Businesses asked if they can do States cleaning and gardening jobs cheaper

Thursday 18 February 2016

Gardening, waste and cleaning companies are being asked to quote for a huge range of services currently done by States manual workers as ministers continue to push for cuts and savings.

With a deadline to come up with £70 million worth of staff savings and £20 million worth of service cuts fast approaching, the Infrastructure department has gone out to businesses to see how much could be saved by outsourcing roles that have been done by States workers for decades.

Infrastructure Minister Eddie Noel said that they were not formally inviting firms to tender for the work, but were assessing how much could be saved by shifting the jobs into the private sector.

The work listed on the States procurement website includes:

- Road and street cleaning.

- Gardening.

- Cleaning equipment, vehicles and offices.

- Rubbish disposal.

Deputy Noel said that the unions had been briefed about the move in advance.

Ministers have until June to publish their cuts plans in the second round of the Medium Term Financial Plan, due to be debated this year.

He said: “We are in consultation with the staff and the unions. To be able to make an informed decision about where we go, we need to know if there is an appetite out there in the private sector to do some of the work that we currently do in-house, otherwise it’s a futile exercise.

“The work we are looking at is in cleaning and parks and gardens.

“The unions know that we are doing this, we’re just testing the water.

“We did anticipate that the service reviews would be complete around about now, but we have pushed that back to allow more consultation with the unions. We expect it to happen around the end of March or the beginning of April.”