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Birmingham may axe £120m in services contracts

Birmingham Mail 15/12/2013

Birmingham City Council is considering tearing up contracts with an outsourcing giant worth £120 million a year in a bid to stave off austerity cuts, the local authority’s deputy leader has admitted.

The Service Birmingham contracts with Capita have come under increasing scrutiny as the council looks to close a £460 million funding gap over the next four years.

Under the agreements Capita has provided computer systems and IT support, a call centre, and council tax revenue collection among other services. More…

SCRAPita?

Birmingham Post 9/12/2013

Despite supposedly being broke, Birmingham City Council has just found another half a million quid down the back of the municipal sofa to hand over to Capita, this time to come up with an ‘education services transformation programme’ for education (see here for a piece by Paul Dale at the Chamberlain Files on this).

Quite why anyone in the council - including the Leader himself or a cabinet member - couldn’t have come up with such a ‘model’ isn’t at all clear.

Couldn’t a local university have done this at a much lower cost? Or is it just too convenient to pick up the phone to our old friends Capita? It seems like the Council has gone for the Rolls-Royce model yet again.  More…

More questions than answers for Councillor Ward over Service Birmingham

The Chamberlain Files, 16/10/2013

The first thing that stands out in Cllr Ian Ward’s ‘Council continues to challenge Service Birmingham’ piece in the Birmingham Post last week was that at no point did Cllr Ward challenge the headline that Service Birmingham stacks up £58,000 a day in operating profits (or that we’re paying for them).  He can’t of course, as it’s a fact.

Also a fact is that, in the 3 years from 2010, £34,000 per day was paid out simply in shareholder dividends to Capita Business Services Limited.  And next to nothing (if, indeed, any) to the other supposed shareholder group, the citizens of Birmingham.  More…

‘Cash-strapped’ Birmingham City Council paid Capita £1 billion in just six years

The Chamberlain Files, 3/10/2013

Private sector outsourcing firm Capita has pocketed £1 billion for running Birmingham City Council’s ICT services in the space of just six years, it has emerged.

The figure – £126 million a year – is bound to reignite a bitter internal debate in the controlling Labour group over the best use of taxpayers’ money at a time when local government faces its gravest spending crisis.  More…

Capita missed targets, said Capita ITS chiefs, because it’s really crap

The Channel at The Register, 29/7/2013

“Of course everyone is working really hard, but let me just be really, brutally clear here. We have had a sales performance issue. Sales performance is not just about the card-carrying, commission-carrying, coin-operated salesmen not performing, it’s about the quality of the solutioning that gets done, it’s about the understanding of the cost models,” Hands said.

“Frankly we’ve lost too many deals on price where we’ve loaded too much cost in… That’s down to a lot of poor leadership but nonetheless we have solutioned badly and that’s not just the salesman’s job. We have overspent in some cases by as much as 100 per cent against the original budget that was put together for a job of work for a client and usually that also means we’re late and we take penalties. More …

Capita bosses pocketed a 20% pay hike while staff is frozen

The Channel at The Register, 24/7/2013

Unionised Capita IT Services (ITS) workers are staging a one-day strike over pay on Friday. Unite reckons the industrial action could impact customers including Deutsche Bank and Prudential.

Negotiations between staff and management have hit the buffers and top brass at the integrator are refusing to get back round the table to thrash out a deal, rabble rousers at the union are claiming. More…

MPs call for Capita contract to be axed

Linguist Lounge, 24/6/2013

In a debate in parliament last week (20^th June) Members of Parliament queued up to condemn the Ministry of Justice’s handling of a £42 million annual contract awarded to a private company for court interpreting services which is still going wrong after 500 days.

Liberal Democrat Sir Alan Beith MP, who is Chairman of the House of Commons Justice Select Committee, said that it was ‘deplorable’ how court staff were ‘strongly pressed by the Government not to cooperate’ with his Committee’s enquiry. More..

Capita plans to close down O2 call centre and cut thousands of jobs

Capita contract for court interpreters veers towards ‘collapse’

Exaro News, 14/5/2013

Courts in disarray as translators refuse to work after Capita slashes travel expenses.  Interpreters are warning that the huge private contract to provide translation services for courts in England and Wales is on the brink of collapse.

It comes as court interpreters are refusing to work after Capita, the outsourcing giant that took over the contract, slashed their travel expenses. Hearings are being held up as court officials scramble to find any interpreters prepared to take up the work. More (login required)…

Get one, pay for four.

Linguistlounge.org, 4/5/2013

A solicitor I was chatting with related his experience at Hendon Magistrates Court on Saturday 27th April 2013. He spoke and represented several clients. He noticed that there were four Romanian detainees. Each involved in separate matters. Only one court was sitting. It was a very slow list. Four Romanian interpreters were also present, and still at court at 5pm. More…

Capita staff told jobs are under threat

The Wiltshire Gazette & Herald, 2/5/2013

CAPITA employees in Chippenham are at risk of losing their jobs as the company needs to eliminate 100 posts nationwide.

An anonymous source inside Capita Secure Information Solutions (SIS) at Methuen Park, Bath Road in Chippenham, said: “We have just been told our business is to lose ten per cent of its workforce.

“Management have created a climate of fear and distrust by this action.“They must have had a laugh calling it ‘Project Elvis’, as in Elvis has left the building.”Capita SIS specialises in providing communications and back-up IT for the emergency services and local authorities. More…

Yelena writes: Capita interpreting contract 15 months on

Steve Woods blog, 3/5/2013

If you look at it objectively, the initial reports from courts indicated that the service was so abysmally poor, it couldn’t possibly get any worse. More…

Taxpayer to foot bill for interpreter pay rise

The Law Society Gazette, 29/4/2013

In February 2012 the Gazette was first to report that the central arrangements were causing problems for courts, partly because interpreters were refusing to work under the contract’s terms. More…

Birmingham City Council joint venture with Capita under review

ComputerWeekly.com, 11/4/2013

“Nowhere is there a clear, total figure for what we are paying and what we should be paying.

“The biggest issue is transparency; we have little idea of what is going on.” More…

Alleged savings on interpreting budget

Linguist Lounge, 12/4/2013

What we can now see is that the actual average duration of an assignment is more like 3 hours, which renders ALS’ estimates of savings invalid. Quite why assignments take longer now is anyone’s guess, though one reason may be that the pace of proceedings is slower so that the Capita ‘linguist’ can keep up. More…

Capita’s top brass bags 20% rise - as IT bods shiver in wage freeze

The Channel at The Register, 10/4/2013

Capita’s top bosses’ annual compensation packages rose by a fifth last year - at the same time the UK outsourcing giant’s IT Services (ITS) workers had their wages frozen and bonuses scrapped.

Hard-pressed ITS staffers, who are thrashing out a pay deal for 2013, were furious when they learned of the windfall enjoyed by execs at the AIM-listed firm. Salary increases for the IT services arm were stalled when the division’s performance failed to meet the management’s expectations. More…

Capita slurps crashed 2e2′s ex-flack-in-chief to bolster sales

The Channel at The Register, 8/4/2013

Troubled integrator-cum-reseller Capita IT Services (CITS) has hired fallen channel giant 2e2′s former sales and marketing director. More…

Nearly 400 jobs to leave the borough as part of Capita outsourcing contract

Barnet & Whetstone Press, 5/4/2013

ALMOST 400 jobs are set to leave the borough as Barnet Council outsources its customer services departments as part of the One Barnet project.

Council staff will be forced to choose between leaving the capital or taking redundancy if the authority hands its new support and customer services organisation contract to public services giant Capita next month. More…

Hopelessly incompetent

Steve Woods blog, 11/3/2013

At the end of last week, Judge Richard Bray branded Capita “hopelessly incompetent” after he was unable to sentence and expedite deportation proceedings against a Vietnamese drug king because no interpreter arrived at Northampton Crown Court, according to a report yesterday’s Sunday Express. More…

Judge’s anger as money is wasted on interpreters who can’t even speak English

Daily Mail Online, 10/3/2013

A judge and a top barrister have condemned the use of interpreters based in a Polish call centre after trial against a Vietnamese drug king was halted. More…

Migrants wrongly told to leave UK by firm hired by UKBA

BBC News Online,  3/1/2013

People living legally in the UK have been incorrectly told to leave the country by a firm working for the government.

Migrants are contacted by text message, telephone or email.

The standard text message reads: “Message from the UK Border Agency. You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have the right to remain.” It then advises people to contact the agency. More…

People versus privatisation: Capita’s one takeover

Occupy News Network, Dec 2012

With an extensive track record of business malpractice and blunders, most firms would not expect to win public service contracts. Yet Barnet Council is signing its future to one such corporation: Capita. More…

The Southampton experience - Guest blog by Brian Norgate

The Barnet Eye, 17/12/2012

We are amazed here at Southampton that has just gone through the worst industrial dispute of any Council which was only resolved at the 2012 election where the Tory council lost control as the residents Southampton voted in sixteen Labour Councillors that Barnet Council could use our Council as an endorsement for the Capita contract. More…

Cllr Barry Henley: Capita-led IT supplier has ‘perverse incentive to do work by the most expensive route’.

Birmingham City Council’s private sector IT provider is enjoying profit margins two and a half times greater than set out in an initial agreement and can expect to be paid almost £1 billion over the remaining nine years of its contract.

Service Birmingham, the Capita-led company responsible for transforming IT services, running the council call centre and operating the local authority pay roll, is able to charge for hiring consultants at up to £2,000 a day – while ensuring it profits by adding a 17 per cent mark up to the council’s bill. More…

Capita and the Outsourcerers: And Poof! Goes the Welfare State

Scriptonite Daily, 4/12/2012

… what is happening today in the UK, rather than being a modernisation, as it is billed, is infact a regressive step back in time. The ideas of private companies delivering education, health, transport, post, energy and other services is not new. It is old. It is how things used to be done. It failed miserably. The idea that private services operate fairly and that philanthropy, charity and voluntarism can deliver a fair society belongs in the past along with its workhouses and its pauper lists. More…

How dare you call me a fat cat, I only earn £14,500 a WEEK

Daily Mail Online, 15/12/2010

The wealthy boss of an outsourcing firm stunned his workers when he complained about being labelled a fat cat, even though he earns thousands a week.

Paul Pindar, chief executive of Capita, was upset by a leaflet handed to him at the company’s London headquarters which claimed he was on a £9.8 million pay and benefits package.  More…

Capita deals with £3.3bn of government spending as more work is outsourced

Guardian Online, 19/11/2010

Some Capita contracts have hit problems. The group’s management of housing benefits in Lambeth led to hundreds of complaints. On one occasion it wrote to a man telling him he no longer qualified for benefits because he was dead. In 2003 a criminal records screening service was incomplete by the start of the school year, prompting then education secretary Estelle Morris to declare herself a “dissatisfied customer”. More…

From Capita’s employees…