Its been in the pipeline for years, It all started under labor with the softly-softly third sector commissioning bringing them in from grants as support services to commissioned to provide statutory services on business lines. These third sector agencies struggle handling the big national contracts, because of the risk - implications of payment by results and TUPE. I Imagine Serco, G4S and other massive MNCs are rubbing their hands.The statutory third sector contracts and commissioning have been a backdoor slash and burn for cost saving, with the primary savings been made on staff wages, pensions and conditions. The local third sector commissioned drug services where I worked start staff on wages at around £14-£21K; previously those jobs were matched to local authority and NHS scales at around NHS band 5-6 and SO 1, 2, 3. It will be bad news for staff and it will be interesting to see the implications for service users.The business model has not done great things for service users except given the false choice of consumer power, look at personalization - shifting the cash out at a set amount to people - then moving costs up by the private sector, private companies rinsing people then going back to the LA for more money, what a sham. Be interesting to see the inclusion of payment by results and what criteria they include.
