Sale of New Scotland Yard – Met H.Q.

What are the contracts for? I’ve not heard anything about that.
Obviously as someone that wants to be a PCSO or PC, I wouldn’t want to see G4S involved in policing!

It looks like they are losing contracts.

G4S loses Wolds prison contract

I don’t think that civvi’s being given a PCSO job first would be that great – as PCSO’s are often seen as ‘experience builders’ before going on to become full PC’s (I am bias as that’s my intended route) However, perhaps civvi’s being Special Constables would be more suitable – Specials are voluntary but they have the same powers and responsibilities as regular officers and that will give civvi’s a good insight in to the job.

The rot started many yrs ago in the early 80s when the village bobbies house was sold, and he had to move, lock, stock, and barrel, This let the village idiots run wild, At my old nick in 74, we had 4 Sgts, two Inspctors, and a retired Inspector who came back as a civvi, and did all our typing, ie statements etc.
Sadly, there are non there anymore, and the nick is open just a couple of days per week, for Joe Public, although there are plenty of Coppers there, they refuse to answer the door, anyone has to use a phone on the wall outside the nick, which is passed to Grantham, then onto Lincoln Control room, run mainly by civilians. Then, a copper will answer the door.
It also started yrs ago, when the then Government, due to pressure from the public wanted to see more bobbies on the beat. I was at time the area Firearms Officer, and dealt directly with a bobby at H.Q. His job was given to a civvi female, who recruited her own staff, and so it went on, the rot creeping through each dept.And so it went on.
I have no idea as to where all those bobbies who lost their position went or were posted to.but the great fix it idea didn’t work, and still don’t, and thats where the trouble started, I say it didn’t work, as I still cannot remember the last time I actually saw one walking the beat.You just cannot expect a civvie to understand exactly what coppers have to do, I.M.H.O. they should obtain a job as a PCSO for a couple of yrs to gain information as to how the job functions prior to be given a civvi job.
But as usual, that’s just my opinion,
Jim.
Lincoln .7

Of course money has to be saved, shed loads of it, but this is yet another example of this hopeless government saving in the wrong place at the wrong tiome. And the other lot would be even worse, so……:mad:

Andy, I see Thames Valley Police isn’t on there yet, I hope we’re not added to the list 🙁
I’m surprised all this is happening after G4S Olympic failure.
During the Olympics my cousin was doing security (he’s a doorman and his company was given a contract to cover G4S failure) After about 3 days G4S pulled their contract as the doorman were showing up the G4S staff. He said there was so many times that the doormen had to ‘remind’ G4S staff what they had to do, or what they missed, not to mention the fact that most of their staff couldn’t speak English properly.
Is that how it’s going to go with the police civil staff now?

Living on the borders of Cambs and Norfolk, looks as if Lincs will be all on it’s own, a very large and lonely area, if single crewed at night.with no backup.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

G4S are currently negotiating similar arrangements with….

Norfolk and Suffolk–who may combine anyway.
Notts
Beds
Cambs
Leics.

All driven downwards by central Government and coming to your local nick soon.

It’s ashame they have gone and done that, especially after how poorly G4S performed coming up to the Olympics.
It is sad to see how the staff were treated too. It’s unfortunate in that now it’s all private it’s unlikely to ever go back to being part of the actual police again and therefore will just be in line for regular ‘restructuring’ (redundancies) and staff reductions. Shame.

Well, Jim on here is an old Lincs copper and I think it’s safe and not too unfair to say that apart from a few Slavs getting a kicking from the local Boston branch of the EDL, and a bit of D&D in Skeggy in the summer, Lincs is one of the quieter counties in the UK, with an ageing population and few really large troublesome conurbations.
This made it ideal for our masters to try an experiment.
All support staff in February received an E-mail from the chief constable informing them that as of March 31st 2012, they were no longer part of the Police service but employed by G4S.
As you can no doubt imagine, this caused some consternation and frantic soul searching but in the true spirit of the process, they were also informed that any re-application to join the Police (in another role for instance) by the transferred staff would be blocked—so they were f*ck*d off twice.
Support staff include of course, admin, drivers, front desk, custody, ID, control room and quite a host of other indirect Police roles.
This little act supposedly saved several million quid.

And no, I’m not a copper and never have been.
A very dear friend was though, when she left the WRAF back in the day—she pulled on a Police uniform—she’s now one of the G4S transferees.

My own view on the filf is that once the brown shirts were wound up, then if your idea of a good day out was to pull on a pair of size nines and go and give a good kicking to someone who couldn’t fight back, then plod was the only viable alternative.
However, seeing how hard working and how dedicated she and many of her colleagues actually are, my argument sometimes falls to the floor.
It does make joint viewing of the News at Ten ‘interesting’ though—we agree to differ.

I don’t think it’s wrong to say that morale is low.

Andy, what are G4S doing in Lincoln?
When speaking of 18yrs service, was you once a Police Constable?

What are the contracts for? I’ve not heard anything about that.
Obviously as someone that wants to be a PCSO or PC, I wouldn’t want to see G4S involved in policing!

Too late mate.
They already are in Lincolnshire.
Eighteen years of service counts for exactly f*ck all.
Coming to a Police service near you soon.

Andy

Union culture is a huge part of the problem. It’s self serving, with no regard to service levels. When these unions strike, it just inconveniences everyone else. Unfortunately, public sector workers seem not to realise that their only reason for employment is to service general society. When society looses money, the public sector must cut its costs accordingly. But unions don’t allow this.

Obviously there are pros and cons of both public and private sector businesses and services. I would argue that nationalising our aeronautical industry destroyed it. The same goes for our automotive industry.

Any strike is someone else’s inconvenience, but why do we have poor industrial relations and strikes? the answer is usually greed and mainly from the employer, I would agree that when funds are tight we all need to take our share, however this is not what happens, NHS staff have had pay frozen and/or cut over the last three years, management make idealistic comments regarding flexibility in work practices.

What they actually mean is cut staff by 10/20%, cease work in certain areas, which are then handed to contract staff on minimum wage and somehow expect the same amount and standard of work to still happen.

Our aviation industry was wrecked in 1956 by a certain Duncan Sandys, most certainly the aviation industry couldn’t continue as it then was, but that buffoon threw the baby out with the bath water, cancelled virtually every development programme, forced the amalgamation of all companies into just two, came out with the grandiose statement that the skilled design teams would be retained.

I for one never forgot his classic statement that from then on the future defense of the country would be undertaken by ground missiles and there was no need for fast jet interceptors, this at a when hitting the right county with a missile was a success.

What actually happened was that all the bosses were retained, the guys who actually built the planes were kicked out, to such an extent that Boeing set up a recruitment office in Manchester and cashed in on the availability of skilled workers.

Then of course the final fiasco to the shambles, TSR2, the plane designed and built by committee, a classic tale of too many Chiefs and not enough Indians, dogged by underfunding from the outset, engines and electronics nowhere near ready when required due to underfunding, delay after delay, the only surprise about that plane was that it actually flew and by the time it did it’s design role was virtually redundant.

You talk a lot of sense. On top of the points you have already made the situation was exacerbated by the 2000 Local Government Act which allowed councillors to be renumerated. The council members responsible for the various branches were puffed up to become “cabinet members” and in some councils have received grossly inflated salaries. The whole culture was changed under the last government so that we have a massively inflated public sector. The balance must be changed and the public sector cut.

You have a point when it comes to certain aspects of efficiency, but what actually happens when a private contractor takes on public service work, usually the service is reduced, staff are on temp contracts, minimum pay, everyone gets ripped off to put profits into contractor’s pockets.

Privatisation of public services is usually worse than what it replaces, simple example our hospitals are now a source of infection due entirely to handing cleaning contracts to private companies, staff levels reduced, pay levels at minimum, yet the costs have soared, wonder where the money has gone?

Don’t blame the unions apart from not being able to stop the wholesale destruction of so much of essential services, the cry goes up can’t afford, no money, costs to high, sphericals, all these contractors have no problem getting their sticky fingers on our money, but sod the service.:mad:

We need to either get our own act together damn quick or accept that we are a 3rd world country with a corrupt hierarchy

Union culture is a huge part of the problem. It’s self serving, with no regard to service levels. When these unions strike, it just inconveniences everyone else. Unfortunately, public sector workers seem not to realise that their only reason for employment is to service general society. When society looses money, the public sector must cut its costs accordingly. But unions don’t allow this.

Obviously there are pros and cons of both public and private sector businesses and services. I would argue that nationalising our aeronautical industry destroyed it. The same goes for our automotive industry.

Further. Public services are just far too expensive these days, and are hindered by general beurocracy, inefficiency/poor management and unions.

I hope other countries are looking on and learning from our mistakes.

You have a point when it comes to certain aspects of efficiency, but what actually happens when a private contractor takes on public service work, usually the service is reduced, staff are on temp contracts, minimum pay, everyone gets ripped off to put profits into contractor’s pockets.

Privatisation of public services is usually worse than what it replaces, simple example our hospitals are now a source of infection due entirely to handing cleaning contracts to private companies, staff levels reduced, pay levels at minimum, yet the costs have soared, wonder where the money has gone?

Don’t blame the unions apart from not being able to stop the wholesale destruction of so much of essential services, the cry goes up can’t afford, no money, costs to high, sphericals, all these contractors have no problem getting their sticky fingers on our money, but sod the service.:mad:

We need to either get our own act together damn quick or accept that we are a 3rd world country with a corrupt hierarchy

Further. Public services are just far too expensive these days, and are hindered by general bureaucracy, inefficiency/poor management and unions.

That is where I feel the vast amount of the problems lie in this country. It is all very well shuffling the top people of Government and Local Councils, but it is the same civil servants that stay. It is inefficiencies in this system that is stalling this country. I am not for one moment suggesting that every civil servant is a drain, because there are many that are overworked and underpaid.

I know at my local council a contracted position – of reasonable expense – whose sole job is to take written reports from building contractors and manual enter it into one application, and then enter it into another.

Why is this position needed at all?
Why can’t the building contractor be given access to enter the data themselves?
Why can’t the two applications be linked?

Then, there is the “management” of this department…

It is just one tiny example of inefficiency, because I can see how many little inefficiencies make a very poorly performing Government.

I am a big believer in KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid. To that end, there is a number of things I would like to see done.

Set up a new HMRC and simplify the tax system. I think everything should be taxed at point of sale and everyone pays it. This means income tax, national insurance, fuel duty, vehicle excise duty, council tax etc are all gone. This would greatly reduce the burden on the new ‘HMRC’, which could be smaller.

I would get rid of the concept of individual councils, it is needless repetition of higher up jobs. The service could then be standardised through the country – that includes the planning system.

I would spend more money on upgrading IT Systems and more importantly, the applications themselves. This would then open up the way for a more transparent way for showing what the government are spending, and collecting.

I haven’t even got to the HSE, NHS or even the EASA, er I mean, the CAA…

The powers that be were trying to make some way of handing traffic over to non-police, not surprising unwelcome, but the subject will come up again.

Prison and prisoner escort duties are mainly in the hands of contractors already, how far will privatisation go?.

Ahh yes I remember now! All talk of ‘private police’ Totally ridiculous!

I noticed that too. I don’t really like having private companies transfer prisoners. That should be down to the police really. Cost cutting no doubt.

The powers that be were trying to make some way of handing traffic over to non-police, not surprising unwelcome, but the subject will come up again.

Prison and prisoner escort duties are mainly in the hands of contractors already, how far will privatisation go?.

Further. Public services are just far too expensive these days, and are hindered by general beurocracy, inefficiency/poor management and unions.

I hope other countries are looking on and learning from our mistakes.

What are the contracts for? I’ve not heard anything about that.
Obviously as someone that wants to be a PCSO or PC, I wouldn’t want to see G4S involved in policing!

The powers that be were trying to make some way of handing traffic over to non-police, not surprising unwelcome, but the subject will come up again.

Prison and prisoner escort duties are mainly in the hands of contractors already, how far will privatisation go?.

What are the contracts for? I’ve not heard anything about that.
Obviously as someone that wants to be a PCSO or PC, I wouldn’t want to see G4S involved in policing!