Courtship's Rocky Path

The piece in the Guardian the other day featuring Sarah Billiald, erstwhile CEO of Kent Probation Trust, and her plans to lead a mutual bid for the prime contract, attracted a lot of attention on here. Long on cuddly stuff about community and offender engagement, for an accountant it was mightily short on money.

This whole daft and dangerous Transforming Rehabilitation omnishambles is all about money and how more can be done with less, so I found it strange that the issue wasn't even hinted at. Not even a slight acknowledgement that in order to win this bid as a prime, you have to be cheaper than the opposition. 

Now lets be clear here, with her background and experience outwith the probation service, Sarah is pushing at an open door at the Ministry of Justice, but the figures have got to stack up. No matter how desperate they are to award at least one prime contract to a mutual or other voluntary sector outfit in order to claim TR success, the bid must demonstrate how loads more work can be done for less money.

This article was a pretty unashamed piece of propaganda aimed not just at the staff in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, it's also meant to provide some evidence for the myth that mutuals and charities can be a 'safe haven' for probation staff and a serious alternative to those big nasty outfits like G4S and Serco.

The trouble is the evidence provided by Turning Point demonstrates that in the end every outfit has to be ruthless in order to make the money available fit the contracted work to be done. As all accountants know full well, in such a situation, costs have to be cut. If Sarah isn't going to explain this, then the staff must work it out for themselves.

The other remarkable omission from this piece of propaganda was any mention of a partner and the answer has a lot to do with the money of course. A large charity pulled out and now a commercial suitor is being wooed. This from the latest Co:here bulletin:- 

As you all know the size and complexity of the CRC contracts, together with the
lack of financial track record of the mutual, means that we have always wanted
to bid in a joint venture with another organisation(s) for the Kent Surrey Sussex
CRC. This also fits with our ethos of co production - we need to work with new
organisations to deliver a very different approach to services (centred around
reducing reoffending).  

Over the past few months the mutual team have been doing a lot of work to identify
potential partners and get to a stage where we can sign a collaboration agreement
(which would be a commitment to bid together and set out any rules or caveats to that
commitment). Having spoken to many different organisations of different sizes, from
different sectors and with different skills we thought we had found a preferred partner in
September and were close to signing an agreement (which is why we said in previous
updates that we would be able to let you know who this is in September).

However when the competition started on the 19th September the Ministry of Justice also published the Pre Qualifying Questionnaire (PQQ) which clearly set out what bidders would have to do to even get through the first stage of the competition. One of the key tests is that you can demonstrate you have access to finances equivalent to 50% of the annual contract value - for our CRC this is in the region of £13million.

Our initially preferred partner (a large national charity with significant commercial experience of delivering large Government contracts) unfortunately felt that, in the light of the PQQ criteria, they could no longer bid for the Kent Surrey Sussex CRC (the 6th largest CRC) and so this potential collaboration collapsed (on the 3rd October) and they will not be bidding in our area. 

We had planned for this eventuality and have spent the last couple of weeks seeing if there is another partner who would meet our key requirements which are:

• Strong ethos of co production placing staff and service users at the heart of service design (both for bid and throughout life of contract).
• Understand our mutual model and how it adds value through governance and delivery (ie. not use mutual as bid candy).
• Bring it’s own delivery and commercial expertise plus be able to finance PQQ  requirements.
• Have a partnership approach as equal players: complementary skills sets but with shared core values.

We have identified an alternative (and in many ways stronger) potential partner and are
currently working out the details of whether we could collaborate and what the terms of that collaboration may look like. Given the size of the Kent Surrey Sussex CRC the only organisations that are considering bidding for Kent Surrey Sussex are private sector
organisations (to our knowledge there are no Charities able or willing to bid for a contract
our size). The partner we are in discussion with is a private sector organisation but we are confident that it meets our key requirements. 

However, this is a mutual and we do not feel we should be making these decisions without
understanding staff’s view. Therefore we propose the following:

1. We will continue to work to see if there is a good collaboration offer with the potential  private sector partner.
2. If we feel there is a good offer we will put this to staff for a vote - this will include the name of the partner and the terms of the deal.
3. Staff will be able to vote “Yes - I would like the mutual to continue to work with this partner to develop a bid” “No - I would rather the mutual did not progress” or “I don’t have a strong view either way as to the future of the mutual”. Voting No would mean that the mutual work would cease and we would have no future role in the bid or influence/ownership of the CRC.

Staff at our first three mutual workshops last week gave a strong indication that they would like a vote but that the vote should be held after all the workshops have concluded so that all staff have the chance to find out more about the mutual, understand how it fits with the CRC and make an informed choice as to it's future. This means that the vote would be held (anonymously and electronically) mid November when the workshops have concluded. 

We will progress work with the potential partner in parallel to the mutual workshops happening so that if staff vote ‘Yes’ we have not disadvantaged ourselves compared to other bidders. This would mean that we would plan to set up bid design workshops in the second half of November which would then be cancelled if staff vote No.

It will be interesting to see who the commercial partner turns out to be and especially what their track record has been like. Meanwhile we have the extraordinary situation of public money being expended as probation staff set about designing their own demise. Better to do this it is said than have it imposed upon you.

I think the result is likely to be the same essentially, but the notion of course has the handy side effect of stifling and discouraging opposition to the whole bloody TR plan, or so MoJ/Noms hopes. There is now to be a debate on the whole omnishambles next Wednesday in the House of Commons and I would urge people to contact their MP's by any means and let them know the strength of feeling on this matter.

Doing the Ministry's Bidding

The Ministry of Justice is absolutely desperate to give it's TR omnishambles planned for probation some semblance of credibility by making sure that not all the 'prime' contracts are awarded to the questionable big boys like G4S, Serco, A4E or Interserve. As mentioned in a previous post, they have resorted to begging:-  

The government’s rehabilitation reforms will not have been a success if no voluntary sector organisations win contracts to become prime providers, a senior civil servant said yesterday.

Speaking at the Third Sector Impact Measurement conference in London yesterday, Antonia Romeo, director of the criminal justice group at the Ministry of Justice, said: "We hope there are really creditable bids from the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector to win tier-one contracts.

"We think that if we don’t have any VCSE providers at tier one, this project will not have been a success."

Romeo said the government had introduced a number of measures to support voluntary sector organisations working with prisoners and to make it easier for sector organisations to win contracts.

"Voluntary sector organisations are absolutely essential to what we’re trying to do," she said. "Opening up the market is the key purpose of these reforms.

"Think about what partnerships you can form, formal or informal, including consortia, in order to deliver services."

Well, step forward Sarah Billiald, former CEO of Kent Probation Trust and former spokesperson for the PCA. She stood aside some months ago in order to lead one of the 8 probation 'mutuals' formed from 13 probation trusts and today's full page puff in the Guardian confirms that she intends to win the prime contract in her contract package area:-

Sarah Billiald is leading efforts to create a staff mutual to run rehabilitation services in one of the biggest probation areas in England and Wales. The former chief executive of Kent probation heads a  small team working across most of south-east England – Kent, Surrey and Sussex – which aims to bid in partnership with the private sector to take over the community rehabilitation company (CRC) responsible from next year for the management and supervision of low- to medium-risk offenders in the three counties. The contract is said to be worth up to £28m.

"The idea of the mutual is that it will deliver a range of services that would include probation and rehabilitation services, but not only them," says Billiald. "It is about taking the skill set we have about people being reintegrated back into local communities and saying it can apply to all sorts of vulnerable groups: people with mental health issues; with disabilities. It could be elderly people."

She says the idea of the mutual – which is called Co:here because it is about "co-producing strong communities" – is not just "to do things to service users" but also to work with them to say, 'Well, how are you going to stop offending?' That's the consistent model and, however the service would be, we would design it with our service users."

Usually mutuals are staff-owned but Co:here will have three types of member – the staff, the service users (in this case offenders) and the community. The structure is hardwired into its constitution with the governing body made up of staff, service users and volunteers from the community elected by the members and with the power to appoint and remove non-executive directors.

Billiald says that the probation competition is about reducing reoffending. The much smaller national probation service will take responsibility for public protection and high-risk offenders, allowing the CRCs, which will take over from the probation trusts, to focus more strongly on rehabilitation.

It's very disappointing indeed to hear a former CEO talking like this, effectively helping the MoJ in its aim of breaking up the probation service. But it shouldn't come as any great surprise because Sarah Billiald isn't a probation officer, and never has been. She's an accountant and therefore perfectly qualified to help usher in this brave new idiotic TR ominshambles:- 

Career July 2013 to present: lead promoter, Co:here mutual; 2008 toJuly 2013: chief executive, Kent Probation; 2006-08: deputy director of home affairs, Prime Minister's National Delivery Unit; 1997-2005: various roles including audit manager, audit principal, audit senior and audit trainee, National Audit Office; 1996-97: volunteer, Bede House (east London community development charity).

In this Guardian piece there is absolutely no hint that in order to win the contract it actually has to be about saving money, less staff, more work, worse terms and conditions. The staff know this of course, even if Sarah chooses not to raise the issue, and carrying them is not going to be easy:-  

But first, the mutual has to be sure that the staff are with them. "We will go to staff and say: 'Here is a choice. We can either do nothing and this competition will happen and whoever wins will win – it could be G4S or Capita and they will own the company and you will work for them," says Billiald. "Or we can fund a joint venture and we will own 51% and have considerable influence. But that joint venture is a private company with shareholders and we will be going into partnership with them.

"That is the choice we're going to put to staff, because if staff say, 'I want no part of this, not in my name', then what sort of mutual is it? But if staff say 'We would rather have some influence than no influence', we would rather go for it."

She says it helps that the competition is being launched against a background where the "current delivery model" isn't regarded as broken. "The current staff know exactly which bits work and which don't. They have never had the flexibility – because we have been part of the public sector – to deliver in a more creative way to focus on rehabilitation."

By way of illustration that all the warm words and soft soap about community involvement, offender engagement and doing 'good work' misses the real point of TR, here is a stark reminder of what is to come from Turning Point, another outfit, a charity, keen to pick up probation work. They sacked all their staff and put them on worse terms and conditions in order to remain 'competitive':-

Turning Point has broken all links with external organisations that had an influence on employee pay levels, and established a “Turning Point-owned approach to annual pay reviews”.

Just as pay within the voluntary sector is coming under intense scrutiny from MPs and parts of the press, Turning Point has revealed in its latest accounts that it has “delinked” from organisations including the National Joint Council for local government and Agenda for Change, the NHS system that allocates posts to set pay bands. 

The decision to take unilateral control of its pay review process is one of several changes the charity made to its terms and conditions of employment when it sacked all its staff earlier this year and rehired them on new contracts.

Three hundred staff have lodged a claim with the Employment Tribunal but Unite the union told civilsociety.co.uk yesterday that it was still waiting for a hearing date.

The charity’s annual report went into some detail about Project Swan, the changes described by Turning Point as essential to “remain competitive and continue delivering value for money”.

It said the downturn in the economy had created a difficult trading environment for all voluntary sector health and social care providers, and public sector funding cuts have “hit much harder and more quickly than we anticipated”.

In response, in November 2012 the charity kicked off negotiations with Unite the union on a set of proposals to change the terms and conditions of employment for staff.  An invitation to employees to provide feedback elicited 448 separate responses including 151 suggestions for how the charity could alter the proposals or make other savings.

After the consultation with Unite, Turning Point terminated contracts for all employees and re-engaged them on new contracts which also featured the following elements:

• No longer paying enhancement to hourly rates for most ‘unsocial’ hours worked, except for four bank holidays
• No more overtime rates
• New rates for ‘out of hours’ management
• Reducing redundancy terms to statutory entitlement for all employees
• Offering casual workers new zero-hours contracts

I think this astonishingly-naive proposal from Sarah Billiald in the Guardian will have a number of effects. It should help to crystallise many people's thinking on the whole omnishambles. It will encourage union membership, and that of the local government pension scheme. It will shake more people out of apathy and assist them in deciding whether to take industrial action when the time comes. Doing nothing really isn't an option.

I'll end on this comment from a regular reader which sums it up nicely I think:-

Notice that SB has full page spread in today's Guardian - Society section on benefits of mutuals in the new probation landscape.... a tiresome litany of putative gains trotted out - clearly not someone who has been at the front-line of practice & not a smidgeon of self -doubt or corporate concern at the vexed legal/governance/public safety issues highlighted above.. just a bland roll over (not that mutuals, if uncorrupted by predatory privateers, themselves are w/o some virtue!) & follow the MoJ line.....