After many years when privatisation, contracting-out and outsourcing have been the dominant trends across the public services, there is now increasing evidence, particularly in the municipal sector – including water and energy – of trends in the opposite direction. The Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) at Greenwich University in London has produced a short briefing for EPSU that looks at the background, the latest evidence and highlights some of the key issues facing trade (...)

The university sector in the UK, and some universities in particular, are under pressure to cut costs and to outsource services. In response to this challenge the Working Lives Research Institute (WLRI) at London Metropolitan University has produced a very useful overview of the evidence on outsourcing, arguing that there is little to demonstrate that it delivers on quality. Shared business services outsourcing: progress at work or work in progress? is based on European comparative (...)

The results of a four-year research project, "Reforming markets and organizations", challenges a number of dominant ideas about the effects of markets and competition. The project was funded by the Academy of Finland and led by Johan Willner, Professor of Economics at the School of Åbo Akademi. The research looked at how efficiency and effectiveness are defined and found that a publicly-owned organisation may be more effective because it is better at achieving goals that are broader than (...)

Privatisation of public services is a new publication bringing together a number of studies carried out between 2007 and 2009 that examined the impact of privatisation and liberalisation on public employment, productivity and the quality of public services. The PIQUE project looked at electricity, postal, hospital and transport services in six European countries. Read more (...)

Trade unions have been campaigning for many years against the use of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) by the government, under the private finance initiative (PFI). The campaigns have been vindicated by the spectacular failure of the biggest PPPs of all, which were set up for the underground rail system in London. Transport for London (TfL), the public authority for the UK’s capital city, has now terminated four major PPP contracts in all. Read more (...)

Since the early 2000s public enterprise in Cologne, Germany’s fourth largest City, has undergone a major transformation. This has seen the creation of the country’s largest municipal services consortium and the return into public hands of key public services like waste management. This has meant a real boost to the City in terms of income, efficiency in improved public service. Read more (...)

Recent trends show that municipalities and departments in France have begun to take advantage of a new form of public company to replace privatised services with public provision. They are creating ‘local public companies’ (sociétés publiques locales - SPL), 100% owned by public authorities, to carry out local public services, without the need to invite tenders from private companies. Read more (...)

The GMB general union has told the Department of Health that it needs to get to grips with the very real risks to the social care market, if another care home disaster like Southern Cross is to be avoided. The union warns of dangers that have been ignored up to now and that the existing framework of monitoring and control is completely inadequate and doesn’t provide any proper check on the financial health of care providers. Read more > (...)

A new survey by the JHL public services union has found that many municipalities and joint authorities are disappointed with the results of outsourcing. And the dissatisfaction is so great that up to a fifth of these public organizations plan to take back outsourced work so that it can be done once again by their own personnel. Read more > here

Over 140 mayors from across the political spectrum have signed up to a campaign for improved funding of local government services. The campaign is calling for a re-negotiation of the federal Austrian financial distribution system, which the national government plans to undertake in 2013. By doing this, the various groups in the ‘Communal Resolution Campaign’ want to promote a new type of dialogue and alliance-building between trade unions, civil society, local politicians and communal (...)