How Essex betrayed its residents

24 February 2010

/article_images/articledir_11594/5797473/1_listing.jpg

Ross Clark on a supposedly ‘model’ Tory authority which has, behind the scenes, left elderly homeowners to suffer at the hands of private contractors

Essex County Council may have been hoping that the problem would go away: a clause in the Land Compensation Act states that property owners must lay a formal claim for their money within seven years and a day of the relevant infrastructure project being completed. Perhaps they also hoped, in a caring way, that the residents — many of whom are elderly — would be put off by the high costs of using the Lands Tribunal — an expensive court which deals with land valuation issues. Many have been to the tribunal, but with a few months to spare, 30 others have taken out an action against Essex Council. The council has already been ordered to pay the costs of a preliminary hearing of the Lands Tribunal on 10 February; moreover, the Land Compensation Act demands interest to be paid on late payments. So — no surprise — the end result is likely to be a far bigger bill for taxpayers than if the council had simply paid up in the first place.

There’s a lesson in the story of the Colchester road for conservative local authorities: don’t get too cocky. Unless you’re very careful and very clever, your contractors are going to take you for a ride and leave you with the bill. The Labour years are littered with examples; of the public sector ripped off by IT contractors, and PFI deals where NHS trusts have come off the worst. In one notorious case an NHS Trust was stung for an extra bill for marmalade, after the PFI consortium pointed out that the catering contract had stipulated toast but nothing to spread on it.

So Essex is not the answer. If the Conservatives want to create true flagship authorities they are going to have to come up with a better big idea than simply to hand over all their responsibilities to private contractors. Private contractors are often capable of doing things more cheaply — but as anyone who has ever employed a plumber knows full well, they are also capable of talking you into a bigger job than is necessary, then of taking the money and disappearing halfway through the job, leaving your floor still up and your bath still not plumbed in. And of course, they can go bust, too. No council can escape its lawful responsibilities by handing day-to-day running or project management over to the private sector. If councils or any other public sector body want to save money, they are going to have to employ people with business acumen to negotiate better with contractors or — in contravention to some branches of conservative ideology — actually to deliver services in-house, more cheaply and effectively.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3

More articles from: Ross Clark | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (1)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Stuart Seacole Smith

March 8th, 2010 2:23pm Report this comment

Sad stuff. Tea and biscuit type stinginess will always come back to haunt by way of lost goodwill, and end up costing way more than the tea and biscuits ever could have. Failing to cough up on house-value reduction deals (which let's face it is always going to represent poor recompense for the suffering that goes with it) is immeasurably worse. That will come back to bite hard, and deservedly so.

Post comment