By Richard Johnstone
5 May 2011
Suffolk County Council has put on hold its controversial
plans to outsource almost all its services to the private and voluntary sectors.
The authority decided last year to focus on
commissioning rather than providing services. Successful bidders would take on
a host of divested functions, from running libraries and children's centres to property services.
However, the plans have been postponed following the
resignation of Jeremy Pembroke as leader of the
Conservative council in April. Deputy leader Jane Storey has taken over as
acting leader until Mark Bee takes office on May 26.
The council
said Pembroke had stepped down because he did not plan to stand for re-election
in 2013 and believed that a new leader should be given the opportunity to ‘make
their mark’ ahead of those elections.
A spokesman for the council said
that Bee now wanted to ‘take a breath’ to examine the plans – known as the New
Strategic Direction – which he admitted had caused ‘a lot of
anxiety’.
He added: ‘It’s
not a change in the plans, it’s approaching them in a different way. There is a
period of reflection and taking stock, asking: are we doing everything that we
can to do things in the right way?’
He added
there was no timescale for when the council would announce what would go ahead,
but the appointment of a new Cabinet meant it was unlikely to be this month.
When the
plans were announced last September, Pembroke said that they reflected the
financial deficit in the public sector and the coalition government’s priority
to reduce the deficit and the size of the state.
‘The coalition
requires lesser government and a bigger society, and Suffolk County Council has
responded to this change,’ he said.
The council
hoped to save as much as 30% from its £1.1bn annual budget by commissioning
most of its services from private companies and social enterprises, but experts said the scale
of savings was unlikely to be met.
Plans to
farm out the running of libraries to community groups have already been put out
for consultation and a report will go to the council’s Cabinet in July.
The council
spokesman said: ‘No services have been divested yet and no decisions on changes
to libraries have happened yet.’
