According to this press release  published last week, the Government has chosen to create a new facilities management company to enable the Ministry of Justice to continue to operate despite the failure of Carillion. The new company will allow around 1,000 staff, including 100 contractors, who were previously employed by Carillion to continue to work for the new company, called Gov Facility Services Limited, with their terms and conditions of employment preserved. This new company will provide services to 52 prison establishments located across South West, South Central, Kent & Sussex, Greater London and East of England. One can only hope that in this rush to secure the hatches of the parts of the Government affected, that the good elements of Carillion will be transferred and the elements which were damaged and poorly constructed will be left behind.

One of the public criticisms that emerged in the light of the collapse of Carillion was the fact that in a Hospital, they charged £75 to change a lightbulb. Now of course to have a member of staff on the premises ready for a lightbulb to fail is going to cost quite a bit and if the lightbulb was changed by someone covering several hospitals, the cost of travel and time involved would quickly amount to £75 even though on the face of it, the cost was very high. A company I work with was recently asked by a public sector body for a quote to install a projector (which they already had available) and a new screen which was costed at about £60. The cost for such a piece of work would have been a couple of hundred pounds in order to cover the cost of the engineer travelling to the site and doing the work. However the building concerned does not belong to the public sector body, but rather to another semi public organisation whose rules prevent us from doing the work. They instead have a list of approved contractors whose quote was £2,000 for the work we would have charged at £200-£300. My taxes and your taxes will be used to pay this contractor who in turn will be obliged to spend several hours filling in forms and paying a premium to the organisation that owns the building. Whilst the same problems may not exist in prisons, there are a myriad of issues that will emerge as Carillion is dismantled.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ministry-of-justice-launches-new-facilities-management-company