Outsourcing favours private companies and is unsustainable, says report

Social enterprises and charities are being squeezed out of the market to provide public services by a small number of private companies that dominate the sector and have “become too big and too complex to fail,” says a new report.1

The situation has serious consequences for Britain’s economy and communities, says the report from Social Enterprise UK.

The report says that changes such as the Health and Social Care Act have led to an acceleration of outsourcing of public services. Currently a quarter of the total spend on public services in the United Kingdom is outsourced, worth £82bn (€101bn; $132bn). But this is predicted to rise to £140bn by 2014. Since the act was passed the estimated value of NHS contracts is £20bn, says the report. One company, …