Growing Anger over Council Carers' Job Cuts

4.06.11pm UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 5th Sep 2005

There is mounting public concern over the redundancy threat hanging over 100 local council carers. Vincent Cable, MP, has a growing number of letters from people worried about the quality and continuity of care provided by agency staff who are replacing in-house employees. And the remaining 100 staff are furious at the way the council has been refusing to answer questions about the threat of redundancy.

Vincent Cable said: "the council has been quietly replacing its own staff with agency staff. It claims that there is more flexibility of hours, and that a privatised service is cheaper. But the staff I have met are incensed with the way the council has treated them, publishing false information about their hours of work and refusing to discuss terms and conditions".

"I have also heard from residents some very negative accounts of poor timekeeping and poor service from outsourced carers and I have written to the Head of Social Services for a full, transparent, statement of complaints and of performance by the agency staff. I suspect that there may be false economies in replacing local, in-house carers."

"It also seems odd to me that, when the NHS - at the West Middlesex for example - is moving away from agency staff because there is no continuity of care and no commitment, the council is moving in the opposite direction".