Outsourcing

OUTSOURCING ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL - "TRANSFORMATION" PROPOSALS

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ECC OUTSOURCING: UNISON MEDIA BRIEFING

2nd March 2009

What’s happened so far:-

In October 2008, Essex County Council placed a notice on the Official Journal of the European Union website asking for bids to run ‘any or all’ of its services for a period of 8 to 12 years at a total cost of £5.4billion. Earlier the Council had adopted a target of £200 million savings over 3 years. The first that staff and some Members knew about this was when they read about it in the Press. The Council appears to have made no business case for this, nor has it produced any appraisal of options as to how it intends to do this, which would be the usual way of doing things.

In December 2008, 11 pre-qualification questionnaires for this ‘external transformation partner’ were received, from which ECC management selected 5, mainly consortia, to proceed to the next stage. The 5 chosen include consortia headed by Capita, Mouchel and IBM.

Trade Unions have not at this point (2/2/09) seen the questionnaire(s) nor did they play any part in evaluating the responses. These bidders were invited to visit ECC, to talk to staff between the 15 and the end of January. Trade Unions were not allowed to meet the bidders. This was because of the way the tender has been organised, we have no way of knowing what the first services to be examined are, hence we have no indication of potential job losses, or their timing at this stage.

What happens next?

ECC intends to reduce the bidders successively to 2 and then to a single preferred bidder with the intention of having a final decision in late March/early April 2009. The successful bidder would start work in August 2009 when they would begin to look at individual service areas and develop business cases to outsource for those service areas.

What’s Unison done or is doing?

We have arranged a series of meetings across the County, which have been very well attended, to explain what is happening and the Union’s response. There are further meetings in this series still to come.

We consider that the Council’s action(s) are potentially unlawful as they break its own constitution and various pieces of statutory and non-statutory guidance, including possibly EU law.

We have written to the Secretary of State (Hazel Blears),The District Auditor, The Council’s Section 151 Officer and its Monitoring Officer (all of these are watchdogs on Local Government finance and the legality of what is going on).

Unison has organised a lobby of the next meeting of the full Council which is on 10th February.

The Branch is liaising with the two main Opposition groups on the Council (Labour and Liberal Democrat) to coordinate our opposition.

Unison is working with other trade unions in the Council to provide unified and united opposition.

We have organised training for Branch officers on procurement through an independent expert.

We have been in touch with Unison branches and others (including one Tory MP) elsewhere over their experiences of outsourcing.

We are asking our members to write to their County Councillors and MPs, and to phone in to local radio shows.

We will be trying to ensure that the outsourcing is a key issue in the County Council elections in June

Unison is asking MPs and MEPs to ask questions in Parliament/European Parliament on the legality of the process. Branch and other officers have done media interviews on these topics. Unison is still considering legal action (a judicial review) to halt the process.

We have been trying to ensure that Unison members attend all the Council’s own meetings on the ‘transformation programme’ and that the key questions from our point of view are raised – so far we have received few, if any, answers to our questions from the Council.

We have stressed that the Council has a very poor record in selecting and managing the contractors it already has.

There has been no meaningful negotiation or consultation by the Council with trade unions on anything related to this proposal, which is contrary to law.

No assurances have been given on the future terms and conditions of our members although the Council Leader has indicated in correspondence that, in his view, the Transfer of Undertakings Regulations (TUPE) do not apply.

We have indicated that we are willing at any time to enter into proper dialogue with the Council on questions of service and performance improvement as we have done over many years. The Council has achieved savings of £34 million in 2008/9 alone. Furthermore, they have £200 million in reserves.

JOIN UNISON’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THIS OUTSOURCING NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE