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,…

A social and economic audit of plans to run-down the Royal Hospital in West Belfast in 1993 by transferring several specialities to the City Hospital. Examines the job losses and equality impacts, the potential impact on West Belfast and the public costs of unemployment. Calculation of the jobs multiplier and the public cost of unemployment…

An analysis of the costs of tendering services at the Down Lisburn NHS Trust affecting nearly 500 staff. It forecasts the savings claimed by the Trust will be significantly reduced or eliminated by client costs. Many of the staff live in three wards that are amongst the most deprived wards in Northern Ireland.

Guidelines for frontline involvement; corporate policies; summary of Working Together for Best Value research; involvement of frontline employees; commitment to quality employment, equity, sustainability and directly provided services; employees and unions involved throughout the Best Value process; re-organising in-house services; examining market testing options; local agreements; advice and support; technical and quality assessment, April 2001.

An essential practical guide to monitoring outsourced public services. Covers the practice and policies of monitoring; the need for monitoring; lessons for improvement; differential monitoring costs; monitoring and quality control plans; user and trade union role in monitoring, September 1991.

An analysis of the costs of tendering services at the Down Lisburn NHS Trust affecting nearly 500 staff. It forecasts the savings claimed by the Trust will be significantly reduced or eliminated by client costs. Many of the staff live in three wards that are amongst the most deprived wards in Northern Ireland.

Shows how the development of a market-based choice and contestability model of modernisation will erode democratic accountability and have a negative long-term effect on democratic institutions.

Demonstrates how a new era of privatisation is emerging and how this will impact on education.

Examines UK privatisation in the context of the sale of public assets in Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East and how transnational companies are reorganising to exploit the internationalisation of privatisation.

Cutting through the coalition government’s rhetoric of localism and ‘community rights’, Dexter Whitfield exposes a strategy to further destabilise and fracture public provision, accelerating marketisation and privatisation.