The council spends £10million a year ensuring home care is provided for 3,700 borough residents.
By making better use of the private sector the council expects to save around £1.15m over a five year period around 2.3 per cent of the total budget.
The trade unions call this privatisation. To everyone else it is a common sense way of making the best of what both the public and the private sectors can offer.
It is not even radical. Twenty-one London boroughs most of them Labour already make more use of private home care providers than Conservative Wandsworth.
The Wandsworth approach is a model of caution. It has been carefully devised to avoid redundancies. No individual currently receiving a service from the council's own staff will lose that service.
The in-house service will remain the largest single provider in the borough. It will be able to take on new work in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth and hold onto existing work in the whole of the borough.
This will be balanced by enabling private providers to take on more work in the Battersea and Putney areas.
The changes in Wandsworth have been carefully thought out. They will help us to go on making sure the right level of care is available for our frail and vulnerable residents when they most need it.
COUNCILLOR JAN LEIGH
December 28, 2001 12:32
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