative cost-cutters include the Labour-led Islington and Camden councils, which announced plans this month to share a chief executive. This is small fry compared with some measures taken by US authorities. In an attempt to fend off bankruptcy, the Californian city of Maywood announced in June that it was laying off its entire workforce, disbanding the police force and handing services to the Los Angeles county sheriff and the nearby city of Bell. City spokesmen have boasted about the radical changes. “We’re on the cutting edge here. We’re the tip of the spear,” said Magdalena Prado, Maywood’s community-relations officer. Prado works for the city as a contractor.
Source:http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/Comment/article403536.ece
