A very private privatisation plan

Back in February 2009, nearly two years after they took control of the local Council, the SNP/Lib-Dem Coalition that runs Edinburgh approved a budget that included the decision to look at the potential privatisation of essential front-line services.

The main opposition group on the Council, Labour, opposed that budget, and have continued to oppose the privatisation plans ever since. The Green Party representatives on the Council have done likewise. Sadly, from my perspective, the SNP and the Lib-Dems (with Conservative support) have pursued these proposals for over two years now, spending some £3.6 million in the process.

The scale of the proposals is breathtaking – some 20 Council Services, aggregated into three groups, covering almost 4,000 Council Staff - all to be outsourced to the private sector. Large swathes of the City of Edinburgh Council were basically being put up for sale.

The private firms bidding to run these services will look to profit by streamlining them and finding efficiencies. That’s code for putting employees out of work.

Parallel to consultation with private companies, the council has been tasked with looking at an in-house alternative achieving improvements with less funding; making efficiency savings as well as thoroughly shaking up staff and departments. 

Nowhere near £3.6 million has been spent on this side of the equation and it was obvious to anyone who cared to look what the preferred outcome was.

But frankly, I doubt if anyone outside the council in Edinburgh knows that their local authority might be about to privatise nearly a quarter of its public services, as there has been virtually zero consultation with Edinburgh residents. 

In a last-gasp attempt to rectify this appaling omission, the council commissioned an Ipsos-Mori poll of Edinburgh opinion on the proposals in August, but to date neither the questions nor the answers have been published in full.

For me, it’s a disgrace that the SNP/Lib Dem Council hasn’t properly consulted on these proposals - proposals that could have a fundamental impact on the day-to-day services on which we all depend.

And worse than their lack of proper consultation is the fact that they are now trying to ram these decisions through a Council with only 6-months left until the next Local Government elections. 

The contracts are a minimum of seven years in length and would bind the whole five-year life of the next Council, never mind the remaining six months of this one. 

The first of the three groups, Environmental Services, was up before the main Council for decision on Thursday 27 October 2011, with Facilities Management Services to be decided upon in November 2011, and Corporate and Transactional Services being decided upon in December 2011.

Thankfully, in no small part due to a truly excellent campaign led by UNISON Edinburgh, the SNP/Lib-Dem Coalition took cold feet on 27 October and delayed a final decision on Environmental Services until the November meeting.

Labour remain resolutely opposed to these plans and we’ll do our best to vote them down again in November. If just one of the local SNP/Lib-Dem Coalition Groups joined us, the drive to privatise our vital public services would be dead in the water.