The Council is running out of time to prevent an all-out strike that could potentially hit multiple council services during Lockdown.

The ongoing dispute between the Council and GMB Union associated with the insourcing of the Housing Repairs and Maintenance service has escalated and is now at a tipping point.

The GMB Union first served notice of industrial action over the conditions being offered to staff being insourced back in July and then undertook weeklong strike action from 7 September.

With the dispute still not resolved, the scope of industrial action has now been widened and the GMB Union is considering all-out action across the council services it influences.

An all-out strike would impact services such as City Clean rubbish collection and recycling as well as the Housing Repairs and Maintenance service.

Protecting council services during lockdown

My first consideration is the residents of the City that rely on council services being delivered.

The Council has a responsibility to the City to properly run the services that residents rely on.

This has never been more important than right now – as we prepare for a second lockdown in Brighton & Hove.

An all-out strike, which is now clearly on the cards, will impact us all but particularly the vulnerable.  There is a moral duty to avoid it.

Tenants of council houses, some of whom are in self-isolation, are already facing unacceptable waiting times for essential repairs to council houses as a result of the failures of this council.  One resident gave an example of waiting for an asbestos removal job from her roof to be completed.

Across the City’s 11,000 plus council homes, the backlog of repairs has now risen to 3,204, with 160 empty properties awaiting refurbishment before they can be let to anyone on the waiting list.

The Council estimates it will take at least 12 months to clear this backlog – and this is before any new industrial action is taken into account.

The Council, by not resolving this dispute, are letting down the thousands of people that rely on the City for their accommodation – including many vulnerable people. 

There needs to be much greater impetus to resolve this dispute so the council can start the task of clearing the waiting list for repairs.

The history of a policy failure

The decision to insource the Housing Repairs and Maintenance service had been a policy failure and is costing tenants huge amounts of money.

Labour and the Greens made the decision to insource the housing repairs and maintenance service in 2018, with the Conservatives voting against at every stage.

Labour then listed this decision as an accomplishment to voters in its 2019 election manifesto writing that Labour had: “Brought the council’s responsive repairs and empty homes service, currently operated by Mears, in-house from 2020”.

But far from this being an accomplishment, this has proven to be another ideologically-driven decision which has proven impractical to implement without spending millions of taxpayers’ pounds.

It is a sobering thought that figures from September 2018 suggested the ‘insourcing’ project would cost nearly £10million, including an adjusted cost to include an Assistant Directors role.  This has been paid through the Housing Revenue Account, a fund formed by the rent collected from council tenants, which is supposed to be used for repairs to council properties.

It is council tenants themselves that have suffered from this policy failure as their own rent payments have been wasted while they wait for basic repairs and maintenance.

There was clearly a lack of any proper analysis of what was actually required to implement this insourcing program from those that proposed it.

What needs to happen next

The Council need to immediately get back around the table with the GMB to resolve the dispute and that the Council should deliver on its promise to be a fair and equal opportunities employer.

The Council has promised to be a fair and equal opportunities employer, but it has apparently not met the commitments it made when deciding to insource the service.

There needs to be urgent action to address the threat of strike action, which would be a disaster as we head into a Lockdown.

At this time when jobs maybe under threat due to the pandemic we need to think of the Council staff who are employed in these services which are under the threat of strike action as they too will be affected if this dispute is not brought to a successful conclusion.