Capita Property Services in Southampton

CAPITA have been named as the preferred bidder in the senior officer reports going to scrutiny committee on Thursday 29 November.

You can view all the reports here on Barnet Council website http://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=123&MId=7348

One of the key issues raised by UNISON and Barnet Alliance concerns ‘lesson learnt’ from other poor outsourcing projects. At last weeks scrutiny committee councillors were told that the council had learnt from other council experiences.

I wonder if they came across the report below ?

Southampton Council has a long term contract with CAPITA.

Take a look at this committee report on CAPITA Property Services Performance Review dated 15 December 2011

You can read the full report here

Here are some highlights

“The report identified that performance in Capita Property Services was poor and client satisfaction was below the mean.”

“During the financial year 2010/2011 the number and range of issues that arose between service departments and Capita Property Services increased. A significant number of these were escalated within the dispute resolution procedure to the highest levels within the partnership. As a result the perception within the service areas and key stakeholders within the Council of the performance of the property service gave rise to a number of areas of concern.”

“Poor value for money due to high fees: A number of issues highlighted

concerns within service areas over the fees charged by Capita.

Disputes over fees have formed a very high proportion of the Property Services issues. The cause of many of the issues has been attributed to:

• A lack of clarity when fees have been proposed by Capita;

• Differing interpretation of the fee tables in the contract by discrete business units operating within the Capita office;”

 

“Poor reactive maintenance of school buildings” This has led to difficult decisions regarding prioritising expenditure and a perception that Capita are responsible for the poor maintenance of the schools.”

 “Quality of Professional Services: A number of issues have related to the quality of the professional services received from Capita.• Service errors were escalated to issues due to a lack of willingness on the part of Capita to accept responsibility for them and take corrective actions.”

 “Key Performance Indicator: The services provided by Capita Property Services are monitored by a selection of indicators. The reporting by Capita of their performance during the first three years of the partnership was not supported by robust assurance data and the results were often obtained immediately prior to reporting to the Council”

Finally

“The performance issues in the service provision by Capita Property Services have led to a significant amount of senior management time and resources,”