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This section contains material on involvement of the private sector in the provision of municipal services.
(Please note: links on this page will open the page in a new browser window)
| The Word on the Streetscene: Transforming local neighbourhoods (Web Page) |
| Giorgia Iacopini, 2009 |
| New Local Government Network (NLGN) |
| 'Streetscene' is a term coined to cover a range of core services which affect the daily street environment. These include planning, design, street furniture, streetlighting, parking, traffic management, street cleaning, litter, and green and open spaces.This report argues for a radical rethink of frontline streetscene services. The research, published in assocation with Serco, argues that by adopting street-by-street analysis councils can raise performance. This is a link to the payment page only. |
| ISBN: 978 1 903 447 82 6 |
| UK |
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| Making Changes in Operational PFI Projects (PDF) |
| National Audit Office, 2008 |
| The Stationery Office |
| A controversial report which suggests that changes to operational PFI deals are often poor value for money. Although offering flexibility and a satisfactory quality of work when changes are implemented, the procedure is often costly and prolonged. The report concludes that poor value for money in making changes to ongoing PFI projects is not inevitable. However, the process of change management needs to be improved. In particular, the report specifies factors regarding resources, contract management and the relationship between the public and private sector. |
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| UK |
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| Making and Managing Markets: Contestability, Competition and Improvement in Local Government (PDF) |
| Grace, Clive; Fletcher, Keith; Martin, Steve and Bottril, Ian, 2007 |
| Audit Commission and Centre for Local and Regional Government, Cardiff University |
| A research report based on a review of theory and a number of case studies, which informed the Audit Commission's 'Healthy Competition' report, below. It suggests that in mature public service markets more sophisticated forms of market mechansim must be employed to maintain service improvements. |
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| UK |
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| Healthy Competition: How Councils Can Use Competition and Contestability to Improve Services (PDF) |
| Audit Commission, 2007 |
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| This report suggests that competition and contestability can be used to generate benefits for taxpayers and service users although councils must be pragmatic in using these market mechanisms and the right expertise in procurement and contract management are required coupled with the accurate information on delivery costs, management costs and service performance. |
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| UK |
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| Local Government Contract Management and Performance Survey: A Report |
| Fernandez, Sergio & Rainey, Hal G., 2005 |
| Municipal Year Book 2005, International City/County Management Association |
| A survey that looks at the characteristics of contracts between local government and private providers to find out how they are being managed and determine how successful they are with the aim of producing a model of contracting performance to help public managers. |
| ISBN: 0-87326-851-2 |
| US |
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| Reinventing Service: Processes and Prospects for Municipal Alternative Service Delivery |
| Fyfe, Toby; McConkey, Michael and Dutil, Patrice, 2004 |
| New Directions No.14, The Institute of Public Administration of Canada |
| A study investigating the different forms of alternative delivery initiatives in Canadian municipalities and the preparation and capacities required to ensure success. |
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| Canada |
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| Privatization of Municipal Services in America's Largest Cities |
| Dilger, Robert Jay; Moffett, Randolph R. and Struyk, Linda, 1997 |
| Public Administration Review, 57, 1, pp.21-26 |
| A report based on a survey covering 66 of America's most populated cities. It asked senior public officials about their level of satisfaction with contracted services and their estimates of cost savings and service improvements. |
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| US |
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| CCT and Local Authority Blue Collar Services [Link to Executive Summary] (Web Page) |
| Austin Mayhead & Co. Ltd, 1997 |
| Department of the Environment |
| A report prepared for the UK Government which examined the impact of the second round of Compulsory Competitive Tendering, from 1993 to 1996, which was applied to building cleaning, refuse collection, catering, school/welfare catering, grounds maintenance, street cleaning, vehicle maintenance and leisure management. This report followed on from Walsh (1991) and Walsh and Davis (1993), below. It looked at financial, quality and staffing effects and the development of competitive tendering. |
| ISBN 0 85112 0335 |
| UK |
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| Bureaucracy, Organizational Redundancy and the Privatization of Public Services |
| Miranda, Rowan and Lerner, Allan, 1995 |
| Public Administration Review, 55, 2, pp.193-200 |
| A study covering 539 cities which compared the impact of mixed public/private provision of local services, or 'joint contracting', to that of 'complete contracting' by solely using external providers to deliver services . It found that joint contracting was more strongly associated with lower total municipal expenditures. |
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| US |
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| Does Privatization Make a Difference? The Impact of Private Contracting on Municipal Efficiency |
| Greene, Jeffrey D., 1994 |
| International Journal of Public Administration, 17(7), pp.1299-1325 |
| A study which compares six cities delivering the majority of their services via contracting arrangements with six cities of similar size and scale that do not and ranks them on the basis of productivity. The study found lower costs in contracting cities these differences were not found to be significant, although this may have been partly due to the small sample size. |
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| US |
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| Privatization and the Budget Maximizing Bureaucrat |
| Miranda, Rowan, 1994 |
| Public Productivity & Management Review, 17, 4, pp.355-369 |
| A paper which challenged some of the conclusions made by Stein (1990), below, on the distribution of savings within municipalities. By adjusting the data used slightly to correct for a methodological flaw, Miranda showed that agencies' as well as municpalities' total budgets decreased with the use of contracting and this was shown to be consistent over time as well. |
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| US |
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| Competition and Service: The Impact of the Local Government Act 1988 |
| Walsh, Kieron and Davis, Howard , 1993 |
| Department of the Environment |
| A report on the impact of the first round of Compulsory Competitive Tendering from 1989-92 continuing the work begun by Walsh (1991), below. It looked at building cleaning, refuse collection, catering, school/welfare catering, grounds maintenance, street cleaning, vehicle maintenance and leisure management in local government. It also investigated the preparation for competition, client/contractor relations, workforce issues, quality and standards and the financial effects. |
| ISBN 0 11 752808 0 |
| UK |
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| Aspects of Competitive Tendering and Contracting in Local Government Administration |
| Rimmer, Stephen , 1993 |
| PhD Thesis, University of New England, New South Wales |
| A study on the effect of contracting-out on the expenditures for five municipal services (refuse collection, sanitation, halls and civic centres, pools and beaches, roads and bridges) in 327 councils in New South Wales and Victoria. |
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| Australia |
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| An Empirical Analysis of Contracting Out Local Government Services |
| Martin, Dolores T. and Stein, Robert M., 1992 |
| Contracting Out Government Services, Bowman, G; Hakim, S. and Seidenstat, P. (eds), McFarland Publishing, chapter 7 |
| A study which seeks to identify the determinants and distribution of efficiency savings from contracting using data on service delivery, expenditure, employment and fiscal pressure from 877 cities. Total expenditure is found to decrease as a result of contracing but not significantly when more than 25% of services have been contracted. Employment is only found to decrease significantly above the 25% contracting level. |
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| US |
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| Competitive Tendering for Local Authority Services: Initial Experiences |
| Walsh, Kieron, 1991 |
| Department of the Environment |
| A government-commissioned study which reported on the results of the first year of the first round of Compulsory Competitive Tendering. It also investigated the preparation for competition, client/contractor relations, workforce issues, quality/standards and financial effects. |
| ISBN 0 11 752378 X |
| UK |
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| The Budgetary Effects of Municipal Service Contracting: A Principal-Agent Explanation |
| Stein, Robert M., 1990 |
| American Journal of Political Science, 34, 2, pp.471-502 |
| A study using data from 1433 US cities which examines the proposition that contracting is used by municipal officials to lower service costs. The results suggest that savings are often recycled within agencies and this leads to more static budgetary requests for service delivery but not necessarily lower taxes. |
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| US |
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| Privatization and Cost Reduction |
| Pack, Janet R., 1989 |
| Policy Sciences, 22, pp.1-25 |
| A study of the effects of competition and contracting on a variety of local services in 15 cities over three years to assess their sustainability. Substantial savings are found initially which are observed to decline after conducting follow-up interviews with public officials. However, the level of competition for delivery of services seems to be related to the relative magnitude of savings and underbidding is not found to be a related to the larger savings. |
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| US |
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| Competitiveness and Contracting Out of Local Authorities |
| Audit Commission, Occasional Papers No.3, 1987 |
| The Stationery Office |
| A forecast of potential cost savings that could be made by local authorities in refuse collection, vehicle maintenance and housing maintenance services by increasing the use of competition. |
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| UK |
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| Contracting-Out in Health and Local Authorities: Prospects, Progress and Pitfalls |
| Hartley, Keith and Huby, Meg, 1985 |
| Public Money, September Issue pp.23-26 |
| This paper, based on a survey of 75 local authorities and 10 health authorities, looks at the impact of UK goverment's policy of promoting competitive tendering for local and health services. Average savings of 26% were found following the introduction of competition for delivery of the same level of service. |
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| UK |
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| Delivering Municipal Services Efficiently: A Comparison of Municipal and Private Sector Delivery |
| Stevens, Barbara J. (Editor) and Ecodata Inc., 1984 |
| U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy and Research |
| A study prepared for the US government which compared ten cities which used contracting-out to private-for-profit firms for eight services to ten cities delivering the same services through public means. It also examined differences in personnel management and technological innovation between the two. |
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| USA |
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