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Last week Suffolk County Council's Members (elected representatives) voted to privastise ALL of their services. As a pubic sector employee working for a Council that is already 50% privatised, I naturally find this a bit worrying. But I also question whether a private company can deliver the quality of service needed for services such as child social care or not experience a conflict of interests when delivering planning decisions.

To those unsure what privatisation means, it is basically the public sector paying a private company to provide a service or allowing a private company to run a service previously operated by the public sector. The idea is that the competitve environment under which private sector companies operate will demand they deliver a good service. This is fine when you're talking about something like bus services (UK bus services were privatised in 1985), where the company has to deliver a good service in order to generate revenue because they will be direct competition with other bus operators. However, when the company is just given a fixed term, fixed payment contract to deliver a service, the only incentive that exists is to save money.

Case in point, the privatisation of UK Rail in the early 1990s (note - even Thatcher thought this was a bad idea). This was basically divided into two parts. A number of private companies would operate the train services, but one company (Railtrack) was put in charge of maintaining the rail network. The train service operators are not strictly speaking operating in a competitive environment (as only one company can run trains along a length of track), but it is extremely difficult to generate a decent profit from this industry, so that served as an incentive of sorts to operate competitively. In contrast, Railtrack just sat on their arse for 8 years and didn't maintain anything. Eventually it all went off the rails. Literally! It was revealed that a number of high profile accidents (where people lost their lives) were caused by a lack of rail maintenance. During the investigations that followed, Railtrack admitted it hadn't even kept the maintenance logs from British Rail, so they didn't even know what needed repairing.

So is Privatising Everything a great idea? I would err on the side of No.

Privatised buses were a disaster in a lot of places.

Everything? No.

Kilkrazy wrote:Privatised buses were a disaster in a lot of places.

Sounds like their business plan was...busted.

Flashman wrote:Last week Suffolk County Council's Members (elected representatives) voted to privastise ALL of their services. As a pubic sector employee working for a Council that is already 50% privatised, I naturally find this a bit worrying. But I also question whether a private company can deliver the quality of service needed for services such as child social care or not experience a conflict of interests when delivering planning decisions.

Certain areas of childcare are already handed down to private companies or rather publicly funded charities at least that's the case in Sheffield.

I'm also a public sector employee, although my position has already been privatised.

Flashman wrote:Last week Suffolk County Council's Members (elected representatives) voted to privastise ALL of their services. As a pubic sector employee working for a Council that is already 50% privatised, I naturally find this a bit worrying. But I also question whether a private company can deliver the quality of service needed for services such as child social care or not experience a conflict of interests when delivering planning decisions.

To those unsure what privatisation means, it is basically the public sector paying a private company to provide a service or allowing a private company to run a service previously operated by the public sector. The idea is that the competitve environment under which private sector companies operate will demand they deliver a good service. This is fine when you're talking about something like bus services (UK bus services were privatised in 1985), where the company has to deliver a good service in order to generate revenue because they will be direct competition with other bus operators. However, when the company is just given a fixed term, fixed payment contract to deliver a service, the only incentive that exists is to save money.

Case in point, the privatisation of UK Rail in the early 1990s (note - even Thatcher thought this was a bad idea). This was basically divided into two parts. A number of private companies would operate the train services, but one company (Railtrack) was put in charge of maintaining the rail network. The train service operators are not strictly speaking operating in a competitive environment (as only one company can run trains along a length of track), but it is extremely difficult to generate a decent profit from this industry, so that served as an incentive of sorts to operate competitively. In contrast, Railtrack just sat on their arse for 8 years and didn't maintain anything. Eventually it all went off the rails. Literally! It was revealed that a number of high profile accidents (where people lost their lives) were caused by a lack of rail maintenance. During the investigations that followed, Railtrack admitted it hadn't even kept the maintenance logs from British Rail, so they didn't even know what needed repairing.

So is Privatising Everything a great idea? I would err on the side of No.

What services are we talking about here? Rubbish collection? I can't see them privatising the local education authority, Police and Fire Services. Don't these come under the auspices of the council?

You can expect there is to be a lot of omissions the '100% privatisation' plan.

I personally think 50% and 100% privatisation are scare statistics, you might get `100% privatisation of services that can feasibly be privatised, but that is not the same thing.

The Wellesley quote of 'lies, damned lies and statistics' comes to mind here.

Well, if they Privatise everything, I assume all those Councillors, who are already paid for doing very little, will abolish their positions to help save money yes?

Aye, hopefully.

Some of the services here where already private. For example the rubbish collection, who drive from their depo, do the collection and then dump it at the county Refuse tip before going back to the depo. Seems odd from how it ran from one location back in North Cornwall.

I am a little weary mind, and also have to ask the question what it will mean to Council tax costs here. I could sadly imagine companies dribbling money through the cracks while our council tax goes higher and higher to cover it.

Flashman wrote:Last week Suffolk County Council's Members (elected representatives) voted to privastise ALL of their services. As a pubic sector employee working for a Council that is already 50% privatised, I naturally find this a bit worrying. But I also question whether a private company can deliver the quality of service needed for services such as child social care or not experience a conflict of interests when delivering planning decisions.

To those unsure what privatisation means, it is basically the public sector paying a private company to provide a service or allowing a private company to run a service previously operated by the public sector. The idea is that the competitve environment under which private sector companies operate will demand they deliver a good service. This is fine when you're talking about something like bus services (UK bus services were privatised in 1985), where the company has to deliver a good service in order to generate revenue because they will be direct competition with other bus operators. However, when the company is just given a fixed term, fixed payment contract to deliver a service, the only incentive that exists is to save money.

Case in point, the privatisation of UK Rail in the early 1990s (note - even Thatcher thought this was a bad idea). This was basically divided into two parts. A number of private companies would operate the train services, but one company (Railtrack) was put in charge of maintaining the rail network. The train service operators are not strictly speaking operating in a competitive environment (as only one company can run trains along a length of track), but it is extremely difficult to generate a decent profit from this industry, so that served as an incentive of sorts to operate competitively. In contrast, Railtrack just sat on their arse for 8 years and didn't maintain anything. Eventually it all went off the rails. Literally! It was revealed that a number of high profile accidents (where people lost their lives) were caused by a lack of rail maintenance. During the investigations that followed, Railtrack admitted it hadn't even kept the maintenance logs from British Rail, so they didn't even know what needed repairing.

So is Privatising Everything a great idea? I would err on the side of No.

some things are best done by corporations but imo others are not. government works on the premises of laws, rights, and public well being. corporations work on the premise of profits. the two are not always compatble, and many functions of government, say, the police, produce no immediate profit whatever. I would guess that the outcome of that experiment, carried out to its logical conclusion, is that the government would only provide services through its contractors that individuals, rather thanthe community as a whole, can afford. so ones rights and access to public services would be determined by income not by the mere fact of being a citizen. I am not ok with that. equality before the law on the basis of rights, not on the basis of the ability to pay, is a corner stone of democracy. if the town is rich they might be able to get away with it but no large urban area could because poor people will always outnumber, and thus will be able to outvote, rich people, and its rich people, not poor people, who will benefit the most from that system. AF

Privatised buses were a disaster in a lot of places.

yes. in south florida the buses couldnt run without govt assistance. theyre a money losing service that is nevertheless essential to large parts of the community who, without it, would be stranded and unable to work.

We've experimented with privatising buses here, reasoning that a more efficient level of service could stop being a burden on the taxpayers in general. Thing is, though, 'a more efficient level of service' basically means cutting the unprofitable routes, and the unprofitable routes are the ones run during the day to get pensioners to the shops and things like that. Nobody wanted to cut those routes, so in privatising they wrote up a great big contract that said the private company would continue to operate all the same routes anyway. Which basically defeated the whole purpose, but they went ahead and did it anyway.

Another example is a council I worked at, that owned and operated a swimming pool and rec centre. They, quite rightly, felt that a local council shouldn't be running a small business and didn't like underwriting it to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars a year. They, quite wrongly, assumed that a private entity would be able to come in and turn it into a profitable business. The operation was handed over to a private company, and it quickly became apparent that it doesn't matter how canny a businessman someone might be, swimming pools just aren't viable proft making bodies. After two years the private company collapsed and the pool was taken over again by Council. Last I heard Council was trying to privatise again...

But there are plenty of cases of privatisation working. I know another council in a small town that could not find someone willing to start up a bar so they started their own. They lost money hand over fist and at one point council was looking at insolvency - who wants to drink at a government bar? They sold the bar and the new owner began making a tidy profit almost immediately.

I think the moral is that if a thing can be provided well by the private sector it should be left to the private sector. But there are many things that cannot be provided by the private sector and we should be realistic about that. The decision to privatise should be on a case by case basis.

What happens is that everything goes to the lowest bidder. Outsourcing and hiring contractors is usually expensive especially as things get more specialised. You only get what you pay for, pay cheap and expect half a job.