Saturday 25 February 2012

One Barnet Reality - Close a library or pay a consultant £12,900 a day

Barnet Council published their supplier payments for January yesterday. Sadly the Council's love affair with their One Barnet implementation partner shows no sign of waning. In January Agilisys were paid £270,719.50 or just under £13,000 every working day of the month.

In the year to date Agilisys have been paid £1.3 million and when coupled with the £642,050.64 they received last financial year they have now billed a shade under £2 million. That is £2 million to just one firm of consultants. There are many other consultants plying their trade at Barnet.

Trowers & Hamlins have also done well out of One Barnet billing the Council £152,641.57 in January.

Simply Performance Management Limited billed another £9,200 in January bringing their total fees for the year to date to £44,775. Now what is interesting about this company is that they specialise in Executive Coaching and have billed the Deputy Chief Executive's office. I wonder who needs that much coaching!

In the week when Councillors confirmed the closure of Friern Barnet library it sticks in the gullet of many decent people in Barnet that the council should be squandering so much money on consultants for a strategy which still seems both unproven and high risk.

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