MP Letter

TRANSFORMATION

Essex County Council have brought to our attention that it is inappropriate to send correspondence on this matter using the internal e-mail system.

However, we are encouraged by the number of letters being sent so please continue sending them by means other than the intranet (and ask your families to do so as this will affect every resident in Essex)

Please see below for a model letter for you to send to your local councillor or MP. Please feel free to amend or adapt into your own words if you wish. Could you please also send a copy of your letter to the Branch Office (UNISON, Essex County, FREEPOST CL3692, 70 Duke Street, Chelmsford, CM1 1XZ).

Many thanks

For further details on outsourcing, please contact Keith Blackburn via the Branch Office 01245 354044.

Dear (MP)(County Councillor)
Address

Date

ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL OUTSOURCING

I am writing to you to express my deep concern over the proposals Essex County Council has published to outsource “some or all” of its services.

The Council’s actions, which are unprecedented, are causing deep anxiety among staff members and the Council’s client groups, especially at this time of rapidly rising unemployment.

I would ask you to look into how the Council has gone about this exercise since there appears to be very serious and damaging flaws in the process it has adopted.

The timetable for the procurement has been hugely compressed which leads one to expect a poor choice of contractor with little or no preliminary work undertaken before the Council put its notice in the Official Journal of the European Union.

It is unclear what legal authority there was for placing the notice, as the Council’s constitution specifies that such a decision should be taken by an elected cabinet member only. However, the Council maintains that the decision has not been considered by Cabinet or Council.

The Council is considering contracting out services to a total value of £5.4 billion over a period of between 4, 8 or 12 years.

The Council already has a poor track record in selecting and managing the private contractors it already has which underlines my concerns that it will make a hasty and wrong decision.

UNISON is disappointed that the Council did not involve the union at a much earlier stage. There was no early meaningful consultation and in fact UNISON only discovered the existence of the proposals in an advertisement which appeared in the European Journal in late November 2008.

I would emphasise that we are not opposed to working with the Council, service users and private companies as necessary to improve the services the Council provides, but the present process does not appear to provide the way to do this.

The Council should go back to the start of the process and use the many available pieces of statutory and non-statutory guidance on procurement which are available and which it has so far studiously ignored.

We would ask you to raise these issues with the Leader of the Council or other elected members if and when you see them.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely