A town hall could hand control of ALL its services to private companies, charities, and voluntary groups as the spending cuts bite.
Council chiefs in Bury have drawn up the radical plan to tackle the financial crisis. They are already making redundancies in a bid to save £32.4m by 2014-15.
Now the Conservative leadership has thrown its weight behind making Bury an ‘enabling’ council – that buys and co-ordinates services but doesn’t provide any.
The plans would affect everything from parks and libraries to social services for vulnerable adults and children.
Some would be handed over to private companies, some to voluntary groups or charities, and some to other councils. Some are likely to be cut altogether.
One Labour MP has branded the plan ‘wholesale privatisation’ – but council leader Bob Bibby said it would make the town hall more efficient.
He said he sees a future where no services are actually provided by the council – so long as they could still be good quality and value.
He said. "If we can make sure the standard of those services is as good, if not better, than we currently have, using less resources, I see no reason why we shouldn’t go forward with that.
"The council’s role would be to make sure that that quality of service is continued. If I live next door to you and you can provide the same service as me but at a better quality and with less resources, why would you want me to provide it?
"If you look back to Margaret Thatcher, it was always envisaged that councils would become enablers."
Comment: A bold gamble, but also a massive one
Ivan Lewis, Labour MP for Bury South, said: "It is the same old Tories – disproportionate and unfair cuts accompanied by wholesale privatisation of public services.
"It is astonishing that the Lib Dems nationally and in Bury are supporting an ideological agenda which is more right-wing than Thatcherism."
The proposals are contained in a draft strategy – Transforming Bury. The document says ‘a range of options’ for providing services will be considered.
It says: "These include stopping the service, working with partners, self-management by community or voluntary groups, volunteering and commissioning to secure best value."
The strategy claims there are ‘unreasonably high’ expectations on councils to spend money on issues like anti-social behaviour – which could be tackled by communities themselves. And it questions whether the council should be spending money picking up litter rather than encouraging people not to drop rubbish in the first place.
The first services are already under review – include learning disabilities, parks, pest control, finance, highways, human resources, libraries and leisure.
Bury is facing a 16.6 per cent cut in its government grant and has so far announced it is losing 184 jobs. It is not clear how the radical proposals will affect the remaining workforce.
But the strategy says ‘it is likely that we will need a different skill set from our employees’.
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After this, why don;t they privatise the council and get a management company to hire other companies to do the work!
This just sound like a lazy solution and when ever things go wrong the council can pass blame to the private companies and never take responsibility!
This is not the first council to go this way, Suffolk has preceded it. contracting out services is much more effective, because the private sector is much more competent. Our local council does not appear to have a single department which is capable of acting effectively, every single one finds it easier to do nothing or to claim it's a civil matter and you should sort it out yourself.
So well done Bury the townspeople should find that they have a council which provides better services at more competetive prices, and that the people delivering them actually care.
Let me guess, all the services that can produce a profit will go to private firms and all the services that can't will go to charities to run.
And will all the private firms be doing this for nil profit or to generate profits which currently do not have to be generated for the council?
There may be some services that can be done more efficiently by a private firm but to apply this as a blanket strategy sounds like something Maggie would be proud of
Agree with clucking bells, it does raise the question of what purporse Mr Bibby and his Tory cronies and lib dem buddies will serve under EasyBury.
As well as undoubtedly detrimentally affecting services, what about the pay and conditions of the staff who will be privatised? Fewer people, being paid less, to provide a lesser service may be the Tory and Lib Dem way, but I don't think there's much of an appetite for it here in Greater Manchester. Apart from, of course, the swivel-eyed loons who spend their days ranting on the MEN's messageboards!
Unfortunately as we see with PFI/PPI contracts for new hospitals and public buildings - this "contracting out" route is not always more efficient and rarely cheaper.
Private companies can hold the taxpayer to ransom and if they are changed over - there is the inevitable time and money to be spent on getting another company up to speed doing the job - then rebidding for the work.
Meanwhile a legion of beancounters are needed to "monitor , appraise and assess" the work.
The real way to save money and "Transform Bury" is to weild an axe to the number of senior council posts and bring wages down proportionately to pre 1990 levels
After this I would want a comensurate reduction in the number of the gravy-train parasites who are paying themselves more than private company chief execs at the top of the council, and a comensurate reduction in council tax once the savings are made.
Bury council, like most councils, is a bloatocracy where jobs for the boys and nepotism is rife among the parasites who have a captive audience, an audience with a gun to their heads!!
A shameful council using alleged defiicit reduction as a cover for a massive ideological assauly. Anyone who witnessed last week's budget meeting will know local democracy is a jokle of dead parrot proprtions. It has ceased to be, Remove services from the loocal authority control and accountability will be further decimated. If you're a Bury Council employee remember too the edicts from upon high that you must not discuss what's happening to your council with the general public. That's a disciplinary matter. Why, if this council thinks it's so great, does it seek to hidewhat it's doing? Why does it prevent discussion and real consultation? When will the allegations of gagging of staff made at a recent Scrutiny meeting and elsewhere be properly investigated? We all know it's going on.
Great idea.
We've tried the public sector employee approach to providing services. All that's got us is rocketing council taxes and a complacent workforce which thinks it is doing everyone a favour if it even turns up for work.
to the comment about the private sector doing it better than the public sector, where are your facts from ?
I work in Local govt and we outsorced my line of work to a private company, our accuracy rates were 98%, the private sector work was 52%, we brought it back in house after 6 months of diabolical service.
Public Sector wins every day over the Private Sector, we serve the community private sector work to line their pockets.
Privatisation of the whole country just like Thatcher intended!
At least they don't have to provide pensions for the outsourced companies!
Sounds like a great idea Mr Bibby as one private worker can do the job of three council workers simply because they have to, in order to make a profit! Councils don't have to make a profit,they just take other people's money and waste it!
Didn't cameron promise that these cuts wouldnt mean privatisation via the back door... he kept that promise this is the front door!
If all services currently provided by Local Government were provided by the private sector would surely be cost effective to the local tax payer. Less councillors would be needed to run each council and the number of officers and workers employed by the said councils could be drastically reduced. It would be a win win situation for the taxpayer.
This is a council who conducted a pay review of it's employees - apart from those on in excess of £45,000 p.a. - found that some employees were under paid and then moved the pay spine so they could actually cut their wages.
This is a council who has wasted a million pounds of Council tax payers money in legal fees fighting a case over unfair pay to women that they hadn't a snowflakes in hell's chance of winning - even after losing the original case and losing an appeal - instead of just apologising to the staff concerned, paying what they owed and moving on. Who will be held responsible for that?
This is a council that thinks it's OK to pay a Chief Exec in excess of £150k a year and after making a huge cock up of things allows him to retire early, taking his pension, without holding him to account and making him put things right on a reasonable salary.
This is a Council who has forbidden it's staff with discussing anything to do with the Council under the threat of instant dismissal for "gross misconduct" with the public.
This is a council whose Councillors squabble like little children in the Council Chamber rather than getting on and doing the job they were elected to do which is to serve the people of the town. If you don't want to serve the people properly and are only in it to serve yourself - don't stand!
To say that they are even contemplating bringing in private companies, who will, no doubt, ask for five, seven or ten year contracts that will cost the Council Tax payers of the town a fortune to get out of even if the services they deliver are no good, is an absolutel joke. Where will the accountability lie? Whose head will roll if the Private Companies they hire are no good at the job?
Get rid of the poor, ineffective management and hire people who can do the job properly on 1 year rolling contracts. If the bosses on £45k + a year don't like it there are plenty of people on the dole queue waiting to take their place! Don't blame the hard working staff of Bury MBC who get treated like dirt by their money wasting bosses and ineffective Councillors.
Someone tell Bury Council that spending money on billboard ads telling us how great they are does not go down well when they're decimating services to the poor and vulnerable and looking to ship jobs, terms and conditions out to the private sector. Bottom of Walmersley Road if the MEN fancies sending down a snapper.