Recently our regional daily, the EDP ran an article, rightly perhaps, praising the success of a company called Norse. Now this company was set up a few years ago by Norfolk County Ciouncil effectively outsourcing first its property services arm and then hiring the company to outsource - or privatise - a range of other services.
Since then Norse has grown hugely and in our region alone provides services to several other local councils - all part of the great Blair/Cameron plan to reduce the scale of the public sector and duck responsibility for all those difficult social and welfare services.
They EDP praised the fact that the firm was paying a large sum of money to its employees living and working in Norfolk. But the story was a bit short of detail; so I did some digging and wrote the following to the paper, the MD of Norse and the reporter involved. Not appeared yet....
The success of Norse Group is very good news for more reasons than
may be apparent from the EDP report (Nov 9: Norse Group pays £82m in
salaries etc) since most of this money is actually Norfolk taxpayers
money.
Norse was formed, as you report, by the county council and,
with its subsidiaries provides a wide range of services for local
authorities. The vast majority of the £82m you report has come from
Norfolk County, Norwich City and Great Yarmouth Borough in payments
for services provided to the community on behalf of those
authorities. This is the benign face of privatisation we are told.
Indeed Norse Group has seen its income, mostly from similar
contracts, climb to £177 million this year, up by about 13% and its
gross profit climb to £40m, up 10%.
Clearly it is very much in the interests of Norfolk taxpayers, not
to mention city council house tenants and residential care home
tenants, that Norse continues to prosper. And in reading their
annual reports it is also very clear that they take their community
role seriously, under the guidance of a range of county and no doubt
other authority councillors on their board.
But the report to which you refer was it seems ordered not so much
by the county as the Norse Group, as managing director Mike Britch
makes clear in paragraph nine. He is also more precise on the
specific benefits that Norse's growth has brought to the county,
noting the creation of 56 jobs within Norfolk supported by contracts
outside the county.
What is not referred to is that the county has been more than a
little concerned at possible mis-understanding of the group's
activities, the county's relationship with it and the precise roles
and possible conflict faced by their elected members combining board
membership with their civic duties. They had a significant risk
report done on this in 2011. It would seem to me that this latest
report is a further effort to demonstrate that the decision to
privatise all this work was a good one, well taken and well managed.
But I did a little sum and found that if £82 million is being paid
to all 5,700 staff in Norfolk that means an average wage of just
over £14,000 each - well below both the national minimum for a
full-time employee and even further behind the living wage which,
among others Boris Johnson is so keen on. And the annual report goes
to some trouble to make re-assuring noises about their commitment to
funding the workers' pensions, which may be in stark contrast to
what they might have expected when employed by the county. All
companies are being urged to focus more on their role in supporting
the public good - something the new Archbishop has already referred
to.
But since we taxpayers 'own' this company can we have a bit more
information? How many Full Time Equivalents? How many now delivering
Norfolk services? How many at foundation and for each contract
since? What's the average wage of employees, manager and executives
- now and then? What are their pension terms? Where does the profit
go? Who are the beneficial shareholders?
Answers to these will help us taxpayers decide whether this has been
a good decision, well managed and of benefit to us all.
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