Contracting out parks and roads maintenance in England

Abstract

Purpose

Different models have been adopted in England over time to organise public service delivery. The purpose of this paper is to explore contracting-out, a prevalent model of public service delivery in England, in relation to parks and roads maintenance delivery by examining private contractors’ performance according to local authority stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach

Since the Conservative Government was in power during the 1980s, local authorities have been an arena for experimentation of contracting-out to private and other sectors. This paper provides a review of the academic and grey literature, and findings are presented from a large-scale online questionnaire survey (n=103) which was distributed to the relevant public realm managers in English local authorities.

Findings

The paper shows that contracting-out of parks and roads maintenance happens across the country in different ways. By and large, local authorities are satisfied with the performance of contractors, particularly as a response to economic constraints. Responsibilities, particularly for parks, are increasingly shared with non-governmental organisations, including community groups, although this is not reflected in budget distribution.

Research limitations/implications

Despite the efforts, the response rate was relatively low (32 per cent), potentially due to the e-mail communication and online nature of the questionnaire.

Originality/value

The research provides empirical evidence about how contracting-out is currently delivering public services and how it has changed in recent years. The findings suggest that responsibilities (and to a lesser extent, budgets) are increasingly shared in England between different combinations of public, private, third and community sector stakeholders. This marks a shift away from in-house public sector delivery of parks and roads services.

Citation

Dempsey, N., Burton, M. and Selin, J. (2016), "Contracting out parks and roads maintenance in England", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 441-456. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-02-2016-0029