Beware 99p Umbrellas

Picture the Scene.

I’m trapped inside Elephant and Castle shopping centre by a sudden and violent downpour. Have you ever been to Elephant and Castle shopping centre? It’s not a great place to be trapped.

And today of all days I’ve left the brolly indoors. The expensive, designer folds-down-to-almost-nothing umbrella that I bought especially for situations like this. I can see it now, in my mind’s eye, nestling smugly among the coats and hats in the downstairs cupboard, all ‘told you so’.

But in the here and now, in this Godforsaken shopping centre with the rain falling in sheets and a meeting I’m late for, decisive action is required. So I buy a 99p umbrella from the Pound Shop (they kept the change).

There will be those among you who, without needing to read further, will know what happened next. But for the uninitiated, the sequence goes like this: step out into rain; open brolly; brolly breaks into a hundred pieces; get soaked. And that entire sequence lasts about ten seconds. Of course being an advocate I immediately return to the shop to complain, only to hear the classic Pound Shop riposte of ‘what did you expect for 99p?’

They may have a point. What did I really expect? If one spends even a moment considering the cost of the raw materials – aluminium, canvas, plastic, and then factors in labour, shipping and profit margin, the futility of purchasing such an item becomes clear. Yet this shop and many others like it do a roaring trade in everything from brollies to cotton buds, screwdrivers to doggie treats. It seems some people don’t care about quality, only cost. Cheap equals good and the only people who really worry about quality are the ultra-rich and the snobbish.
When this mentality is applied more universally, and in particular in the context of ‘our’ services, then its potential consequences become more alarming. Then we are talking not just about getting wet, but about some very real dangers to health, wellbeing and even life. However this is exactly the approach that seems to be taken by many commissioners of health and social care services when contracting and tendering. We hear stories of 70, 90 or even 100% of tendering decisions being made on price alone. Quality and effectiveness are seen as afterthoughts, luxuries even. And the current Government is reinforcing this message through its cuts agenda, forcing local authorities into the ludicrous position of cutting back even further on services that in any civilised society would be perceived as essential.
Worse still, some provider agencies seem happy to go along with the delusion that they can provide quality services for peanuts. The act of winning contracts becomes an end in itself rather than a means to a greater goal. Corners are cut in pursuit of a lower unit cost, and it is staff and service users who bear the brunt of shortfalls.

Independence is also sacrificed in the quest for lower costs. The ability of organisations to lobby and campaign; to undertake outreach work to marginalised communities; to employ and nurture disabled staff and volunteers; or to invest in longer term developments; all suffer when there’s no margin built in to contracts.
For the past few years Action for Advocacy has built a platform on developing tools that enable advocacy schemes to demonstrate their quality and impact. To a large extent we have succeeded, but in the light of an emerging Pound Shop mentality, maybe we are missing a trick. It’s not the advocacy schemes that need to address quality, it’s the commissioners. If they continue to award tenders on cost alone, then sooner or later the sector will reach a point below which it cannot go without endangering the people we serve. And at that very point (maybe we’ve already reached it?) someone will come along and go below, that’s just in the nature of things. Can we prevent this potentially catastrophic decline? I hope so, and to me the key seems to be intervening directly in commissioning practice, taking the fight to commissioners and reminding them in the strongest terms that money isn’t everything. Wish us luck, because that must be the most unpopular message of all at this time. But we cannot sit back and do nothing. If you are aware of poor commissioning practice in your area, we want to hear about it.