Councillor asks, ' How has spending £51m benefited the people of Bradford District?'

10.57.09am GMT Thu 20th Dec 2007

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland ( Lib Dem Idle ) is asking the Council to set out clearly what benefits the £51m contract for Information and communications technology ( ICT) has brought to the citizens of Bradford.

She said,

" Councillors have been given pages of information about how the contract has benefited the council and how staff have reacted. The Council has clearly installed a great deal of new software and changed a great many of its systems. The Bradford-i project is one of the largest projects undertaken by any authority in the country with many different systems being changed. The report to councillors shows that in the main most things are going well but the real test is have things got better for the people of Bradford? They are our customers and they should feel the benefits of such a change."

Councillor Sunderland is asking the Partnership Board of Bradford and Serco to report to the next meeting of the Corporate Improvement Committee the about the benefits residents should expect to see as a result of the project.

"We also want to see how the Council itself has changed. What difference has been made to how it operates as a result of spending all of this money? The project was sold to councillors on how we would improve the way the Council works to provide better services to both internal and external customers." How can the Executive be held responsible for the way this money is being spent if councillors on the scrutiny committee don't know what the benefits are supposed to be?

"For example, we don't know how many problems which people phone in are solved first time around so that people don't need to waste time phoning again to chase progress or indeed how much time and money is wasted because people have to call the Council back because we don't do what we say we will do.

I expect the Council to give us this information the next time the Improvement Committee meets otherwise I don't' see how we can possibly do our job properly."