• IN your editorial you accuse those who push for out-sourcing of doing this for ideological reasons, (Challenge ideas that have served us ill and blighted lives, July 19).

In the same article you report that Jeremy Corbyn is insisting that Labour-run councils should, wherever possible, run services “in-house” and you berate Camden councillors for not being “wholeheartedly on-message”.

Surely this demand is just as much driven by ideology as the pressure for more out-sourcing?

A primary duty of councillors is to provide services to residents which are efficient, rendered in good time, and at a reasonable cost; 99 per cent of citizens don’t give a damn about who delivers their services if these objectives are achieved.

No one apart from the doctrinaire hard-right will oppose Cllr Meric Apak’s aim of building up in-house services to compete with outside contractors, providing this is on a level playing field.

I suspect, however, that recruitment of trained personnel may be a problem, particularly if we leave the European Union without a sensible deal.

Much more urgent, though, is restoration of proper supervision of service provision by professional clerks of works.

This applies to work done by the council’s existing contractors (the complaints of unsatisfactory, unfinished work and long delays in completion are legion) but perhaps will apply even more when services are brought in-house.

JOHN LEFLEY
Camden Liberal Democrats