Month: July 2013

Yesterday and today the media are reporting another story about contractors ripping off the public purse.

“private security company G4S for overcharging tens of millions of pounds on electronic tagging contracts for offenders.”

This branch has been clear from the start that if you use the private sector you need to have the skills and expertise and resources to manage them. In response to our concerns our council has responded by creating the commissioning council in order to manage the private sector using “relationship management” Who comes up with such jargon? In the real world with stories like G4S and Serco the relationship with all private sector contractors taking public money should be very clear: 

“If you are taking public money and you don’t deliver you are not getting paid and if you over charge us then the contract is ripped up and you have to pay, end of story.”

However in order to enforce this you need lots of resources to ensure robust contract monitoring team…..but the catch here is that to do this can mean the business case for outsourcing does not stack up!

So with a history of private sector failures in the public sector what has been the clever thinking? Answer—The Thin Client!

UNISON has written at length about the ‘thin client’ . To put it simply it seeks to reduce the size of the client team down (less people monitoring the contractor) and relies unbelievably upon the contractor reporting itself..?

“You could not make this up but it is true.”

So when you read about G4S (again..Olympics anyone! ) and see they only found out when they started to re-tender, then it shows the ‘light touch’ approach to contract monitoring is simply unacceptable.

“Grayling told MPs that G4S and a second major supplier, Serco, had been overcharging on the existing £700m contract, with the Ministry of Justice being billed for non-existent services that dated back to at least 2005 and possibly as long ago as 1999.”

What does the above say about the culture of the contractors who must have know what they were doing?

(Footnote “the market’s instinctive reaction – 8% off Serco’s share price and 5.5% of G4S’s more lowly rated stock.”)

Did the Coalition government promise better control?

I remember back in 2010 government minister Francis Maude saying this in regards the private sector contracts with the govern­ment:

“We will expect you to be transparent in all your dealings with us and for the terms of the contracts we sign with you to go up online.”

Oh dear, not turned out as he hoped and he is now saying

“The public rightly expects government suppliers to meet the highest standards, and for taxpayers’ money to be spent properly and trans­parently. As a result of what the Justice Secretary outlined earlier today, I am launching an immediate review into government-held G4S and Serco contracts.”

You can read more here and here

UNISON has for the last two weeks been trying to establish what plans Your Choice are putting in place for consultation with Parents/Carers.

After Parents/Carers threatened a Judicial Review Your Choice put some of their restructure plans on hold.

However, Your Choice has allowed a sixth of the workforce to go before the consultation begins. This has had a terrible impact on morale of the frontline workforce and we are now receiving news that more staff are finding alternative jobs with others applying to get out of Your Choice services. For instance 60% of staff working in Barnet Independent Living Service have already left the service.

UNISON has asked Your Choice on a number of occasions to provide details of their  consultation plans in order we can try and bring some stability to the workforce. UNISON has advised our members not to leave and wait to hear the outcome of the consultation. Many of our members have provided a quality service and built up strong relationships with services users and carers. It is UNISON’s view that this strength is being undermined by the restructure and worsened by the lack of information sharing. We are concerned that the high turnover of staff in these type of services increases the likelihood of a serious incident in the workplace.

On the Your Choice website here http://www.yourchoicebarnet.org/news/2013/06/2013/06/consultation-process-update/ it states: 

Our announcement giving the Board’s decisions on our restructuring proposals said that decisions concerning Valley Way and Supported Living changes will be postponed until a full consultation has been completed.

This will be held with service users, parents and carers of both services.  The Valley Way consultation will be for six weeks, followed immediately by the Supported Living consultation which will be for a further six weeks. The Valley Way invitation and consultation document will be sent out by 12 July, inviting families to personal meetings during the week of 22 July.

We’ll post further updates as we progress.

This provides very little useful information.

UNISON produced a response to the staff consultation which you can read here we are concerned that the stability of the workforce is being further undermined by the lack of information/communication to the workforce and the trade unions.   

Look out for further updates

The wordle below sums up the feelings and issues facing staff working for Your Choice.