Campaigns help scupper privatisation deals

Public services union UNISON celebrated two successes over privatisation plans in local government and the transport sector at the end of last year.

In a major deal Hyder Business Services (HBS) was set to take over a large number of services from Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes councils.

Some 2,000 jobs were to be transferred but after a two-year campaign by union members the negotiations were abandoned.

In a joint statement the council and the company put the reversal down to "an unbridgeable financial gap between the expectations of both organisations".

But Northamptonshire council leader Councillor Mick Young also said: "The senior management team and other parts of the council have been reinforced and are now very much stronger. The county council's financial position is better and it has much greater capacity to initiate change itself".

The local UNISON branch commissioned a report by the Centre for Public Services which helped it argue the case for an in-house service improvement strategy as an alternative.

A similar approach was successful at the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (PTE). There were plans to hive-off IT services but the union was able to argue that no work was going into the in-house option "against the Best Value recommendations".

After a two and a half-year fight management agreed to keep the service in-house and increase the IT budget by 50%.