Political Penguin

Paul Mac has a good post on SERCO who took over the running of education in Walsall a few years ago and how they intend to transfer jobs ‘offshore’. This has always puzzled me when local government staff are handed over to the private sector about how exactly we can ensure their job security and in some respects maintain a suitable level of service to the general public.
Here’s a couple of examples.
I’m with O2 for my mobile contract, been with them for almost a decade. Can honestly say I’ve never had a problem and they’ve always sorted anything out for me quickly and on the whole I’m a satisfied and loyal customer. I also know they’re not the cheapest in the UK market. I’d hazard a guess that ’3′ are of which I am constantly called up by some geezer, usually called Colin with a thick Indian accent wanting me to switch, and when challenged assures me all the call centres are UK based. I also remember being in the presence of a friend trying to sort out a problem with ’3′ and she couldn’t get the person on the other end to understand her, despite the fact that she speaks half a dozen different Indian languages.
I also had a little experience with Walsall Council over an application for Council Tax Benefit a while back which I’ve referred to a couple of times.
During my time spent on hold for up to half an hour trying to get through and speaking to various people who simply couldn’t do anything which included someone who had a Nigerian sounding name and neither I could understand him nor him me, and I was speaking in as plain an accent as possible and not my normal black country dialect this made me think about the potential problems that outsourcing can create.
Now it doesn’t seem to be the case that SERCO are going to ‘offshore’ call centres, they afterall don’t really have them but this did remind me of the now defunct partnership with Fujitsu that Walsall Council was trying to set up.
This deal would have meant the outsourcing of frontline telephone contact along with a lot of other things to a private company. A friend of mine who reads this blog told me at the time that his partner worked for the intended firm who would handle the call centres and we really didn’t want to know about their work practices.
This does raise an issue though, at what point, once jobs are outsourced are these private firms allowed to employ who they want to do the job and not just the workers they inheritted from the council.
Being private firms, their first priority is profit, not public service, the worst they can expect is their contract being cancelled and my experience has always been that the private sector firms tend to be a lot cleverer than the local authorities when it comes to the contracts.
Something to ponder on.
This is OK when we are talking about the private sector, if like me you’d rather speak to someone in the UK then you can because there is choice of the service provider. However with local authorities you can’t. If I decide I don’t want to speak to someone at the Walsall Council Tax department, I can’t just call up someone at Wolverhampton.
I know what you’re thinking, you don’t have choice anyway, well here’s the difference. If the council service is crap then at the ballot box, as voters we have the option of voting for another party to run the council and if services are so crap then it would follow that the party in power loses and is replaced by a different administration that will improve the service. (that’s the theory anyway). However, if the service in question has been outsourced to a private company, usually on a massively long contract then it doesn’t matter who is in power because those who originally made the decision have locked the council into an agreement that almost certainly cannot be broken and if it is will probably incur severe financial penalties on the council, I’m thinking the botched deal between Walsall Council and BT here.
Anyway, for anyone who happens to have a problem with their Council Tax Benefit not being processed, or not being paid to a landlord who is about to evict you (overheard plenty of people at the One Stop Shop complaining about that) then here you go. Don’t bother calling the helpline, they’re useless, don’t even bother with the One Stop Shop, they’re equally useless, simple e-mail Carole Evans (I’m assuming she’s still the Executive Director) on “evanscATwalsallDOTgovDOTuk there you go I’m putting in a bit of a spam guard so she won’t get crap in her inbox, aren’t I nice. I e-mailed her and the problem was sorted in a week after nearly four months of arguing with the munchkins downstairs.