The privatisaton of the property services agency

The UK public sector has changed enormously over the past 20 years. Many of the changes have arisen from the introduction of market forces into the public sector and the transfer of responsibility for service provision to the private sector. Some services have been totally transformed by these developments. This is especially the case with the provision of construction and maintenance services. Previously, this work was carried out by the Property Services Agency (PSA) whose role was to provide, manage, maintain and furnish the property used by government. However, in the mid-1980s, the Efficiency Scrutiny Unit advised that construction and maintenance functions should in future be controlled by departments themselves and not the PSA. This removed a great deal of the PSA’s role and eventually led to its breakup and privatisation in 1992 and 1993.This Thesis will examine the ‘Process of Change’ experienced by the PSA. It includes an examination of the effects of change on: PSA employees; the newly privatised companies; and government User departments. The Thesis will show that those responsible for managing the privatisation of the PSA initially used a Planned Approach to change. However, as the PSA encountered an increasingly dynamic and unpredictable environment, the Planned approach gave way to an Emergent approach to change. It will be shown that the changing environment created serious problems during PSA’s transition. Though these problems continued after privatisation, the newly privatised companies chose to tackle the resultant changes through a combination of Planned and Emergent Approaches.Not only has the privatisation affected the PSA and its new owners, but it has also affected the relationship between the public and private sectors in terms of the commissioning and execution of contracts. Therefore, this Thesis will also examine the impact of the PSA’s privatisation on customer-supplier relationships. It will be shown that relationships between government departments and private contractors tend to be on a short-term and adversarial basis. However, in recognition of the drawbacks of such relationships, both the public and private sectors are taking steps to improve this situation. The Thesis concludes by offering a new framework for managing change and advice on improving customer-supplier relationships.