From the 1980s up until the late noughties a fairly stable orthodoxy existed among many senior policymakers that the transfer of large swathes of local government services to national outsourcing companies was a good thing, would bring much-needed investment, transformation of approach and efficiency in delivery. Anyone who dared question the reality of what outcomes would actually be achieved was ostracised and branded as a dinosaur by the industry that built up around the sector.

At APSE (The Association for Public Service Excellence), we always try to look for tangible evidence and think through the long-term outcomes in any suggested approach to delivering local government services. It is therefore fair to say we held a fairly healthy scepticism of much of the claims of risk transfer, widespread additional employment benefits and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. From around 2005 onwards, we also started to see many contracts which harked back to the compulsory competitive tendering days or which were early strategic partnerships, starting to run out of steam and councils starting to insource them.