More on letting private companies do public work not working
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/13/a4e-terminates-prisoner-education-training-contract
The welfare-to-work provider A4e has prematurely pulled out of a £17m contract to deliver education and training to prisoners in 12 London prisons on the grounds that it was unable to run the contract at a profit.
The decision was criticised by prison charities as likely to cause significant disruption for inmates.
Announcing that it would be terminating its contract, the company said delivering the Offender Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) had become "extremely challenging" in the past two years because of "a number of constraints" which had "a heavy impact on learner attendance, completion and achievements".
"We have concluded, in order to not continue to deliver the contract at a loss, to terminate our provision of [the contract] in London," it said. "This has been a very hard decision to make because A4e and its employees are passionate about the delivery of education services to offenders and believe education is critical to an offender's long-term rehabilitation."
The company, which was due to continue providing training until July 2016, employs 400 teaching and support staff within London prisons. A4e runs another teaching contract in prisons in the east of England which it has decided not to terminate.
A4e did not specify the constraints it cited in its statement but prison charities said access to education in a number of prisons had been impeded by staff shortages which had hampered prisoners' ability to get to lessons. The company is paid according to the amount of training it provides.
Now actually you can have a bit of sympathy for them, since one of the reasons appears to be simply due to the governments policy of cutting everything in sight (except private contracts of course) in order to save money and be nasty to poor or criminal people. Nevertheless, you do have to wonder why we need to fork out the cash for the education and the company profit on top, when it could surely be delivered at cost by a public organisation.
And of course when the private company withdraws, as it is permitted to do so (although oddly enough such contracts usually have massive penalty clauses for the government if they decide to end the contract) there's massive disruption. Imagine this in social and elderly care, hospitals etc.
The welfare-to-work provider A4e has prematurely pulled out of a £17m contract to deliver education and training to prisoners in 12 London prisons on the grounds that it was unable to run the contract at a profit.
The decision was criticised by prison charities as likely to cause significant disruption for inmates.
Announcing that it would be terminating its contract, the company said delivering the Offender Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) had become "extremely challenging" in the past two years because of "a number of constraints" which had "a heavy impact on learner attendance, completion and achievements".
"We have concluded, in order to not continue to deliver the contract at a loss, to terminate our provision of [the contract] in London," it said. "This has been a very hard decision to make because A4e and its employees are passionate about the delivery of education services to offenders and believe education is critical to an offender's long-term rehabilitation."
The company, which was due to continue providing training until July 2016, employs 400 teaching and support staff within London prisons. A4e runs another teaching contract in prisons in the east of England which it has decided not to terminate.
A4e did not specify the constraints it cited in its statement but prison charities said access to education in a number of prisons had been impeded by staff shortages which had hampered prisoners' ability to get to lessons. The company is paid according to the amount of training it provides.
Now actually you can have a bit of sympathy for them, since one of the reasons appears to be simply due to the governments policy of cutting everything in sight (except private contracts of course) in order to save money and be nasty to poor or criminal people. Nevertheless, you do have to wonder why we need to fork out the cash for the education and the company profit on top, when it could surely be delivered at cost by a public organisation.
And of course when the private company withdraws, as it is permitted to do so (although oddly enough such contracts usually have massive penalty clauses for the government if they decide to end the contract) there's massive disruption. Imagine this in social and elderly care, hospitals etc.