BRADFORD Council will spend thousands on a new ‘big brother’ style electronic monitoring system when it appoints new care providers for the district later this year.

The Labour-controlled council is in the middle of the tendering process and has already agreed with 52 bidders that it will bear the cost of the new systems, which will keep a check on home visits to the elderly and disabled by carers.

Opposition councillor Jackie Whiteley (Con, Wharfedale) is demanding to know what the bill will be for the systems, believed to cost about £2,300 each, and is arguing that they will be useless for measuring quality of care.

But the authority’s deputy leader, Councillor Val Slater, said the systems would be able to tell the individual number of carers looking after each person, so they could see if providers were not giving consistent care. “That is a quality check,” she said.

Council officials are not revealing the cost of the new system because the procurement process is under way and is commercially sensitive, but the final figure will also depend on how many bidders get the job.

Cllr Whiteley, the Tory group’s spokesman for health and wellbeing, has also raised concerns that because only 52 providers have put in care bids, the council will not have enough chance to reject unsuitable ones.

She previously warned that Bradford district's home care system was on the brink of collapse, and that the service would disintegrate if not enough companies were willing to do the work on the low hourly rates being offered by the council.

She said there were not enough bidders for the contracts, so the council would have little chance to reject unsuitable ones.

But Cllr Slater said 52 tenders would give “more than adequate” cover. “They all understand the amount we are paying and actually want these contracts and are prepared to do the job,” she said. “We have gone to the maximum we can afford to make sure people get the service they need.

“I do feel sympathy for companies but the council has to balance the books. We have agreed with the bidders to to pay the one-off cost of a new electronic system so we will not be putting that extra cost on the provider.

“We need a minimum of 25 providers to cover the whole district but we are still assessing that and we may award contracts up to 45.”