Further to the news that Carmarthenshire Council is planning to outsource all leisure and cultural services, the Carmarthenshire branch of Unison held a protest outside County Hall yesterday. They will also be protesting against cuts to front line staff and services on the 24th February when the council decide on the budget.
Unison issued the following press release;
Carmarthenshire labour Led council has taken a serious step towards putting its services up for sale.
The council has recently advertised that it will consider ‘future management options’ for Leisure Centres, Libraries, County parks and Museums. This is management speak that they want to outsource these services.
Mr Ian Jones Head of Leisure is quoted as saying in the press ‘public consultation on budget proposals showed support for alternative leisure delivery models’. The council’s consultation about budget cuts was a sham; the public in Carmarthenshire are opposed like general public elsewhere to privatisation and this is a significant step towards this.
What choice were the public offered outsourced services or no services? Our branch produced a No Cuts budget that would have maintained all services in house. This selling off of the family silver will lead to worse services and or more costly services to the public who will have no say over these services through their elected councillors.
Outsourced services will threaten jobs, terms and conditions of our members and other staff. They will have less spending power when small businesses are already struggling in Carmarthenshire (have a look at Llanelli town centre).
It is a scandal that this Labour led council have asked for informal expressions of interest and are paying RPT consulting to advise them through the process, but it is a direct consequence of implementing Con-Dem cuts of doing the Con-Dems dirty work for them. Instead of passively implementing cuts they should be resisting the cuts with Unison.
We intend to campaign against outsourcing our services to line the pockets of big business. We will be calling on other trade unions, anti -cuts campaigns community groups and the general public to defend local authority services.
We will send a clear message to the Council our services are not for sale
Mark Evans
Branch Secretary
Carmarthenshire County Unison
Unison issued the following press release;
Carmarthenshire County Council Services for Sale
Carmarthenshire labour Led council has taken a serious step towards putting its services up for sale.
The council has recently advertised that it will consider ‘future management options’ for Leisure Centres, Libraries, County parks and Museums. This is management speak that they want to outsource these services.
Mr Ian Jones Head of Leisure is quoted as saying in the press ‘public consultation on budget proposals showed support for alternative leisure delivery models’. The council’s consultation about budget cuts was a sham; the public in Carmarthenshire are opposed like general public elsewhere to privatisation and this is a significant step towards this.
What choice were the public offered outsourced services or no services? Our branch produced a No Cuts budget that would have maintained all services in house. This selling off of the family silver will lead to worse services and or more costly services to the public who will have no say over these services through their elected councillors.
Outsourced services will threaten jobs, terms and conditions of our members and other staff. They will have less spending power when small businesses are already struggling in Carmarthenshire (have a look at Llanelli town centre).
It is a scandal that this Labour led council have asked for informal expressions of interest and are paying RPT consulting to advise them through the process, but it is a direct consequence of implementing Con-Dem cuts of doing the Con-Dems dirty work for them. Instead of passively implementing cuts they should be resisting the cuts with Unison.
We intend to campaign against outsourcing our services to line the pockets of big business. We will be calling on other trade unions, anti -cuts campaigns community groups and the general public to defend local authority services.
We will send a clear message to the Council our services are not for sale
Mark Evans
Branch Secretary
Carmarthenshire County Unison
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| (Pic; Carmarthen Journal |
3 comments:
Garnant Golf was run in an 'alternative' outsourced way by Clays Golf and they ran out of money even though they were given about £200k of taxpayers' money.
Now that Garnant Golf is run by the members, are the taxpayers still paying for the 'skeleton staff' there,or is the club now completely self-financing?
Clays removed the (taxpayer-funded)equipment. Has this now been returned to Garnant?
the club is now self financing... end of story. volunteers run the bar and cut the grass.
I am glad to see (comment above) that Garnant Golf members' club is self financing and does not require any public funds especially as the Council said it cost between 100k and 250k a year for upkeep and running costs.
This makes it more puzzling to me how and why the golf specialists Clays, to whom the contract to operate the club was outsourced, and who were given £200k from public funds, ran out of money.
As far as I know the membership now is about the same as it was when Clays ran it.
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