Issue - meetings

Report CSD19125

Members of the PDS Committee considered a motion which had been referred from a meeting of the full Council on 15 July 2019.

The motion (moved by Councillor Angela Wilkins and seconded by Councillor Vanessa Allen) requested that the RR&H PDS Committee undertake a 360 degree review of the services provided by Greenwich Leisure limited (GLL) under their contract to provide the borough’s library services.

Visiting Member Councillor Wilkins questioned how profit could still be achieved with a 25% reduction in costs to the service as implied by the contract.  The current strike action was primarily not brought about by the request for a 6% pay rise, but by concerns about staff terms and conditions.  GLL were not delivering the proposed 13 training modules, employees were not receiving an ‘acting up’ salary, vacant positions were not filled but temporary and/or casual staff were being brought in.

In comparing the last two monitoring reports, Councillor Wilkins noted that two questions which regularly received complaints, had been omitted from the customer satisfaction survey; these related to the cleanliness of toilets and opening hours.  Should customer satisfaction levels fall by more than 5% then the contractor would incur a relatively large fine.  Therefore, by omitting these questions, it could be presumed that GLL were manipulating the survey.  This would be covered by an internal audit to address key risk areas.

In response to Councillor Wilkins, GLL confirmed that whilst costs had reduced by 25%, the service had not. Councillor Wilkins referred to an APCOA parking contract report considered at a previous Environment and Community Services PDS meeting where it was reported that during the tendering process, the Council had told the contractors that the baseline for wages should be the National Minimum wage not the London Living wage.  As a result APCOA were unable to employ people due to the lower salaries offered.

Returning to the Library Contract, Councillor Wilkins highlighted that events had continued not to take place.  Penge Library used to support the Penge Festival but had been unable to for the past two years.  Some childrens events during the summer did not go ahead due to the strike action.

In summing up, Councillor Wilkins urged Members to agree the motion.  Further detailed information was needed on what and where resources were spent, some of which should be used to provide libraries i.e. Penge Library with a selection of books for ethnic communities. 

The Principal Client, Libraries reported that the 25% saving was based on the £6m figure for the year in which the transfer took place and included one-off capital payments to start the contract, additional refurbishment and IT equipment etc. and therefore did not reflect the normal revenue costs.

In regard to the omission of questions from the customer satisfaction survey, Members were informed that opening hours had not changed and respondents had been free to comment it they so wished; there was no attempt at concealment.  The question relating to toilets was not reported simply  ...  view the full minutes text for item 33