A COUNCIL is planning to privatise some of its services in a bid to save money. North Tyneside’s elected mayor Linda Arkley has told officers to look at almost every part of the authority to see if the private sector can do it better and for less.

The Conservative leader has been on visits to four councils, along with senior staff and Labour councillors, to see how other authorities coped with privatising services ranging from highways maintenance and street lighting to the collecting of council tax and other bills.

With the council needing to make around 300 job losses as it look to find £40m of savings, Mrs Arkley admits there is no choice but to look for “a whole new way of doing things”.

Her changes come alongside a warning from opposition councillors that “the only way for the private sector to save money is to either offer lower wages or use fewer staff”.

Mrs Arkley’s team visited councils in Lancashire, Merseyside and East Yorkshire and saw how a variety of services – and hundreds of millions of pounds in taxpayer funds – were handed to private firms in joint ventures.

This included benefit services, school support, drainage and street cleaning.

Mrs Arkley said: “Like everyone else we are having to look at different ways of working.

“We have looked at other councils and gone through their model of working, about how staff are transferred over, if that happens, what happens to the pension fund etc, and the time line and the planning. What was quite interesting is the money some of these private firms have been able to put in, with an increase in staff. We just don’t have the money to do that by ourselves.

“I know it is a new way of doing things which I can see some people will get worried about, but I don’t think they should, it is a new way of working, this is a changing world.”

Mrs Arkley added: “We have not said which services will be put into a joint venture yet. We are looking across the board. Now, some have to stay with the council, but we are looking at what will be suitable.

“If you look at some legal areas, children and young people safeguarding, that is something would stay with us, but there is a lot to look at elsewhere.”

But Tynemouth MP Alan Campbell warned some of the private companies offering to do these services “do not have a good reputation”.

He added: “The root causes of the developing crisis are the cuts to grants by central government and their decision to change business rates.

“Both of those things hit Northern councils hardest.”

North Tyneside’s Labour group leader Jim Allan said he remained concerned that staff would lose out.

He said: “What you have here is the old way of reducing spending, to see if anyone else can do it for you cheaper. And without a doubt the easiest way to do a job for less is to either reduce wages or to do the job with fewer staff.”

David Miller, Unison branch secretary, said: “In the current climate of budget cuts, we do have to look at doing things differently and see how services can be run better under the value-for-money regime.”