Term maintenance contracts tendered to private companies are far more efficient than local authorities ever were.

Coordination of adopted road repairs with those carried out privately on behalf of the utilities companies has suffered greatly though. Private firms don't speak to each other, so we see roads getting resurfaced and then dug up two weeks later for pipework repairs; and almost always, the reinstatement work by utilities contractors isn't up to the same standard as the larger surfacing companies.

Newcastle City Council were a great example to others, they had a couple of guys in an office whose sole job was to coordinate road repair timetables with the utility companies. Inevitably, there was still some cross-over, but it worked pretty well. Whether or not those jobs have now been cut, I couldn't say.

An old teacher of mine used to say "the plural of 'anecdote' in not 'evidence' ". If the roads in your area are better under tendered contract, then I'm glad. However the roads in my area are under private contract and they are, to put it bluntly, shockingly awful.

There are many factors in play - the willingness of local authorities to allow utilities to perform works for example which are a massive factor in road break up for one and the lack of coordination of that, as you say. However, I find it very hard to agree with the argument that privatisation is by definition better value than in-house processes. Or at least, if the private sector is more efficient, why not just import the same practices into the in-house provision and get the same benefit without the extra cost of private sector profit requirements?

There is no 'magic bullet' in private enterprise. Everything that the private sector can do, the public sector can do too. In my own particular corner of the public sector, that's pretty much what's happened. We follow the same practices, we conform to the same standards of performance and management. We follow the same 'rules' essentially. It's very hard to find an area you could just point to and say 'the private sector would do that better because...'

How do we know this would be the best solution? How do we know that increasing public sector efficiency isn't in fact happening anyway, and the Libservatives are about to throw the baby out with the bathwater? It appears to me this policy change is very much out of the blue, has there been a white paper proposing it? Have we seen any publication of an analysis of whether it will actually likely be better value or not? Or is it simply a dogmatic act based more on ideology than evidence?

Many times we have been told 'the private sector will offer better value, so that's who we're going to give it to'. Yet there are myriad examples where the actual result has been less value for the taxpayer/customer. PPP/PFI, various road/tunnel/bridge systems (see the Skye bridge and the Mersey tunnel for two); let alone the major privatisations like water or rail network that have led to year on year above inflation cost increases and have required massive subsidies without any sign of major infrastructure improvements to go with them.

The 'public sector bad, private sector good' paradigm probably isn't a myth, but it's very far from being an objectively proven truth. Without objective analysis, we have no way of knowing whether this is a good idea or not. I see no such analysis, at least in the public domain (and if it's a government policy change, the evidence damn well should be in the public domain).

No, the roads in my area are abysmal, but that is because very few of roads around here have a proper foundation, and many of the base layers are made from coal tar; so people were loath to embark full road reconstruction, because of the disposal requirements of coal tar.

I was talking about my experience on the mainland, supplying local authority surfacing contracts over most of central England - Draw a line from the Humber to the M6 and extend down to Coventry - roughly. I accept that experience is still largely anecdotal but, when seen repeatedly over a wide area, it has a bit more substance.

How do you import those practices? For example, a good Screwman on a Paver is worth his weight in gold and, if the local authority trains someone up to that standard, what's stop him chasing a massive pay hike by jumping ship to the private sector?

I'm obviously only talking about a narrow area here, based on my own experience, but you can see the problem.

I'm not in favour of wholesale privatisation, but I wouldn't dismiss private sector expertise and efficiency as nothing more than chasing money to the detriment of everything else.

I know this may be obvious, but maybe then the public sector should be paying him more like what he's apparently worth?


I personally think the private sector has a lot to give, in terms of generating 'best practice' (god, I sound like a manager) at least, however I personally believe the default for.. national infrastructure like transport and water is that it should be the responsibility of public bodies (backed by proper accountability, which is a major issue in the whole public/private thing I admit) rather than private enterprise. Fundamentally, I just don't like the things that we all have no choice but to use to be subject to the profit motive. The problem is as much as government may talk about competition, it doesn't really exist in any of our utilities in any real way. As much as they may claim to be in competition, many of our privatised utility companies operate what looks very much like cartels. And without real competition, private enterprise has a habit of being just as inefficient as public enterprise and more expensive into the bargain. IMO.

Jon

That's where it falls down - specialists in the private sector can attract very high wages, for a seemingly low grade role. There's no way the public sector will cough up to compete with that, unless they can make it pay - utilising the person in that role for a higher percentage of his time, as private companies do; but that could mean (in this example) Local Authority surfacing teams competing for private work when the current budget/workload runs out.

That sounds great - very productive - but we had a team on the island last week from Barnsley, for a one day job!

I still don't see the argument.I see no reason whatsoever that that equally doesn't apply to the private sector. So, you say, you have had a specialist team over from Barnsley for a day. If that specialist team had been in the private sector then, would they magically have been locally sourced? No, they'd have come from Barnsley just the same. Because, as you say, their skills are specialist and rare. So either way, you have to pay to bring them from Barnsley. Just in the case where they're employed by a private contractor rather than a public utility, you also have to pay for the agency that is sending them to you, rather than them just being a common resource employed by the state.

Hiring private contractors works when they are plentiful, because you get competition between them for the work which drives the cost down. When there is a limited supply of the necessary skills, you're much better having the resource in house, because in a seller's market the supplier can force the price up due to demand outstripping supply. In your earlier example, the private sector can afford to pay your specialist three times the wage because they know they can charge someone else four times the price for his services. This applies equally in the private and public sector.

Now, I'm not in favour of centrally managed economies or any of that guff. Doesn't work, never has. However I see absolutely no reason why the state can't employ specialists on a 'roving' basis to go where they are needed within national infrastructure projects. In fact, I know for a fact the state already does this when it feels like it. My father was an account in a rather specialist field and was employed for many years by what is now HMRC. He travelled round the country wherever his skills were required. Did that for several years.

Also - this

Jon

red ken done this in London some years ago
ie the utilities gas, water, electric, BT and others (cable)

if they dug up a road/street they had to pay for the complete relaying of that road/street

they soon got there act together as it was costing them money
the only thing private enterprise understands is the cost
its about time this was used nationwide ...