Neighbours join forces to ease cuts pain – Islington Council in talks with other Town Halls to find joint suppliers

Published: 30 July, 2010
by RÓISÍN GADELRAB

THE Town Hall is looking to revolutionise the way it operates by striking deals with other London boroughs to share services in a bid to save cash.

Islington’s Labour councillors have been in talks with their counterparts in Camden, Hackney, Haringey and Waltham Forest over the idea of offering joint contracts to suppliers.

Firms providing school meals have already been asked to bid for a deal covering Islington and Camden.

Islington Council has been told it must make £7million of cuts this year, with a further £70million slashed by the government from its spending over the next four years.

The tender document for the school meals contract estimates the deal will be worth about £62million over five years. The idea behind sharing with Camden is to cut down on management and delivery costs.

In a separate deal, Islington has teamed up with nine councils to buy cheaper insurance, saving the borough £350,000 over two years on a contract with Zurich Insurance.

Islington’s annual premium – including liability and property – is now £900,000, down from £1,250,000 before joining the consortium.

Labour council leader Councillor Catherine West said: “We negotiated a deal where we would go in together and pay less. This is what we’re doing increasingly to look at where we can make savings. 

“We’re looking at everything, from health and policing to education. It’s all about the efficiencies to be made at the top because we’re desperate not to cut the frontline. We also need a culture change in the council so people begin asking: What can be done collectively?”

In some cases, Islington is teaming up with councils with a similar ideology, while others, such as the insurance deal, are purely dependent on who else wants to join.

Cllr West said: “Some of it is pragmatic but others are based on the way we view the world and the importance of public services. We need to look at how we build up a support mechanism to combat Lib Dem and Conservative policy ideas and their attack on public services. 

“There’s no doubt that the Tory-Lib Dem government is using the crisis as a way of pursuing their ideological dream of killing the public services.”

The council leader said there were also long-term plans to bring education, currently being run by private company Cambridge Education, back in-house. She had not ruled out sharing education services with other councils.

Mental health services and cemeteries are already run jointly with Camden, while Islington and Hackney police have just opened a shared Safer Neighbourhoods office in Blackstock Road.

Cllr West said: “With health and policing, we can only make recommendations. We want to hang on to our neighbourhood teams. I’ve raised this with Boris Johnson.”

At the same time, opposition Lib Dem councillors are calling on Cllr West to axe the post of council chief executive and consider sharing the job with a neighbouring borough.

Islington’s current chief executive, John Foster, earns £220,000, but Labour has unveiled plans to cut the salary to £185,000 when he retires next year.

Liberal Democrat finance spokesman Councillor John Gilbert said: “Labour councillors need to be much bolder in rooting out waste and inefficiency locally. 

“This must happen before any other cuts are even considered.  

“Sharing a chief executive and pooling services with other councils could bring big savings. But Labour is silent on these big issues and is already cutting services and slashing spending by £7million until April 2011 alone.”

He added: “To add insult to injury they refused to accept the Liberal Democrat idea of a five per cent cut to all councillor salaries and instead created new paid positions for their own councillors.”