Contracting out parks and roads maintenance in England

Abstract

Purpose Different models have been adopted in England over time to organize public service delivery. This paper explores contracting-out, a prevalent model of public service delivery in England, in relation to parks and roads maintenance delivery by examining private contractors' performance according to local authority stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach Since the Conservative government was in power during the 1980s, local authorities have been an arena for experimentation of contracting-out to private and other sectors. This paper provides a review of the academic and grey literature, and findings are presented from a large-scale online questionnaire survey (N=103) which was distributed to the relevant public realm managers in English local authorities. Findings The paper shows that contracting-out of parks and roads maintenance happens across the country in different ways. By and large, local authorities are satisfied with the performance of contractors, particularly as a response to economic constraints. Responsibilities, particularly for parks, are increasingly shared with non-governmental organisations, including community groups, although this is not reflected in budget distribution. Research limitations Despite our efforts, the response rate was relatively low (32%), potentially due to the email communication and online nature of the questionnaire. Originality/value The research provides empirical evidence about how contracting-out is currently delivering public services and how it has changed in recent years. The findings suggest that responsibilities (and to a lesser extent, budgets) are increasingly shared in England between different combinations of public, private, third and community sector stakeholders. This marks a shift away from in-house public sector delivery of parks and roads services.

A review of the outcomes from contracting out urban green space maintenance: What we know, don’t know and should know

“…However, the difference may be a result of differences in the type of maintenance services, as the Norwegian municipalities mostly used private contractors for provision of services they could not provide themselves. Dempsey et al (2016) found that satisfaction levels with private provision among English local authorities on the average were surprisingly high compared to the legacy of contracting out from the era of compulsory competitive tendering in the 1980s and 1990s.…”

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“…Even newer studies in the review, e.g. Dempsey et al (2016) or Leiren et al (2016), confined reports on outcomes to the relative performance between private and in-house provision as the two main alternatives. A recommendation for future research is to pay attention to the details of different contractual and organizational arrangements and their comparative performance.…”

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“…Coproduction has been overlooked in state-run systems (e.g., Italy and France) (Palumbo et al, 2016). That is in contrast to Nordic patient choice models (Bendz, 2017) or Anglo-Saxon consumer-driven market where responsibilities are increasingly shared between different combinations of public, private, third, and community sector stakeholders (Dempsey, Burton, & Selin, 2016). There are significant benefits to coproduction.…”

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“…As a reaction to the problems that CCT exacerbated in terms of deskilling parks management and reducing many tasks to grounds maintenance [85], the New Labour government (elected in 1997) introduced the Best Value regime. While this focussed on the quality of management, it put inordinate pressure on local governments to put resources into evaluating and measuring parks quality for national scrutiny (the then-Audit Commission).…”