The social enterprise previously running adult social services in Swindon, SEQOL, had to have £726,000 of agreed income written off by Swindon Borough Council in 2015/16.
The Labour Group Leader responded to the news that SEQOL owed the Council £726,000 when it folded, stating:
“This news shows the Conservative administration’s experiment to outsource our adult social care services to a private enterprise, has utterly failed at a big cost to the Swindon taxpayer. How can they ever say they deliver services efficiently when we have news like this?
In 2011 when Swindon Borough Council set up SEQOL they heralded the company as trend-setting organisation that other areas of the country would also do, it was in effect a Conservative pet project. The Labour Group refused to support this enterprise running adult social services because there was no guarantees about the quality and efficiency of the services being provided by this company. Our reservations have proven to be founded.
Let’s hope the Council’s Tory administration has learnt from its mistakes and won’t offload our adult social services to another company in the future”