Our Choice

Bronwyn Hipkin is surprised the city council uses outside contractors to carry out some tree works. She should not be surprised. The city council, like all other councils, and like all commercial organisations makes reasoned decisions as to which goods to manufacture itself and which services to provide with its own staff, and which goods and services to buy in.

She also appears to be suggesting that it’s always going to be cheaper to use in-house staff than to buy in services which is not the case.

Once upon a time under governments of one colour there was intense pressure on councils to sack all their own workers and hire private contractors to do pretty well everything. Once upon a time, under governments of another colour; there was an assumption that councils existed to employ as many people as possible directly, regardless of whether this was the most efficient way of doing the work.

The current regime where a council can choose whether to provide a service itself on a case by case basis, provided the final choice is actually sane is definitely an improvement.

Cllr Tim Ward
Chairman, environment scrutiny committee,
Cambridge City Council

It appears that Cllr Ward has attempted to hijack the debate on the Jesus Green proposals to make a party political point. What he has managed to demonstrate is that party politics has no useful role to play in the way we run our city.