Salford and Liverpool City Councils plan IT trading venture Two northern councils have teamed up to sell technology and services commercially. Salford – home of MediaCityUK and the BBC's Northern HQ – and Liverpool City Councils plan to establish a trading entity within the next 12-18 months to both compete against and collaborate with firms in the private sector. It's hoped a third, …
Hopefully, I wouldn't agree at all to them competing with the private sector on a larger scale than that. It's one way of reducing the financial pressure from the removal of revenue support grants but it shouldn't be at the expense of the economy. A lot of councils are going to be doing things like this within the next few years.
"The Salford and Liverpool plan follows 12 months' collaboration that began with Liverpool looking for a partner to help on an ERP and financials projects, which saw the pair first share the price of a premium SAP engagement package."
They should all have been doing this sort of collaboration for years. It's good to know that this form of mutual working is becoming a thing nowadays. All we need now is for the various police forces to start cooperating with each other when specifying and buying equipment ... etc .... etc.
Police forces cooperating! hahahahahahahaha.
Easier to blame the government for lack of cash resulting in loss of officers, rather than do anything about the 42 different forces all with their own, IT, HR, cars, Chief constables, deputy CC's, etc costing a packet.
"Easier to blame the government for lack of cash resulting in loss of officers, rather than do anything about the 42 different forces all with their own, IT, HR, cars, Chief constables, deputy CC's, etc costing a packet."
You almost make it sound like you support a single national police force. With Theresa May in charge and Snooper Charter 2.0 on the books and the lack of oversight from the various EU institutions looming, I'm not sure that's really a such a good idea.
well, so far Norfolk County Council have held onto their "Norse Group" and are running joint enterprises with Barnsley, Devon, Enfield, Medway and other councils outside their East Anglian heartland. I suppose it depends on how much money they make - "too much" and someone will want to make an offer the councils can't refuse (and then gouge them afterwards) , a massive loss and even the most fiendish of asset strippers wouldn't touch them.
"There's a reason why a lot of people work in the public sector."
Siloed practices?
Merging many back office roles and that includes IT I'm afraid, can reduce duplication. At best it means they no longer have to advertise for unfilled vacancies, at worse, redundancies.
It's no different from a private business buying another business. You'll find HR, admin, cleaners, IT, building management and many other departments trimmed back.
They've read the reports on SouthWestOne ?
Most unlikely. I work in a sector where local authorities are piling in to commercial business, believing that although they can't even empty bins weekly, they can do a better, more efficient job than large, long established companies who have been fighting it out for decades in a ruthlessly competitive sector.
In any line of business, there's how the rest of the world think you make money (and they always think it is falling off a log), and the commercial reality (where there's a range of requisite resources plus commercial and technical skills just to win the business, never mind make a profit).
If local authorities are so confident of their competitive abilities, good luck to them - oh, and by the way, I'd like a choice of who I pay my council tax to.
But you can bet if they succeed one of those ilk will be sniffing round to buy them up.
Actually it seems that UK councils with shared borders have (slowly) started to share things like payroll, personnel and some legal services.
If it's done locally and not imposed from central government it can work and can save money.
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