Open Letter to all 63 Councillors in the London Borough of Barnet

Dear Councillors,

It must be a challenging task to make decisions on behalf of all the residents in theLondon Borough of Barnet. These decisions involve so many areas of our lives – education, social care, health, housing, the environment. It must be even more difficult at a time of austerity when you are forced to make such difficult decisions about how to spend our money wisely and to the benefit of all of us. On 29 November 2010 those of you who were members of the Cabinet approved the programme sponsored by the Chief Executive, the One Barnet programme of privatisation, which will award two contracts worth more than one billion pounds to private companies for a period of 10 years. In November 2012 all of you will be asked to approve this programme of privatisation. What a heavy burden of responsibility it must be to make such a huge financial commitment on our behalf.

It is inevitable that residents will assume all of you are equally responsible for decisions made regarding the One Barnet programme of privatisation, and will hold you all accountable for its impact on their lives, its cost and its success or failure. Experts in local government and on the impact of privatising services, as well as residents and council employees, have voiced concerns, but there seems to be a great reluctance on the part of representatives of Barnet Council to discuss or reveal details about the One Barnet programme of privatisation, despite residents, Unison and the Association of Public Services Excellence inviting them to attend discussions on the implementation of this programme. Have all of you been given the information needed to understand the impact of the privatization plan? Have all of you had enough time to debate the issues and difficulties in effective implementation of this plan? When a new policy is implemented, there is always the risk of something going wrong and, with the amount of money being committed to the One Barnet
programme of privatisation, any failure could have a huge impact both on Council finances and on services. Is there a Plan B if the One Barnet programme of privatisation is found to be unfit for purpose? If, as part of the privatisation programme, 70% of council employees become employees of a commercial company, how many staff will the Council retain to help put things right if or when something goes wrong?

When we elected you, we put our trust in you to make wise decisions on our behalf, using our money, but  we did not give you the right to introduce new policies without consulting us. As you weigh up the pros and cons of committing us to the One Barnet programme of privatisation, with all its financial and legal implications we implore you to act in the best interests of all of us, residents and council employees alike.

We, as a group of residents, voters and taxpayers, are not satisfied with the proposed privatisation of services, as we believe the quality of our services will diminish. Ask yourselves this question: you will no doubt put the interests of the residents you represent first, but will a private company be concerned about our best interests as much as the interests of their shareholders and making a healthy profit?

Yours sincerely,
Barnet Alliance for Public Services
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The Barnet Alliance for Public Services meets on a Wednesday evening at the Greek Cypriot Centre in Brittania Road, North Finchley at 7pm. All are welcome and the alliance is not associated with any political party, it is an organisation with the sole aim of improving the quality of public services in The London Borough of Barnet. The Barnet Eye supports the aims and objectives of the Barnet Alliance for Public Services.

This email was sent to all 63 Councillors of Barnet Council