On the 25th Jan 2018 Scrutiny hosted an Ask the Leader session, where Cllr Matthew Barber took on all comers. I had a question for him about Capita.

“In the aftermath of the Carillion collapse, I’ve been looking into the wider issue of outsourcing public services as a decision and the associated risks. Whenever a decision is made to outsource public services to an external provider, we outsource the work but not the responsibility. It is still Vale that must meet payroll, manage HR issues, keep the IT systems working, replace batteries in officers’ mobile telephones, and repair or replace
wobbly tables in our offices. I see places where performance is falling short, yet the KPIs are still green.

“When Cabinet decided to outsource this work, who at Vale took on the responsibility of managing the contracts with the outsourcing companies to ensure we were still delivering our services? What issues have arisen in contract management and what’s been the cost of that? For example, how much have we had to spend on retained officers’ work in keeping the Capita KPIs green? And now that we see what happens when a company goes bust, what sort of contingency plans have council developed us to protect us in the event of a Capita collapse?”

Cllr Barber replied that the council had outsourced many contracts most of which were working well. However, it was sensible to have plans in place in the event of the potential collapse of any of these contracts. A joint client team operated across the Five Councils’ Partnership and the client relationship director had delegated authority to act for each of the partner councils in managing the performance of the contractors. Most of the operational problems with the Capita contract had occurred in the transformation activities in HR and IT rather than in services operating on a “business as usual” basis. There were rectification plans (within the provisions of the contract and at no cost to the council) in those areas where the required service standards had not been achieved.

That didn’t answer my questions, did it?

Since that time, of course, Capita shares have collapsed, several areas of their performance have been poor, and in May 2018 Cllr Barber stepped down as Leader of the Council to pursue other opportunities.