Issue - meetings

[Report of the Director of Environment and Neighbourhoods. To be introduced by the Leader of the Council.]

This report sets out the rationale, purpose, and scope of an Insourcing Policy for the Council.

The Leader of the Council introduced this report which set out the rationale, purpose, and scope of an Insourcing Policy for the Council. The new Insourcing Policy marked a significant shift away from the Council’s previous approach, and identified a new policy where insourcing was the default preference.

The Leader highlighted that the Council’s commitment to insourcing was grounded in a belief that all public spending should firstly deliver a public benefit, and that every council’s plan for the delivery of services on behalf of their residents should seek to maximise every pound spent on the delivery of the service itself. Consequently, this Insourcing Policy signalled a significant change of direction for Haringey Council. The Council should no longer be perceived as a Commissioning Council, but a municipality committed to finding ways to directly deliver services to residents.

The Leader emphasised that the administration was moving to reverse at a local level the almost forty year national trend towards outsourcing, which had resulted from not just the ‘opening up’ of public services to the market, but also a legislative regime that had made in-house provision of local services more difficult. This policy had caused a range of harms: it had unfairly meant that local councils lost control over some local services whilst retaining ultimate responsibility for their quality and delivery; it had eroded worker protections and the power and mutual support of organised labour; and the artificially low costing of outsourced projects had meant that the public sector and society more widely have been left footing the bill.

The Leader noted that introducing a preference for insourcing supported the administration’s goals to improve local services for local people, maximise the community benefit it achieved with its budget, increase quality job opportunities and good working conditions for residents, and secured democratic accountability of public services. In Haringey, there was a strong starting point: the Council had retained in-house many services which had been outsourced elsewhere and had already made good progress in bringing more services in-house. The introduction of this policy signalled the Council’s commitment to build on this work.

The Leader welcomed the policy as committing the Council to a strategic review of all externally commissioned services as their contracts come up for renewal. This would assess the efficient management and workings of all externally commissioned services and anticipate opportunities to bring services back in-house, in a way that focussed on what was most important to the administration, and sustainably increases the capacity of the Council.

In response to questions from Cllr Connor, the following information was provided:

• Every contract had a different aspect and the Council would examine every individual case and look at the savings and improved services that residents could expect to be achieved when considering the insourcing of services.
• The Leader reflected that following nearly 10 years of austerity, these circumstances had led local authorities to seek support from the private sector. This had inevitably led to a high number of resources and expertise leaving local  ...  view the full minutes text for item 35