Council Leader Jim Robbins has spoken about his support for the borough council's procurement services saying they are doing a fantastic job despite years of chronic under-funding due to the Conservative Government.
This comes after Swindon Carers Centre (SCC) announced their closure at the start of last week after failing to meet an agreement as part of the Swindon Borough Council procurement process affecting thousands of unpaid carers in the town. Three days later the borough council reached an interim agreement with SCC to keep it open another year whilst they negotiate a new long-term contract.
And then there was the announcement on Thursday that the award-winning Swindon Domestic Abuse Support Service (known as Swindon Women’s Aid), which is celebrating 50 years of service and had been rightly praised by Her Majesty The Queen earlier this year, had failed in its bid to retain the contract to continue providing its services, having fallen foul of the same commissioning and procurement procedure.
Cllr Robbins said: "The Administration's focus for our commissioning processes is focused on the delivering the best possible outcomes for service users, in this case, those suffering domestic abuse. People who have used the service were consulted on their views as part of the process and their feedback formed part of the decision to move to a new provider.
"We have inherited a procurement process from the previous administration that as a new administration we identified needs improvement. This is a piece of work that has been ongoing for some time as we adapt to new legislation in this area and our desire for the process to include the Swindon Council Missions and it is important we take sufficient time to get it right.
"Like all areas of the council, our commissioning and procurement services are under resourced after years of chronic under-funding to councils by the Conservative government.
"The Adults Commissioning team that we inherited had one staff member trying to manage over 100 contracts, and these challenges were repeated across the organisation. Residents will remember the procurement process that the Conservatives used for waste services in the town resulted in the chaos we saw at the start of the year. We have taken steps to add in new leadership and staff to the commissioning team, and that is already having a positive impact.
"In an ideal world, we would have had more time to focus on this, but we don't live in an ideal world. We inherited a council failing in a number of areas, with inadequate children's services, underinvestment across the board, huge debts and senior staff leaving in droves. We have stabilised the organisation, recruited a much more dynamic senior leadership team, delivered an ambitious new Swindon Plan and started to implement it, and will carry out the work needed to improve commissioning and procurement to ensure that we work effectively with partners going forward.
"We totally understand the disappointment felt by Swindon Women’s Aid after not winning their bid, but we know that it was a robust procurement process, and we look forward to working with The You Trust to continue to deliver the best possible support to those suffering from or at risk of domestic abuse.
"Addressing the points made by VAS (read the story here), the Provider Selection Regime doesn’t automatically apply when contracts are jointly funded by the Integrated Care Board and the Local Authority, there are complex rules associated with the use of PSR and PCR, all of which are considered on a case-by-case basis for each service prior to contract expiration.
"As VAS have highlighted themselves, it is important that we run a fair and transparent process and we can only evaluate what has been submitted as part of a competitive procurement process against the pre-defined quality questions and price weightings.
"We want to encourage local organisations to bid to run services, welcome support given to them by VAS and other organisations to deliver quality bids, but we will always focus on delivering the best possible outcomes for the services users."
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