Complaints against officers

[Fedster + 1,307]

Force examining whether to terminate long term payment plan.

Gwent PCC Jeff Cuthbert

 

A police and crime commissioner is looking at ending his force's PFI contract 17 years early.

The private finance initiative deal sees Gwent Police pay an annual sum to pay off the cost of Ystrad Mynach Police Station.

PFI was encouraged in the late 1990s and early part of this century in order for forces to use private money to invest in public sector projects. They often involved lengthy contracts which see the investors secure huge returns. 

Gwent Police is due to pay for the police station until 2035. The taxpayer forked out £941,000 in the 2016/17 financial year for the site.

PCC Jeff Cuthbert is to take advice on whether it would be worthwhile paying a lump sum to end the deal early.

Darren Garwood-Pask, chief finance officer for the Gwent PCC, told Police Oracle that following a review in 2014, the force took back facilities management in house at no cost.

A tendering process to provide advice on the rest of the contract has recently closed.

Mr Garwood-Pask believes that the PFI contract is one of the best in policing but said: "We are keeping an open mind because it's a significant outlay of our budget so with all the austerity we've face we look at every option as part of the savings programme.

"We will assess whether for the capital outlay we can have savings of X a year and if that is worthwhile.

"The second test is if we can afford to do it."

The review was carried out under former PCC Iain Johnston.

As previously reported on Police Oracle, Carillion the private company providing services at four buildings and one training centre to the Met Police is to go into liquidation. The force says there are contingency plans in place so that services continue running.

View On Police Oracle

 

[MerseyLLB 8,426]

The issue with PFI is because many of them were agreed 10-20 years ago the contracts do not include the changing needs of the force.

One PFI agreement I am aware of basically means that when a force rolls out part of their IT change that one station will still have to complete several different tasks the old way as the PFI contractor has stalled in the discussions for the required infrastructure upgrades.

It's also ridiculous that moving tables, chairs and computers invokes sanctions on the occupiers if not done by the contractor...who charge if we ask them to do it.

Another PFI contract has insufficient parking facilities for the police operational vehicles...which results in snot o grams and sanction notices being left on vehicles for parking outside the parking plan - it's frankly ridiculous. The issue is...If the operational vehicles are parked in bays in the staff car park (which is also woefully too small) then it results in officers having to pay to park a long distance away - before anyone gets smart the public transport infrastructure is not suitable for those on VSA.

[BlueBob + 690]

15 hours ago, MerseyLLB said:

The issue with PFI is because many of them were agreed 10-20 years ago the contracts do not include the changing needs of the force.

One PFI agreement I am aware of basically means that when a force rolls out part of their IT change that one station will still have to complete several different tasks the old way as the PFI contractor has stalled in the discussions for the required infrastructure upgrades.

It's also ridiculous that moving tables, chairs and computers invokes sanctions on the occupiers if not done by the contractor...who charge if we ask them to do it.

Another PFI contract has insufficient parking facilities for the police operational vehicles...which results in snot o grams and sanction notices being left on vehicles for parking outside the parking plan - it's frankly ridiculous. The issue is...If the operational vehicles are parked in bays in the staff car park (which is also woefully too small) then it results in officers having to pay to park a long distance away - before anyone gets smart the public transport infrastructure is not suitable for those on VSA.

Perhaps these were or are some real world indicators that despite police senior management saying they are a business, they tend to play at it.  The reason the PFI companies make sooooooo much money is the police managers and advisors were lacking and slacking on the real costs year on year to their budgets.   Fortunately this PCC didn’t quite go so far as to say the £900,000 a year is a surprise to them!   And that seems to be for ONE station ..... nearly £3k per day!

Edited January 19, 2018 by BlueBob

[Mac7 808]

The above coupled with ridiculous interests rate are choking the NHS and now it would seem the police. A re financing of PFI contracts would seem sensible in the long term but I would not be surprised if there were huge buyout penalties in the contracts.

[MerseyLLB 8,426]

Unfortunately I would guess the minutiae are not disclosable. 

I've always had to question - how can a 'for profit' do things cheaper than a public service?

In many cases they can't but the 'baseline' package requires less upfront investment so seems attractive.

We see it everywhere... vehicle fleets, estates maintenance... 

Speak to any tradesman...a public sector contract is often a golden ticket. Granted there are some shrewd organisations who negotiate preferable contracts but there are a good number of suppliers who withdraw from these.

You only have to look at the railway franchises to see it CAN be done with he right leadership... the DFT successfully nationalised the East Coast mainline then sold it back to Virgin who folders it. And yet still the public coffer bailed then out! 

The FSS privatisation has been a nightmare.

G4S should have been avoided at all costs after the Olympics.

Somewhat more emotively...police canteens were privatised...and now have gone the way of the dodo...forcing police officers to face sensational headlines for buying food or minor parking infractions.

Rant over.

 

 

[obsidian_eclipse + 1,202]

I remember when we used to have a few caretakers knocking about the station and they'd often be working none stop on one thing or another without any requirement or oversight. It could be as simple as oiling hinges, planeing doors which got stuck, changing light bulbs etc. No one really saw any problems because they were fixed before it was noticed.

Now imagine a force out sourced the facilities. After all, why were they paying wages for people who didn't seem to be needed. I'm sure there was much back slapping and congratulations at 'saved' money.

But then when a light bulb blew in the changing room and it was behind a metal grill so you couldn't get at easily they had to put in a service request. It was interesting because suddenly it was all accountable and bureaucratic, volumes of paperwork was being generated where before you'd see Jim in the basement and he'd get on it. But now it wasn't deemed appropriate to put a call out for the lightbulb to be fixed by the contractor because it would incur a fee to attend. So it would be added to a list until a sufficient number of things had failed or broken down to justify the three figure number. Months go by with a dark changing room, a few toilets go out of order, some doors are jamming open (so much for security) and the heating is on the fritz. Thankfully that means a new light in the changing room.