Positively Public - campaigning for quality public services
What is Positively Public?
Positively Public is UNISON's campaign for quality in our public services, and for recognition of the essential role of public service workers in achieving this.
Positively Public has campaigned on a range of public service issues, from the quality of school meals and hospital cleaning to the promotion of best practice. We have won widespread recognition and support for our evidence-based critiques of policies such as the Private Finance Initiative and have been successful in securing a number of important policy changes.
UNISON's strategy
UNISON has pursued a twin track approach to public service campaigning that opposes the privatisation and marketisation of public services in principle but also recognises that where reforms are going ahead, UNISON must get the best protections for our members.
UNISON campaigns for public services at international, national and local level, working with a diverse range of organisations who share our views on public services.
Campaign Issues
Positively Public challenges the drive to privatise and marketise public services and is currently campaigning across a range of issues and services.
All our evidence and experience shows that once services are run for private profit, the quality of care and service is reduced and the public service ethos is replaced by a hard-nosed profit motive.
Join us campaigning for quality public services.
CONTACT DETAILS
• The UNISON contact for the Positively Public campaign is Margie Jaffe.
Positively Public
1 Mabledon Place
London WC1H 9AJ
Email us
Recent documents
UNISON Response to Government Reform of PFI
UNISON's response highlights our concerns around the high costs of PFI; the lack of flexibility; lack of value for money; lack of risk transfer of PFI projects from the public to the private sector; poor quality of service; and the cost of government bail-outs when projects fail. It warns that PFI is no longer relevant or effective, and calls for an end to the scheme. It advocates a return to conventional procurement, which will ensure a more efficient, flexible and cost effective way of building public assets, such as schools and hospitals. The response also calls on the government to monitor the impact of existing PFI contracts on the workforce and on service quality.
UNISON Response to Government Reform on PFI
The role of private finance in public investment
The report shows that PFI is not value for money, despite the coalition government backing this form of investment. It warns that the cost of PFI has risen astronomically following the financial crisis and the gap between the rate at which the government and the private sector can borrow has widened dramatically.
The role of private finance in public investment
UNISON Response to Lord's Inquiry on PFI
UNISON's submission to the House of Lord's Inquiry into PFI highlights our concerns around the methodology of PFI, risk transfer, high costs, value for money and workforce issues.
UNISON Response to the Select Committee on Economic Affairs - House of Lords
Reclaiming the Initiative - putting the public back into PFI
The report catalogues how ever-growing billions of public money has become locked into financing massively expensive PFI schemes. The Government has committed taxpayers, for a generation to come, to a bill of more than £217bn worth of repayments between now and 2033/34 on just £64bn of PFI projects. PFI’s reliance on the private sector was supposed to give public building programmes more rigour and strength but, as the union’s latest report - “Putting the Public Back into PFI” – shows, in reality it has exposed them to greater hazards and weaknesses. Public projects have been tainted by private failure
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