Labour Group U Turn

[fred c]

Looking at this article in the mail its hard not to think of the ruling Labour Group, of doing a ConLib U Turn on the outsourcing of the ICT contract.

http://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/local/ict-set-to-be-outsourced-1-4698115

The Labour Group have decided to outsource the ICT contract, but retain the Revenue & Benefits section "In House"....it beggars the question "Why" ? half a dozen labour councillors thought it was the way to go when they were members of drummonds cabinet, but were pilloried for their views by the "Ruling Faction", surely they must be feeling vindicated by this decision.

The next Labgroup "U Turn"...... the re-introduction of bus services in Hartlepool ?, it was a cynical & disgraceful decision at the time, brought about more by national policies than by local needs.

[The Great Dictator]

Revenue and Benefits will disappear within 2 years..

[Julie noted]

'Outsourcing' or 'Job Share'.
As some of the 'top brass' are sharing, or are considering sharing with Stockton/Darlington/whoever, why can't the blue collar job share?
Do we really need full time road repair crews or any of the other depts. that could be shared with other councils?
My other half is always banging on about the state of the roads in Hartlepool, so where are the road crews?
Why not bring in contractors when required?
Just a thought.

[Donkey Kong]

Why not bring in contractors when required?
Just a thought.

This is starting to happen elsewhere.  Large councils such as Sheffield and Oxfordshire (and several others) have framework agreements for road maintenance with contractors similar to those employed by the Highways Agency for the motorway and trunk road networks.  I would strongly suspect that to get the best deal on this kind of arrangement HBC would probably be better off teaming up with neighbouring authorities such as Stockton, Middlesbrough and Darlington in order to be able to provide some kind of workable scale to the contractor.  It would show progressive thinking if they were to even consider going down this route.

[fred c]

Coincidentally, first thing this morning i saw 2 local authority vans 1 Housing Hartlepool & the other was Darlington Council, the guys  were emptying a house in the Rift House area... i did wonder if there is some sort of joint taskforce for this sort of thing.

The roads repair side of HBC often use contractors to do the pothole repair type of work, council officers obviously decide where the repairs are neccessary though.

To my mind there are further opportunities for senior officers to job share, as per the HR dept head with Darlo.... my only thoughts on that is, if they can all of a sudden decide to "Job Share" what was the person working a full week doing in the first place ?

[Stig of the Seaton Dump]

Outsourcing comes with plusses and minuses.

It may be cheaper but service generally drops as a result.
Speaking with over 10 years experience of picking up the pieces where outsourcing doesn't quite deliver.
Plus don't you have to pay VAT on services you buy, where as you don't if you do it in house.

I've said then then thought, don't things have to be good to drop ?...

I remember a street cleaner telling me he was no longer allowed to shovel snow from OAP homes in winter
and I have mentioned seeing 4 council staff operating 1 jet wash.
Just last week a massive council lorry was parked over the road from me for hours with the worker sat inside
and the engine annoyingly running, eventually they made a phone call and then spent half an hour digging a hole for a lamp post. 
(The lamp post still has no top on, that will probably be another half dozen drawn out visits before it is fitted, painted, wired up, connected, inspected)

Maybe the council should pull it's socks up and then it could maybe save some jobs being lost to outside companies.
On the surface, that doesn't appear to be part of management culture.

[marky]

I could be wrong on this but I think there is already a joint arrangement covering road repairs with Boro Council - not quite sure how far this goes. I would have thought HR and Payroll would be an obvious choice of authorities sharing resources and there nist be other 'standard' functions. The difference is where the decisions are made and that should always be local in my view. As for the U-turn, it just goes to show how half-baked and contrived the objections were - they hadn't even taken into account that HBC didn't actually own any of the kit.