Manchester’s Green Party celebrated a win this morning after the city council passed its motion for a new ‘Insourcing First policy’.
First submitted by Green Party councillor Ekua Bayunu at the end of January, the opposition party introduced the motion to stop the Manchester City Council outsourcing contracts to the private sector.
This policy will mean the council has to start taking practical steps towards bringing public services, such as bin collections, back into public ownership instead of indirectly hiring private companies to carry out these services.
A number of high-value contracts the council has are due to expire in the coming months – contracts which the Green Party have criticised for being too costly and inefficient.
Councillor Bayunu’s motion said: “Contracts are being badly managed, resulting in a poor service for residents, mistreatment of the workforce and unacceptable waste and expenditure for the council.
“We have a major opportunity to rebuild the council’s capacity to deliver services in-house, saving money, improving services for residents and raising terms and conditions for staff.”
The council’s Labour Party introduced amendments to the motion this morning, which put more focus on government legislation and cuts to funding, but ultimately agreed to make ‘insourcing’ the default.
Both parties have now agreed on amendments and approved the motion.
The passing of this motion is a significant win for the Manchester’s Green Party. The Green Party has just three councillors and must get any proposals approved by the council’s Labour majority of 91 councillors.
The original motion called on the council to make ‘an assumption that all local authority services should be delivered in-house by the council, unless there are strong countervailing reasons not to’.
Leader of the Green Party, councillor Astrid Johnson, said: “We hope this motion will ensure that the need to take these remedial actions and take up precious management time will be much reduced, and council workers will be better able to focus on delivering services to our residents.”
