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Interviewer: What’s going on here today?
Eric Pickles: Well basically what we’ve got is three councils
that have agreed to merge their back office services, which means
they’re going to be able to spend more money on the front line,
on services that matter to people.
And it means there will be able to combine together
to get better deals when their buying from suppliers.
Stephen Greenhalgh: Tri-borough is an opportunity to take
a lot of cost away from the front line.
We’re going to halve our over heads.
We’ve identified 500 jobs, 175 senior managers and supervisory staff
and it enables us to deliver better services to our residents
and that’s what politics is all about.
Colin Barrow: I think everybody expects their council to be
accountable to local residents,
expect services to be designed with local residents in mind
but they expect it to be delivered efficiently as possible
and therefore that’s why were combining some of the invisible back office
services to give a better service to residents.
Merrick Cockell: ...by doing that they’ll still be able to run those
front line services in a way that fits in with the needs of our
particular authorities so we keep sovereignty
but we’re able to cut out some of the costs by doing it collectively.
Eric Pickles: What we’re doing is taking those things that matter to the public
and protecting them and those services that support those services are being merged,
and what it will mean is over a period of time that there will be less people
working in administration which will enable more people to be able to work on the street
because you can get with that all the kind of advantages that you would expect
from the private sector right here in the public sector.
We can produce a better service if we’re all prepared to work together
and put aside petty political difference.