"Integration plans will leave Boston the loser"

Mrs Franklin Bolds's piece last week about newspapers no longer being produced locally has prompted a warning from our regular contributor "Scanner," who writes....

"What is often not realized or goes unremarked upon is that changes like this usually mean the loss of fairly well paid jobs in the area. This happened, in the early days, with the downsizing of the railways. Then we had the departure of the Electricity, Gas Board and Water Board offices followed by the loss of the Lincolnshire County Council offices in Boston - and don’t forget the police expansion at North Hykeham.
"Now we have a council that is talking of integrating services with our neighbouring councils ‘to save money.’ Sounds a noble and logical quest.
"But where are the new 'integrated' offices going to be? I bet that they won’t be situated in Boston or, anyway, that we will be net losers once more. This will mean the loss of well paid workers living here and even less jobs and incentives to help our youngsters stay or return to work here. I hope our councillors will take this into account and not be bullied into accepting the exodus of even more workers from the area. What may seem to be a money saver could backfire drastically.
"Some say that the hidden agenda is to replace Boston Borough, East Lindsey and South Holland Councils with one 'super' authority. Once more, if this does happen, I wager that the HQ will not be in Boston – 'it will not be central enough.' So much for keeping services local - provided and managed by local people! More job losses for the town? Over the year there has been steady drain of employment from Boston that no one has tried to stop.
"While I am on the subject of jobs and losses. You will have read that some of our council officers have been rushing round in ever decreasing circles, preparing the services they run for ‘value for money’ testing. I am sure that they have done their level best not to neglect those services while carrying out this task but, surely, at a time when the council is so hard up, they should be concentrating on running services as efficiently as possible - not churning out reams of paper so that they can tender for those very same services and compete against the private sector.
"We know that the private sector will only tender for the services that are profitable and can tender as a loss leader, accordingly, leaving the borough with those that will never even break even. You may remember that the last time the council went down his road (or should I say garden path?), and contracted out the grounds maintenance contracts etc, it had to pick up the pieces because of the unsatisfactory performance of the contractor. Once more the councillors are telling their employees, 'don’t worry there is TUPE (I think it stands for Trade Union Protection of Employment) which will protect your conditions of employment.' This proved useless then, and I don’t think things have changed.
"We seem hell bent, nationally as well as locally, on having our 'local' services run by foreign companies with offices anywhere but in Boston. What with the increasing number of company bankruptcies and receiverships there continues to be, how safe is this policy? Will we ever be able to pick up these services again if the contractor goes bust? It will, surely, cost us more if or when this happens.
"Finally, a comment on the new 'democratic' way of electing Boston’s Mayor. After the vote this year one member was heard to complain that though he had voted for his friend last year, his friend had not voted for him this year. Really adds dignity to the office of Mayor, doesn’t it? Incidentally, I would like to be a fly on the wall at a future BBI meeting. Next year there will be 27 candidates all vying to be Mayor. Will the ordinary independents of the ruling party accept an edict from on high on who to vote for, or, as described above, will their attitude be, 'I’ll scratch your back only if you’ll promise to scratch mine next year?'
"Watch this space. "


SCANNER