Biggs refuses to bow to public pressure on nurseries

THE RESULTS OF THE public consultation on privatising the Council’s three remaining day nurseries begin to emerge, Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor John Biggs has promised to “see if [the proposals] can be improved”.

Campaigners had been calling for the privatisation to be withdrawn – but the Executive Mayor seems determined to go ahead with outsourcing the nurseries, while ensuring that the revised proposals do not surface until after the May elections.

Service user struggles to follow the Labour position

The saga began in 2014, when Mayor Lutfur Rahman put closing the nurseries down as one of the options which could help produce a balanced budget. Labour Councillors joined a vociferous public campaign, run by local mums, opposing the closures – and insisted the Council nurseries must stay open. Mayor Lutfur Rahman listened to them – and kept the nurseries open.

Mums were very disappointed to see John Biggs’s budget proposals in February 2017, which proposed that the Council should stop running the nurseries – and let private providers rent the premises to run nurseries in instead. It was “closure” in all but name, and this time Labour Councillors have been absent from the protests.

The final “sell off the nurseries” proposals were sent out to public consultation last year – but now campaigners claim that the Council is being coy about releasing the results. It has sent out a formal press release which appears to have a link to the results – but the link doesn’t go anywhere. It has also written to some campaigners with selected information about the consultation results, but campaigners have been left with many questions.

Council press release: over 200 people filled out the online consultation.
Council letter to Campaigners: 226 people completed [online] responses… 191 (84.5%) opposed the proposal.
Campaigners: why is John Biggs ignoring this opposition to the proposals?

Council press release: seven meetings were held with parents of children at the nurseries and further meetings were held with parents, campaigners and trade unions.
Campaigners: how many supported privatising the nurseries?

Council press release: We also acknowledge the contributions [to the consultation] from the National Deaf Children’s Society; towerhamletsmum.com, the 1001 Critical Days All-Party Parliamentary Grup, and the Unison trades union branch.
Campaigners: how many supported privatising the nurseries?

Council press release: “the Mayor has listened to parent and resident concerns about affordability and […] has asked council officers to look again at the proposals to see if they can be improved.”
Council letter to campaigners: “The theme of poverty was mentioned by almost a quarter of respondents…”
Campaigners: why has the Mayor singled this one issue out of the consultation responses to respond to? What other concerns were raised and what is the Mayor’s response to those?  How can you “improve” a proposal to hand over the nurseries to private providers?

Council press release: “there will be no changes to how the day nurseries are run whilst this additional work is carried out.  Any future decision on the day nurseries will be made after this review.”
Campaigners: what changes will be made after the review is carried out?  Why is the review only into the question of charges, rather than responding to the consultation responses as a whole?

The Council also notes that almost a quarter of respondents were concerned that alternative nursery providers would not run such a good service. The Council admits that the three nurseries were scored “good” at their last Oftsed inspection. It goes on to say that 50 non-Council nurseries in the borough were also rated good, 10 were “outstanding” and 7 were “requires improvement” or “inadequate”. Campaigners point out that the non-Council nurseries do not have to deal with children with complex special needs.

The Council letter to campaigners says that 17% of consultation respondents were worried that children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) would lose their service. It goes on to say that the Council would continue to fund these services, which “might be delivered at the premises of a private or other nursery provider, but they would not be outsourced themselves”.

Campaigner and service user remain perplexed.

Campaigners are at a loss to understand what on earth this means. On the one hand the Council says that it is trying to save money by ceasing to provide day nursery services itself.  On the other hand, it will pay money to a private company to provide the services. This would not represent a saving of money at all.

Any private provider is going to charge at least the same as the service costs the Council at the moment – but the private provider will want to include an element of profit (which the Council does not). Either a private provider will charge profit on top of the current cost to the Council, or it will just charge the Council the same as the current cost – and deliver the service more cheaply. Delivering the service more cheaply, in such a labour intensive enterprise, has to mean cutting staff wages – so the specialist staff would be the ones, in effect, paying for the Council’s savings in this area.

Campaigners have only just received this information from the Council and are formulating their further questions. One of these is likely to be “what is the point of consultation if we are just going to be ignored?”

•Read more about it:
Mums tell Biggs: nurseries must stay!
Parent uproar over cuts as Biggs welcomes pilot

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