“shouldn't that read "SOUP CENTRE"? they'd even mess that up!”

“Dave,

There are many examples of where outsourcing goes wrong.

A particular case being a major UK company who outsourced their HR. It now costs them at least £9 for each phone call just to report a person going on sick leave. They tell their own managers to deal with things in-house, and not to ring the outsource HR company to save money!

Discipline cases can easily clock up bills in the thousands, training costs have gone through the roof, but the HR company managed to get their client locked-into a 10-year contract they cannot escape from.

Then there are the companies who outsourced payrolls, and who have seen names and bank details being sold-on. Would you trust a company who did this with your details? And bear in mind that many of them use cheap labour in other countries to do all the processing. so no gain in jobs in this country either.

Better to get the councils to pool resources and do it themselves. They could add in centralised purchasing, like ESPO do for other councils, and save a few more quid that way.”

“Its all politics at the end of the day, the Tories get in and all of a sudden eveythings out of date. Well thats not what the independant Audit commission said when they classed it as a 4 Star Authority last year.

Lets also not forget it was the previous labour regime that first proposed outsourcing and the last review of local goverment was carried out by the last conservative goverment who implement the current structure in Notts. As regards outsourcing HR, Finance and payroll to the private sector well the experience of places like Lincolnshire CC would suggest the grass is not always greener”

“So, they don't have the technology or other infrastructure, their skills are probably equally back-level (out of date) but they expect to be able to create a cenre of excellence for other authorities to use. Whilst this is possible, I don't give it much chance of success. Better to outsource these "shared services" e.g. H, Payroll and IT to the private sector who are already set up to do it - this is increasingly normal practise in industry. Local authorities are there to provide services to the community, not to become major services employers.”

“Oh well, at least we know what the budget is all about now. They need the money to create bigger offices for themselves.”

“Time for the proper reorganisation of local Government in the county. The conurbation to be a greater Nottingham unitary authority and everything else in the county to be unitary. Savings on loads of levels and some chance of proper representation for those "county" areas of the conurbation. This was proposed by David Kirkham some time ago and seems like good common sense.”

“DEPORT THEM!”

“It makes sense to do away with duplication on a local level, when it's our money that is funding it. Centralising common functions like this could achieve an economy of scale that would reduce costs without any impact on services.

But I'm gobsmacked to read the claim that "HR, finance and payroll still rely on paperwork", considering how many years the councils have had computer systems in place.

I know the wheels of local government move slowly, but they've had over thirty years that I know, of to move basic stuff like that from paper onto computers.”

“So much for more local democracy...”