What is Lambeth Council proposing?
Lambeth Council is proposing to have yet more services within Housing provided by the private sector. Under an arrangement referred to as "Partnering" or "long-term contracts", private companies will bid for ten-year contracts worth over 1.2 billion pounds to carry out all manner of services from April 2009. Some of these services are already privatised under smaller contracts (such as repairs and maintenance, graffiti removal and garbage collection), and others which are currently carried out in-house (such as grounds maintenance, out-of-hours repairs, the Lambeth Service Centre, planned maintenance, and major works). Hundreds of Lambeth staff could be transferred to private contractors and face attacks on their terms and conditions.
What will "Partnering" mean for services?
Among the most worrying proposals is that the council will get rid of technical officers who visit tenants' homes to specify what repairs need to be done. In this way the contractor will be responsible for specifying, carrying out and monitoring all responsive repairs - a sure recipe for disaster. The council are also considering moving the call centre to a private company out of the borough - or even out of the country!
"Partnering" will mean public services being taken even further away from public control. It will mean less accountability and make it much harder to pick up the pieces when things go wrong.
Why is the council proposing "Partnering"?
The Council claims that "Partnering" will lead to efficiency savings, but despite repeated requests from Lambeth trade unions and from Lambeth tenants, it is unable or unwilling to release any figures - such as cost projections or surveys of other boroughs - showing that this is likely to be the case.
Even if "Partnering" were to save money, it seems likely that this would be at the expense of the high quality services tenants and leaseholders need and deserve, with contractors seeking to cut corners wherever possible in order to keep costs down, rather than investing in high quality materials and the high level of service which would provide the greatest value for money in the long run.
What’s the alternative?
The extensive experience we have in Lambeth of contractors carrying out sub-standard work and fraudulently charging for work they haven't carried out suggests that we should be moving away from working with private contractors, rather than handing them the entire budget for service provision.
By directly providing services through a Direct Labour Organisation we could stop profits being taken out of the borough to line the pockets of private contractors. A DLO would also provide jobs and apprenticeships for local youth.
Plenty of local authorities provides services in house through DLOs, some of them extremely successfully. Lambeth officers refuse to even come up with costs and plans for this option, they refuse to even consider this alternative.
Who decides?
Tenants' representatives are being consulted on the content of the specifications but there is no suggestion that residents will have a say on whether the council goes ahead with "Partnering" or not. Following on from the council's recent decision to apply to the Government for permission to form an ALMO, despite there not being a majority of tenants in favour of the idea, there are great fears among residents that this could strike another serious blow for the future of council housing in the borough.
What's happening now?
Lambeth Council is currently finishing the tender documentation to be sent out to potential contractors. The selection process will take place this autumn and the intention is that the new contracts will take effect from April 2009.
Lambeth UNISON has asked the Council for guarantees that terms, conditions and pensions will be protected in the event of jobs being transferred. UNISON has also asked for staff to be given the choice on whether to transfer or not, and for staff to have the opportunity to transfer back to the council if they are made redundant by the private contractor. It would be easy for the Council to do this by writing clauses into the new contracts, but they are refusing to do so.
UNISON is currently holding a consultative ballot on industrial action should management fail to provide these guarantees.
A public meeting on 8 May was attended by over 70 tenants, leaseholders and members of staff. A further meeting has been called by the Public Services Not Private Profit Campaign on 11 June. Word is spreading around estates and through the trade union movement.
Come and join our campaign!
For more information please email info@saveourservices.org.uk.