1st May 2009
By Tash Shifrin
Essex County Council has delayed a decision on its controversial outsourcing plans until after the June elections – and might sharply scale down proposals to hive off ‘any or all’ services.
A tender notice issued in November said the council was looking for a private sector partner with ‘the potential to provide any or all of the council’s services’ in a deal worth up to £5.4bn.
Two consortiums, headed by IBM and T-Systems, have been shortlisted. Essex was expected to select a preferred bidder at a full council meeting on April 21.
Instead, the council agreed only a brief paper with no details of the proposals, recommending that a decision be delegated to a Cabinet meeting scheduled for May 1. That meeting has since been cancelled.
A council spokeswoman said officers had ‘wanted extra time’ to put their proposals together and that the ‘purdah’ period before council elections on June 4 meant that debate would be delayed until after the poll.
The council has also given Unison, which opposes the outsourcing plans, assurances that ‘current proposals are not a prelude to extensive outsourcing of council services’.
In a letter to Unison members, Essex branch secretary Mick Mahoney said: ‘What we now appear to be facing is a more limited exercise in which a commercial partner will be invited in to advise on the configuration and running of back-office services.’
A council spokeswoman told Public Finance: ‘It’s more than likely going to be a small area, like IT or [back office] processes.’
