could 5% cuts mean end of privatisation?

The wage should go with the job not the sex or gender of the person undertaking it.

Heaven help us with the council we have. Labour.

growstuff you posted Why should work that requires brawn be paid better than that which requires brain

A women who he is doing the exact same job as a man (and vice versa) should receive equal pay.

How can anyone say that a refuse collector is equal to an office clerk, a cleaner equal to an office manager, a builder equal to an accountant…

Some of the refuse collectors and drivers who collect my rubbish are women!

Frankly, it is good that female workers should receive equal wages. Outsourcing shouldn't be an excuse to duck responsibilities.

Why should work which requires brawn be paid better than that which requires brain?

There is one major disadvantage with councils running all services, they will have to pay equal wages to women. Birmingham had this problem, heavy male work was deemed to be of equal value to other work in female dominated industries.
Councils that contract out refuse collection, building work and road repair don’t have this issue because they don’t directly employ the workers.

Whatever you think about equal wages councils directly employing building workers will lead to claims by women workers for equal wages. Many will think that is good but you and I are going to pay extra and there will be no savings.

The OP is very optimistic, but I don't think that councils can afford to take the social care services, e.g care homes and children's homes back in house. The initial capital outlay would be too much.

Paying specialised companies to come in and run specific services is often cheaper than a council running the services themselves.

Take rubbish collection, for example. There are 3 or 4 big companies who specialise in this work. They have the size to drive good deals buying their specilised bin lorries. Buy 100 and you get a cheaper price than buying 5.

They have staff who have run waste services all their working lives, they are often integrated and deal with recycling rubbish as well as collecting and disposing of it. Share holder dividend or no shareholder dividend, it is cheaper to get specialised waste contractors to handle council waste than for the council to do it themselves.

However I would never use a service where the final owners are are venture capitalists, especially American venture capitalists. they would render their own grandmothers down for lard.

There are other services which I do think should be done in house and that would include most aspects of social care.

I think there’s more chance of hell freezing over than government departments/ councils saving money.
The words are not in their vocabulary.
I speak from personal experience and what I hear from my daughter who deals with government contracts through a private company.

It was supposed to be the other way round wasn't it. In the way that water privatisation was supposed to bring more investment, more reservoirs, instead we have filth pumped into our rivers. But changing ideology is very difficult and I am not sure that we, as a country are ready to accept that outsourcing and privatisation were huge, wasteful, mistakes.