Herts County Council – Lib Dems Ask “Could Bringing Services back In-House be more Effective and Efficient?

Not for the first time have the Liberal Democrat members on Hertfordshire County Council questioned the appropriateness of outsourcing so much of the council’s service provision to external contractors.
The county’s experience with highway maintenance has not been happy, particularly with the simpler, more routine tasks. As contractors have adopted more rigid management practices, particularly with first-line supervisory management, these have resulted in more and more instances of inefficiencies: –

The common threads in all these examples are: –

, e.g. in home care and residential care.
This issue has been the subject of an earlier posting, which can be found by clicking on https://tinyurl.com/y348j6rm
The conclusion we reached then seems to be still valid,viz. the larger jobs seem to go well but the smaller the work the greater the inefficiency and delay.
With these problems in mind Liberal Democrat Group Leader Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst moved the following resolution, which was seconded by fellow Liberal Democrat, Cllr John Hale: –

Unfortunately due to the exiration of time the Chairman ruled that this motion could not be debated and would therefore fall.
The Liberal Democrat will raise the matter again at a future Council Meeting.