TWO of the services provided by Thurrock Council’s strategic partner Serco have been taken back in house.
The council’s Leader – Cllr John Kent – made the announcement at the meeting of the authority’s cabinet on Wednesday (10 July) evening.
He said he had taken a “very urgent” decision and that the move – which will save the council money – will be completed by 1 August.
Cllr Kent opened Wednesday’s meeting by saying: “Thurrock Council and Serco have reached agreement on bringing some services back in-house.
“These services were carried out by Europa which is a sub-contractor for Serco.
“Staff are being transferred to the council to make sure our ambitions for investment in the housing and sustainable transport is implemented with appropriate governance, in a timely manner, with improved quality and with lower costs.”
He added that the move followed “in-depth investigations into the value-for-money of several services” and that it would “create long-term savings for the council”.
Serco took over the council’s strategic agreement when it acquired Vertex in 2012.
Cllr Kent said: “Since then senior staff from both organisations have worked to develop the agreement.
“The council made some changes earlier this year as part of the housing transformation programme, and it has also renegotiated a permanent model to ensure it will be able to deliver a more effective and value-for-money approach to the delivery of its housing capital and revenue programmes.
“In planning and transportation, Europa had been responsible for the procurement and delivery of highway maintenance, bridge maintenance, street lighting, traffic signal control, road lining, and direction and information signing.
“A review over recent months had shown significant areas for improvement both operationally and financially.”
3 or 4 years ago you had the farcical situation where Vertex subcontracted road repairs to Europa and Europa paid Thurrock Councils Highways Department to do the work.
It took a while (years?) to realise that Thurrock Council paid Vertex to do the work, Vertex took their cut and sub contracted the work to Europa. Europa took their cut and then sub contracted the already sub contracted work back to Thurrock Council.
A farcical waste of tax payers money.
Why remove one set of middle men just to replace them with another set ?
Thurrock Council are now giving works out to companies outside of Thurrock then expecting them to give the work back to local companies.
All these big companies are doing is taking their cut and expecting the small local companies to do the works for next to nothing.