BREAKING NEWS....
The Chairman of Crapita (sorry Capita) has just quit, see www.laboursleaze.com.
Capita (known by some as Crapita), made its fortune bidding for contracts from the public sector. Since the last election it has secured the payroll provision for the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
In February it was awarded the £120M contract to represent the Department for Trade and Industry over miners' personal injury liability claims.
In December it won the contract to administer the British Waterways pension scheme.
In September it was given the contract to provide IT services to the Department of Work and Pensions. It also collects the BBC's licence fee and administers the London congestion charge.
The company states:
"Our multiple contacts and contracts across central government enable us to play a core role in the reform of public services,
meeting e-government targets,
joining up government initiatives and achieving a cultural change in service delivery
Capita's breadth of expertise positions us well to assist with meeting these challenges."
Capita was involved in the disastrous launch of the Criminal Records Bureau in 2002. The company was fined £2M for its failings in providing criminal checks on people working with the vulnerable.
In 2000 Capita was appointed as the customer service provider for the Individual Learning Accounts Scheme, which went £70M over budget.
Nice work if you can get it:)
Ken, you list only a few morsels of the pies on Crapita's table.
ReplyDeleteThey started out, if I recall correctly, taking over services for several local councils in the privatisation years - and making a hash of the jobs (wasn't the housing payments problem in Sheffield one of thiers - everything running months behind and noboby knowing what was going on) whilst doing very well themselves.
It's what happens when you write a watertight contract.
The Congestion Charging project was the same I seem to recall. Get fined for poor work and results and then somehow persuade the the client to hike the charges a lot much earlier than they had originally indicate because the amount you make does not cover the running costs and profit as you would like it to.
I think when people say the the Chairman is 'well connected' they are merely hinting at how embedded he really is. How embedded do you have to be to get rewarded for failure?
They are also into publishing business books - well, not really publishing them but like to be seen to have a broad portfolio available that might be supplied at huge profit to them rather than the author - and numerous other activities.
I would trust them about a far as I trust The Chancer. And that is no distance at all.
Chairman took out 1 million pounds just before stepping down as chairman to use elswere???
ReplyDeletebut is he only standing down till things cool down??
Dear knowledgeable contributors,
ReplyDeleteI am not happy that Standard Life has buddied up Capita to attend to its shareholder services and have made it clear that I give them nil permissions to share any of my details with this highly dubious company. I simply do not trust Capita which I judge to be heavy handed and not focused on customer needs. Do others agree with me that Standard Life has again, yet again lowered its standards in getting into bed with Capita?
Best regards,
Mick McNeill
About 10 or 11 years ago, I disconnected my TV from the aerial and used it solely to watch videos. This meant that I didn't need a TV licence. Capita sent out letters to every household without a licence and they were menacing in tone. I seem to remember that they implied that they could just turn up and enter your home to inspect whether you had TV apparatus connected to an
ReplyDeleteaerial, which they couldn't. Fortunately, their reputation is now getting so bad that I think it will do them harm. A financial advisor recently told me that they were 'rude, inept & dodgy' (they manage a pension in deferment from my former employer). Interesting to remember that there was controversy
about one of their high-ups making huge donations to the Labour Party and being awarded government contracts. Maybe the Tories won't be so keen on them.