Transformation performance of contracts.
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Failures, delays and soaring cost of Barnet Council’s Street Lighting PFI contract
The London Borough of Barnet signed a £100m 25-year PFI street lighting contract with Barnet Lighting Services Limited (Bouygues Construction and Mill Group infrastructure fund) in April 2006. This Briefing details the delays and performance failures by the private contractor, the lack of audit despite the high risks and cost increases borne by the Council, and the lack of regular, comprehensive and publicly available monitoring reports.
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25% failure rate of strategic partnership contracts
Nationally, 25% of 44 contracts have either been terminated, reduced in scope with services and staff returned in-house, or experienced major problems. The briefing gives brief details of the strategic partnership contracts and Barnet Councils poor track record in monitoring smaller outsourced contracts (October 2012).
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Terminate Capita Contracts and Redesign the Council
A demand to terminate Barnet Council's Capita Contracts and Redesign the Council has been made by Barnet UNISON.
Barnet Council plans to carry out a review of three options - either to maintain the status quo, return some services in-house or to terminate both the back-office services and regeneration contracts and return to in-house provision. However, the Branch are convinced that Capita's contract performance failures warrant immediate termination of both contracts which makes a review pointless. This should be accompanied by a redesign of the Council to integrate services and abolish commissioning; service planning with users and staff participation; social, economic, equality, environmental impact assessment and rebuilding the capability and capacity of the Council.
See earlier report on How the London Borough of Barnet was stopped from becoming the capital of outsourcing and privatisation.
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The Way Out of Financial Crisis - Barnet's LATC
Your Choice Barnet Ltd (YCB), planned to make £2m profit over a four-year period from residents with physical disabilities and learning difficulties to subsidize London Borough of Barnet taxpayers. It is, as predicted, in financial crisis. This analysis for the Campaign Against the Destruction of Disabled Support Services (CADDSS) exposes the scale of the company’s financial crisis, the failure to attract new service users and revenue, the totally inadequate approach to engagement and the drastic staff restructuring proposals, which it claimed would not affect service users and carers. The report sets out a detailed case for full and continuing engagement of service users, carers and community organisations, together with staff and trade unions, in the design, delivery and review of service provision. There is a very substantive case for returning Your Choice Barnet services back to in-house. See earlier reports for Barnet UNISON on the Options Appraisal, Business Case and Business Plan which predicted the financial crisis. Critique of Barnet Council's Options Appraisal for Adult Social Care In-House Provider Services (August 2010), Analysis of Business Case for Local Authority Trading Company (May 2011) and Local Authority Trading Company (LATC) for Adult and Housing Services (January 2012)