U-turn on plans for home care service

Mar 31 2009 by Neil Mckay, The Journal

SOCIAL service chiefs have been forced into an “embarrassing” U-turn over controversial plans to axe home care service providers following a legal challenge which claimed the process was not “transparent”.

Following a threatened High Court action, bosses at Durham County Council have agreed to re-examine a decision to reduce the number of contractors which provide home care to the elderly and vulnerable from 42 to 10.

They are to re-interview all the unsuccessful applicants and appoint a completely new panel to carry out the interviews.

Care providers and their clients were left shocked and bewildered when the county council failed to select established care providers despite many of them being rated as “excellent”.

They included Willow Community Care in Stanley, and Applejack Care in Weardale. The move left many elderly people fearing they would no longer receive care from services they were more than happy with.

The climbdown was yesterday branded as “an embarrassment” by Durham County Councillor John Shuttleworth, who said: “The authority dispensed cack- handedly with the services of some excellent providers, including Applejack Care in my own Weardale ward.

“This caused a great deal of alarm and distress to the clients who greatly value the work and support of the Applejack carers. Surely the authority should be supporting local businesses.

“I very much hope the outcome will be completely different following the re-interviews. This sort of confusion does not augur well for what is hailed as a brand new unitary authority starting on Wednesday.”

Rachael Shimmin, corporate director of Adult and Community Services at Durham County Council, sent a memo to members on Friday saying: “A tendering process has recently been undertaken by Durham CC Adult Commissioning Unit resulting in the selection of providers for new contracts in 10 geographically defined zones.

“The selection process significantly reduced the number of companies with which the council plan to do business in the future. Ten companies will take over the provision of service which used to be provided by up to 42 organisations of varying size. The procurement was instigated following a Cabinet decision on September 25 2008.

“The new contract was due to take effect from June 15, 2009. The procurement process requires a 10-day standstill period before the actual award of contracts to allow for unsuccessful providers to challenge the outcome. During this period, a number of the unsuccessful providers indicated they were unhappy with the process and they were informed of their right to lodge a legal challenge.

“One unsuccessful provider subsequently did this, obtaining an interim injunction on March 14, 2009. This has the effect of preventing the council from awarding contracts until a court hearing can be arranged.

“The allegation is the council has not complied with its obligations in relation to transparency at the interview stage.

“Rather than contest our position through the courts, which could result in a lengthy delay, it has been agreed in the interests of making the process as transparent as possible, we will re-run the interview stage of the tender process in its entirety. In addition the panel responsible for evaluating the interview stage will have entirely different membership from the first interviews.”

Nick Whitton, head of commissioning for Adult Services at Durham County Council, said in a statement to The Journal: “Following a legal challenge regarding the selection of home care providers in County Durham, we have agreed to re-run the interview stage of the procurement.

“This decision was taken in order to avoid lengthy delays and disruption for service users which would have resulted had we continued to contest the matter through the courts.

“We are now in the process of re-arranging interviews and writing to service users to inform them of the situation.

“We are also making the necessary arrangements to ensure that home care continues to be provided until the tendering process has been completed.”

The authority has also been criticised for awarding a new contract to run Durham City’s Park and Ride service to Arriva North East, even though their bid was more expensive than the bid submitted for tender by local company Scarlet Band, which run the service since 2005.