by Phillip Ward
2 minute read
There is a lot more to the obese Localism Bill than planning.
Take the Community Right to Challenge. This will allow community groups, voluntary bodies or charities to express an interest in taking over all or part of a local service, provided by a local authority or on its behalf. In respect of waste services, the model might be the successful recycling collections being run by the Cwm Harry Land Trust in Powys – although the powers won’t apply in Wales. Their brand of local “slow recycling” has engaged the local community and raised recycling rates to 74%.
Competition
While this is promoted as a Big Society activity – letting the people develop their own services – that is not how it will play out in practice. The provisions can’t set aside the procurement directive, so acceptance of an EoI does not result in the community group being given the work; it merely leads to a procurement exercise. They would have to win that against competition from professional service providers.
The grounds for rejecting an EoI have not yet been spelled out – that is for later regulations, but it will be interesting to see whether any loss of efficiency from the fragmentation of services is one of them. Philosophically it shouldn’t be.
Given the incidence of in-house provision of waste services, this could paradoxically benefit waste companies especially since among the groups allowed to express an interest are any two employees of the local authority. It’s not hard to envisage a couple of managers throwing in their hand with a commercial partner rather than developing the mutual model which is presumably envisaged.
To protect procurement cycles, local authorities will be able to limit the dates when they will be prepared to consider an EoI and all authorities should urgently look at that so that they can keep some control on timing.
For voluntary groups, the best advice maybe to try to try to collaborate with the local authority so that the expression of interest is more likely to lead to a procurement they can win and succeed at.
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