Regarding awful contracts that the public sector enters into with the private sector, here are a couple of little anecdotes from my little corner of it…
I work for the National Probation Service (as was), more accurately my local Probation Trust indeed I’m sitting bored to tears in one of our 24/7 outposts right now. We used to have our own maintenance division who would handle all manner of facilities management. In the interests of ‘efficiency’ the Home Office decided to put facilities management out to tender some years ago. Various companies bid for it and an outfit called Interserve won. The contract is worth many millions of pounds per annum (far more than the cost of X number of counties/municipalities arranging their own).
Last August we had a minor issue with the roofing on one of our offices, we phoned it in to Interserve HQ as we were bound to do. Some days later three men arrived with a sophisticated hydraulic lift and proceeded to remove and replace precisely 5 roof tiles. Noticing their accents we enquired as to where they had travelled from, their answer was Gateshead. Well, we’re a major conurbation that couldn’t be any further from Gateshead without being in France! 😯
Everytime one of our striplights burns out we are duty bound to follow the same procedure. Two recent instances of this resulted in electricians travelling here from Exeter and Milton Keynes respectively. One of them stayed in a hotel overnight, all paid for by ‘us’ and by logical extension you, the tax payer.
This process is repeated many times over across our organisation and the public sector at large. It’s utterly laughable. In the past we would have simply replaced the striplights ourselves with the only expense being the cost of the new bulb. Additionally, as with the minor roofing problem and everything else we would have used local tradesmen and/or local businesses to supply our needs, thereby benefitting the local economy. Not any more.