If the flagship government mutual joint venture, My Civil Service Pension (MyCSP), had not set out plans to become a company partially owned by its employees, it would probably have been outsourced, MyCSP head Phil Bartlett has told CSW.

 Speaking in an interview, Bartlett explained that "our workloads were going up… We were under pressure from a budgetary point of view to reduce our operating costs, and there was no money for investment."

“[Outsourcing] stood out as a viable option against those pressures, and if we weren’t [becoming] a mutual joint venture, I think I would have advised that the only way forward for this was outsourcing,” he added.

The move has been unpopular with some of Bartlett’s employees, but he said that the company had to act quickly. “We’re moving at a pace. We didn’t have the luxury, in the circumstances we were in, to take this journey over a number of years. Frankly, we wouldn’t have been around long enough for that, so we’re having to move at a pace. Some people are going to be comfortable with that and some people aren’t,” he said.

Joint venture mutuals are being pushed by the Cabinet Office as a new way of delivering public services, and MyCSP is the first. Last year, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude pledged “a genuinely ground-up movement where staff, who are the real experts, can come together to take over and deliver better services”.

However, MyCSP has been supported by few frontline staff, and some PCS Union members went on strike over the proposals two weeks ago. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “It is ironic that the first attempt by the government to set up a so-called ‘mutual’ is being met by a total rejection by staff.”

For the full interview, click here.

Written by Joshua Chambers