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A paper on Financing Infrastructure in the 21st Century: The Long Term Impact of Public Private Partnerships in Britain and Australia was presented by Dexter Whitfield to senior public sector managers, PPP advisers and trade unions in Adelaide, Australia in July 2006. It was organised and funded by the Don Dunstan Foundation, Australian Institute for Social Research, University of Adelaide, Australia.

Analysis of Strategic Services Partnership proposals for Southampton City UNISON. The ESSU has undertaken an analysis of proposals for a Strategic Services Partnership in Southampton which examined the implications for services and staff and proposed an alternative strategy. It assessed standard and variant bid proposals for ICT and related services and employment models. The following year it assessed how the contract was awarded to Capita plc.

East Hertfordshire’s Leisure Services contract with Enfield Leisure Centres Ltd (Aspire Trust) has a major financial crisis. It is £500,000 in the red in the first year of a five-year contract. Resignations of senior staff and the possible liquidation of the Enfield Trust add to the scale of the crisis – a crisis in the making during the evaluation of the market testing bids in 2005.

Despite the Enfield Trust bid being based on an 8% increase in leisure income and a 10% cut in staffing costs, they were awarded the contract. But the contract was not signed until five months after staff were transferred and large sections on monitoring and staffing issues were removed. From attempting to achieve a saving of £975,000 over five years the Council saved a little over £50,000 in the first year. It is now faced with additional estimated costs of £903,560 over five years based on the 2005/06 budget. The parent trust, Enfield Leisure Trust, went into liquidationin September 2006 and East Herts were forced to transfer lesiure services to Stevenage Leisure Trust (Commissioned by East Hertfordshire UNISON, 2006).

New Report: Aberdeen TGWU ACTS Branch commissioned the European Services Strategy Unit to undertake a critical evaluation of Aberdeen Futures and the city’s community planning participation framework. The objective was to assess the extent to which the scope of participation had resulted in a shift of power in the decision making process and to identify the extent to which Aberdeen Futures has involved trade unions and community organisations in its activities.

The study examined the structure of the community planning framework – The Aberdeen City Alliance (TACA), the Challenge Forums, Aberdeen Civic Forum and the City Assembly. Most of the interviewees reported that there had been no shift or re-alignment of power in the city to community organisations.

Trade unions have no formal representation on the Alliance, the Civic Forum or the Challenge Forums. Trade unions failed to challenge exclusion from community planning organisations. Yet the City Council’s 10,000 employees are also service users, as are the many thousands of other trade unionists in the public and private sector in Aberdeen. They have the right, like all citizens, to be represented and organised in the community and at work and by more than one organisation. The city’s trade unions also have an analysis and views about the causes of current problems and ideas and policies to enhance Aberdeen’s economy.

The report recommended that the TGWU should, possibly in cooperation with other public sector trade unions, set up a working group to map out a trade union perspective on the city’s community planning process and recommend appropriate strategies. If the City Council, TACA and the Civic Forum are not responsive to trade union involvement then the TGWU should consider establishing a Commission to draw together a trade union perspective and policy agenda and/or establish a Public Service Alliance, a city-wide coalition of trade unions and community organisations. Download the report.

Hard copies can be obtained from: TGWU 7/48/28 Local Government Branch, 42/44 King Street, Aberdeen AB9 2TJ, Scotland, Tel: 0845 345 0140.

New Labour is creating markets in public services on an unprecedented scale. Education, health and social care, children’s services, housing, planning and regeneration, the criminal justice system and the welfare state are all being marketised. Contents: How neoliberalism drives marketisation – How markets operate – Typology of privatisation and marketisation – The five-stage marketisation process – Public costs – The impact of market failure – Why public provision is essential – Alternative modernisation strategy – Strategies to oppose marketisation – Lessons for Europe. Spokesman Books, April 2006, £11.99 (bulk rates available).

A response to Durham County Council plans for Phase 2 of Investing in Modern Services for Older People by Durham County UNISO. The report examines the limits of expanding the social care market in the County, the impact of further homes closures and analyses the options. The County Council voted narrowly to stop further closures following a UNISON and community campaign.

The April 2006 issue of the PFI Journal contains an article by Dexter Whitfield, The Marketisation of Teaching, which examines the potential impact of the Building Schools for the Future programme on education. The Marketisation of Teaching is available in the Outsourcing and PPP Library.

Newcastle City Council has set a national example by excluding soft facilities management services (catering, cleaning, grounds maintenance, security and waste management) and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) from the BSF/PFI contract. The ICT contract alone is valued at £16.5m. The UNISON branch of Newcastle City pressed for the exclusion of both soft FM and ICT at the start of the procurement process and commissioned the Centre for Public Services report How to Exclude Support Services from Building Schools for the Future and PFI Projects.

The City Council agreed to require bidders to submit a mandatory bid which was evaluated with in-house bids from Neighbourhood Services and the in-house ICT service working with Dell. The evaluation process included staffside input from UNISON and the Centre for Public Services together with GMB and staff representatives from some of the schools in the BSF project. A preferred bidder is expected to be appointed in March or April.

Public Private Partnerships: Public Services or Corporate Welfare seminar. Dexter Whitfield from CPS gave a paper at the Public Private Partnerships: Public Services or Corporate Welfare seminar organised by the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at Trinity College, Dublin in December 2005.

The case for seconding the 95 staff employed on the existing Tyne Tunnel rather than transferring them to the operator of the New Tunnel was put in a detailed report for Newcastle UNISON. However, the Passenger Transport Authority decided to transfer staff to the new operator when the tunnel is built.