More Outsourcing Failures: Duties Handed Back To West Sussex County Council

Wednesday, 15 July 2020 07:00

By Karen Dunn, Local Democracy Reporter

West Sussex County Council’s plans to cut short another part of its contract with outsourcing firm Capita has been described as ‘local government Groundhog Day’.

Service Finance, which deals with the money side of Adult Services — such as paying residential homes for care — is set to be taken back in-house from August, two years early.

It will be the latest in a long list of services no longer included in the £154m ten-year deal struck with Capita in 2012.

The contract, described by UNISON as ‘a tortuous experience’, saw the company take over various financial and support services.

Many, such as the pension fund administration, the children’s services multi-agency safeguarding hub, and a variety of human resources services, have since been taken back.

At a meeting of the performance and finance scrutiny committee on Thursday, members were told bringing Service Finance in-house would ‘enable the council to gain greater control and flexibility in the delivery of the largely statutory services’ as well as knocking £3.3m off of Capita’s bill.

But Labour group leader Michael Jones said the deal had been ‘fraught with tension since day one’ and had been a ‘huge gamble’ on the council’s part.

He added:

“Once again, we face another in-sourcing of services from Capita we were frequently assured it was perfectly fine to allow a private company to run instead of the council.

“This has become such a familiar occurrence now at West Sussex county council, it is rapidly becoming the local government version of Groundhog Day.

“This might look like ‘death by a thousand cuts’ to the contract, but in reality Capita is being allowed to offload the parts of the contract they have signally failed to make a success of and cherry-pick the bits which are most profitable to them.”

Bob Lanzer, cabinet member for economy and corporate resources, said work had been ongoing with Capita about bringing some of the services back in-house ‘for some time’ and he wasn’t sure why the council was being criticised.

He added:

“It just shows a pragmatic approach – a readiness to improve our planning.

“When these contracts were set up in 2012, they did make sense in many ways and they did deliver in a financial context.

“We are some years on from that and quite close to the natural end of these contracts, so there’s no idealogical driver as to whether a service should be in-sourced or whether it should be external.

“It’s where it works best.”

Bringing Service Finance back in-house will mean a TUPE transfer of 61 staff from Capita to the council.