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    So, Capita then

    As of today, I work for them.

    Does anything have anything positive to say about them, because my morning has been pretty depressing reading...

    #2
    So, Capita then

    Er, if you don't want to get suicidal, you'd best stop reading Private Eye as soon as possible...

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      #3
      So, Capita then

      Read Private Eye on a regular basis and you'll be depressed to the extent that you'll wonder why you didn't look anywhere else for employment.

      Best wishes on your new job though. And, listening to last night's BBC7's repeat of 'The Day Today', I've finally found out where you got your moniker from.

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        #4
        So, Capita then

        Damn, GO got there before me.

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          #5
          So, Capita then

          The Share registrars or the Government octopus? If the former, they're pretty competent, unlike those morons at Equiniti. Good old private equity buyouts. Fire anyone half decent (and so on a half decent wage) and replace them with cheap, unskilled temps.

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            #6
            So, Capita then

            I worked for them for about 3 months back in 2002. It wasn't that bad.

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              #7
              So, Capita then

              my wife works for the national strategies arm doing project management on educational material production in the Reading office

              same as any other big company, quite a bit of beauracracy, but the pay and conditions are pretty good, and most of the people are nice

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                #8
                So, Capita then

                Just to clarify, this was not through choice - the company I used to work for has been 'assimilated'...

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                  #9
                  So, Capita then

                  Eggchaser wrote:
                  The Share registrars or the Government octopus? If the former, they're pretty competent, unlike those morons at Equiniti. Good old private equity buyouts. Fire anyone half decent (and so on a half decent wage) and replace them with cheap, unskilled temps.
                  I was a cheap, unskilled temp there.
                  I ended up hiding in the cafe until they didn't ask me back.

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                    #10
                    So, Capita then

                    They recently head-hunted my girlfriend's brother. So they must have good taste in employees, as he's a thoroughly sound chap.

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                      #11
                      So, Capita then

                      Capita efficiency...

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                        #12
                        So, Capita then

                        Are they in the market for the Probation Service? That'll go well.

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                          #13
                          So, Capita then

                          My sister – in – law works for them in Birmingham.

                          They have the contract to process and work out the amount of council tax the good citizens have to pay. When she worked for the City they were allowed 30 minutes per person. This was agreed between union, management and employees as a reasonable amount of time to efficiently and effectively work out each ‘case.’

                          Capita have come in and because time is money they have cut that down to 20 minutes and cut staff. This has not only increased the work – load but obviously reduced efficiency leading to errors in the amount of council tax people pay.

                          The management team has been replaced with graduates with no experience in the field and no management skills. They are walking management talking drones to paraphrase my sis – in – law.

                          She told me the other week that Capita face financial penalties due to some clause in the contract about not meeting targets. This is why they are now paying overtime to clear the backlog. At first this was at the normal rate, but union involvement negotiated time and a third (for weekend working).

                          I don’t think she is happy in the job anymore.

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                            #14
                            So, Capita then

                            I still don't understand how a firm can specialise in outsourcing. That sounds to me like a speciality in winning contracts. I prefer specialities in doing the thing in question.

                            I note G4S are talking up their experience with running prisons as a reason for being trusted with probation. By the logic of awarding contracts to Capita, they're wasting their time mentioning that.

                            I'd prefer someone with experience of running probation myself, but they've been banned from bidding.

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                              #15
                              So, Capita then

                              The company I work for was taken over by Capita shortly before I started working for them. By and large, Capita seem to have left the original staff and working practices alone, so it might not be too bad, CTT.

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                                #16
                                So, Capita then

                                See also, legal aid, brought to you by Eddie Stobart. If you're one of the great unhosed.

                                Your first paragraph Tubbs is one of the most succinct descriptions of this dogmatic madness I've come across.

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                                  #17
                                  So, Capita then

                                  Thank you. Our mate OThornhill has spotted a better expression of the dogmatic madness though. From David Cameron in 2009:

                                  We will create a new presumption – backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication – that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service,” he says.

                                  “Of course, there are some areas, – like national security services or the judiciary – where this wouldn’t make sense. But everywhere else should be open to real diversity,open to everyone who gets and values the importance of our public service ethos. This is a transformation: it ends the state’s monopoly over public services.
                                  So nothing except for the judiciary and MI5 ruled out...

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                                    #18
                                    So, Capita then

                                    Etienne wrote: By and large, Capita seem to have left the original staff and working practices alone, so it might not be too bad, CTT.
                                    I wonder what CTT makes of the place...four years on.

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                                      #19
                                      So, Capita then

                                      Good spot (note to self-check date of OP).

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                                        #20
                                        So, Capita then

                                        What a carve up! All part of the responsibility laundering culture that's been prevalent for as long as I've been a grown-up. The absurdities it throws up are immense, not least the amount of impenetrable bureaucracy it produces.

                                        The least efficient job I ever had was through Capita. For a government department that changed its name between me being offered the job and turning up to do it (the recruitment process was needlessly epic and cryptic for a temp job, and they forgot to do the obligatory security clearance bit altogether). I had to sign a contract saying I couldn't resign but they could give me the flick without notice. Instead, they let me sit there for six months being paid pretty well for doing around 30 minutes' work per day, because all the projects people had been working on got cancelled with the change of regime. My team was me and one part-time manager. On the days she wasn't there I'd get to lunch time and say to myself, "Fuck it, I'm going to the pictures", and do so. I was bored out of my mind but there wasn't much work about and I needed the money. I dread to think what their cut was, cause agencies can pretty much take what they like as daily commission, and this department IIRC could only get staff through Capita for the foreseeable.

                                        Having said that, they weren't quite as awful as the smaller agencies I've dealt with, and not as darkminded as Serco seemed when I entered their high security bunker to deal with no sensitive information whatsoever for a few days. Unless my memory's playing tricks, that was an even madder set-up: a quango type of thing, run by Serco, who used various agencies to recruit a series of temp staff who made up a lot of the workforce. I think the idea was that using different agencies each time would make it look as if they weren't relying on temp staff, but being serviced according to need by dynamic providers or whatever bullshit flows through these people's diseased minds. What it meant was, no one knew how to do anything or cared if it went tits up because they were all just passing through - what little knowledge one person could pick up in their month there would be lost as soon as they left. It was insanely wasteful, entirely due to this greed-masking dogma.

                                        That was with a relatively trivial kind of work, though. Serco are big in defence too. I wonder how close they come to 'national security', in fact.

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                                          #21
                                          So, Capita then

                                          Serco run this place.

                                          http://www.serco.com/markets/homeaffairs/custodial/hassockfield.asp

                                          I visited there in 2002-3.

                                          It was an odd privatisation- lots of very dangerous and disturbed youths. Not even Grayling is proposing privatizing probation for this group, I shouldn't think. It was impressive, and as far as I could tell, the staff were ex-Prison Service and Social Services, and good. There didn't seem to be any corners cut.

                                          But each place there was, to say the least, expensive. I suppose they were in a very strong position to negotiate the price, given suicide risks of young people who'd mostly had horrible lives- not even the most intense law and order fanatic is comfortable with that. I think there was a suicide there some time later, but it may well not have been their fault. Still, with all that profit floating about, one isn't inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

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                                            #22
                                            So, Capita then

                                            More Serco news. I think that we can all agree on what sort of punishment these folk should face...

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                                              #23
                                              Capita update -

                                              https://www.theguardian.com/business...profit-warning


                                              ("Eye" told you so?)

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                                                #24
                                                https://twitter.com/BMA_GP/status/1062682840813522944

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                                                  #25
                                                  https://twitter.com/exmaglux/status/1062835791309742081

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