Mr Reasonable

Consultation Barnet Council Style - What a BL***Y JOKE

2012-02-10T23:05:00.002Z

The results of the frankly bizarre and utterly meaningless Barnet Council business plan, budget and corporate plan consultations have been published in the cabinet papers for 20 February. The on line budget consultation attracted only 25 responses. It does say that “Due to the small sample size the overall findings should be treated with caution”. Perhaps “chuck it in the bin” might be a more suitable response.

Then we come on to the corporate plan consultation. This consultation asked people to prioritise what services were important to the community and to themselves. At least this consultation attracted more response - 109 people. Yes out of the 350,000 residents of Barnet, the council managed to ‘engage with’ 109 people to fill in the consultation. To bolster the results they sent the consultation to the 1,000 members of the Citizen Panel of which 491 responded. So in total we have a total of 599 results, hardly confidence inspiring.

I criticised the survey when it was first published as being meaningless and I would suggest my forecasts were quite accurate. People were asked to pick the eight most important services provided by the council to them personally and to the community as a whole out of a list of 28 services. Not surprisingly people rated services that are important to the community very similar to the services that important to them personally.

Refuse collection was significantly the most frequently mentioned service as being important to the borough as a whole (54%), followed by community safety services (49%), repairs of roads and pavements (48%) and street cleaning services (41%). However, around half of respondents did not indicate that these services were one of the most eight important services for the Council to focus on for Barnet as a whole, indicating opinion was divided. So what on earth does that tell you. Absolutely nothing!

Much worse, it goes on to say, “Perhaps the most surprising finding is that many of the services that seek to support the most vulnerable were not reported as being of the highest importance by respondents. Namely, Support for adults with a physical disability (13%, ranked 24th =), Support to adults with a learning disability (13% ranked 24th =), Support to family carers of adults (12% ranked 26th) and Fostering, adoption and children in care (11%, ranked 26th).”

So what conclusion can they draw from that. Are these essential services for the most vulnerable to be dropped because 599 people didn’t rank them highly enough. I have an acronim for this type of meaningless question. SFW (So F****ng What).

Interestingly, when they asked people about areas where the council could save money the top answer was Review salary and expenses packages for 'top' and senior council Employees closely followed at joint third place by Review remuneration and expenses of councillors.

They also held what they call a deliberative event where 74 people from the Citizens Panel were invited to ‘deliberate’.

And at the end of it all, what conclusions did this extensive and probably very expensive consultation exercise. Ain’t got a clue and how on earth this can inform the decision making process I simply do not know.

Perhaps the council should stop messing about with these pointless, crass and utterly inconclusive consultations and just start engaging with the community. Try listening to people at residents forums – where we were forbidden from discussing the budget consultation and stop wasting our money.

Leaked One Barnet Evaluation Document is back in the public domain

2012-02-09T08:19:00.005Z

Two weeks ago the Barnet Eye published a leaked document summarising the shortlisting evaluation of bidders for the Development and Regulatory Outsourcing project. It wasn’t up for long before Rog T received a legal letter asking him to remove the leaked document from his website. I commented on that document but said that I would take it down if the document was removed from the public domain. Yesterday I noticed that the document has once again been posted, this time on the Kate Belgrave website with the document here .

Given that this document is back in the public domain on another website, free for the whole world to see, I feel that, given my very modest readership, I am in no way making matters worse by commenting upon it. Once again, should Barnet Council's lawyers seek to remove the document from the Kate Belgrave’s website, then I will of course again immediately remove this post.

I am sure that many readers understand the huge extent of those services being outsourced but for those who aren’t quite sure here is a link to the original European Tender Notice : http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:90122-2011:TEXT:EN:HTMLIt a huge list of services and seems to require a great many different skills from running the cemeteries and crematoria, carrying out Environmental Health inspections through to managing the planning department.

The document suggests that two companies have been shortlisted to get into final negotiations with Barnet Council.

One is Capita Symonds who just a couple of weeks ago told some loyal and hardworking staff in the TV licensing office in Bristol that their jobs are being “relocated” either to Darwen in Lancashire or to India in order to cut costs. My dear old Mum worked at the TV Licensing Office in the 1970’s, as a civil servant, so I have a great deal of sympathy for those staff who were not only outsourced but have now been “relocated”. When Councillors tell you that the staff will just have a different name on the payslip don’t believe it. Ultimately it is what it cost that is most important and the Capita bid appears to be promising big cuts in costs of £29 million so don’t be surprised when the jobs are moved to Bangalore. It is also promising big increases in income of £12 million. I suspect that “increase in income” means big increase in charges so don’t be surprised when the cost of cremation or submitting a planning application rockets. And for all this hard work it looks like they will be receiving the very reasonable partner fee of £10.7 million!One weakness of their bid appears to be their “Satisfactory but below expectations response provided in relation to achieving high and measured customer satisfaction”. Alarm bells should be ringing very loudly.

So what about the other bidder, a consortium of two companies, EC Harris and FM Conway. The latter company appears to be highways specialists with lots on their website about tarmac and resurfacing. Their experience may be beneficial for the highways element of the contract. However Barnet already outsources most, if not all, of the actual repair and maintenance work so I wonder if their intention is to try and secure more of the delivery work as well as managing the maintenance.

EC Harris are also a large and well known company who in case you didn’t know are “the leading global Built Asset Consultancy, helping clients make the most from their investment and expenditure in built assets.” Interestingly, a quote from one of their partners seems to step back a little from the massive outsourcing strategy Barnet is pursuing.

“Whilst many are considering full outsourced models there is often a need to recognise the importance of existing in-house teams and the implications of this. In some cases an interim or blended solution is needed, providing a bridge between current arrangements and longer term aspirations, whilst still delivering the immediate requirement for reduced costs.” Keith Hobden - Partner, Asset Performance and FM, EC Harris.

EC Harris /FM Conway’s proposals do not appear to score as well as Capita although they have bid the highest financial benefit; £27 million increase in income and £16 million reduction in costs all for the very modest partner fee of £8 million. Where they don’t score so well is working with external organisations where they were below expectations and the believability of their profit sharing figure which has been discounted by 90% from £6.5 million to £650,000.

Now these two shortlisted companies/consortia are the partners that the Council are choosing to move forward with. As a rate payer, what I have read alarms me greatly. There seems an awful lot that is still assumption and “aspiration” and it also seems apparent to me that jobs will be shipped out of Barnet to the cheapest place, whether that is Darwen in Lancashire or Bangalore in India. Barnet Council may make savings but as taxpayers we are all going to have to pay for the unemployment and housing benefit for those redundant staff, the loss of income tax revenue, loss of VAT revenue when they stop buying goods etc etc etc. Very short-sighted I’m afraid to say. Still the shareholders and senior managers of Capita or EC Harris will be fine with their multimillion pound “partner fees”.

Last but definitely not least, thanks again to the Barnet Council employee who was brave enough to leak this document – you deserve a medal for casting light on this secretive process which could have huge consequences on all Barnet residents. I don't know who you are but every single resident in Barnet owes you a great deal.

Oakhill Park Bin Lorry Depot - What is the truth?

2012-02-07T10:17:00.006Z

Thanks yet again must go to Mr Mustard who passed on the response to a Freedom of Information Request he received this morning. Knowing that I had blogged previously about the Council considering using Oakhill Park for a bin lorry depot when the main Mill Hill depot is sold off he thought I should see the response.

Frankly I am utterly shocked and no longer know who to believe. Cllr Evangeli reassured me that the bin lorry depot in Oakhill Park will not go ahead. Cllr Rams tweated that it would not be going ahead because he had stopped it. So what was the response from the Council this morning.

As per the published Council budget, a total of £12.1m is currently allocated for the re-provision of depot services. From this £12.1m a maximum of £2.4m has been earmarked for the redevelopment of the Copthall & Oakhill Parks & Cleansing Area Operations sites.

So the question is who is telling the truth, a council officer in a Freedom of Information Request response sent today or the assurances of two local councillors back in December.

Every single resident in New Barnet, East Barnet and Brunswick Park should be concerned about this. It's all very well getting a verbal denial that something is happening but when you see that millions in cash have been allocated for the redevelopment of our local park as a 'Cleansing Area Operations Site' you should start to get very worried.

What is the truth here?

Who’s Got A Nice Big Pension Pot?

2012-02-06T12:01:00.010Z

First of all massive thanks to the eagle eyed Mr Mustard who tipped me off to this story.
Last year, having reviewed Barnet Council’s annual audit, I noticed that a few members of staff had been paid, in total, over £1 million in compensation for loss of office (when staff leave their job). At the time I remarked about the very significant sum paid to the former Executive Director for Environment and Development who received £280,485 upon leaving the Council.

So it was with interest that I reviewed the London Development Agency Statement of Accounts for the year ending 31 March 2010 to see that a certain Mr A Travers had received just £8,575 compensation for loss of office when he departed from the LDA. A modest sum by all accounts but then again he did receive £162,595 in salary. However, when you scan across the line a rather large figure jumps out. Pension contributions £437,797 of which, £417,473 was paid as early retirement costs.

It also notes that Mr Travers was seconded to London Borough of Barnet from January to March 2010 at a cost to the Borough of £44,957 including salary and on costs. So Mr Travers was employed by the LDA; he was then seconded to Barnet Council for three months from January to March 2010 and then very neatly he started his consultancy contract through Halliford Associates at £1,000 a day with Barnet Council on 12 April 2010. Very convenient timing for someone who had just received such a large pension fund top up for “early retirement costs”.
At a time when everyone is suffering hardship it seems that some are suffering less than others.

Oh and by the way, I thought I would have a look at the Board of the LDA at the time to see who was a member these events took place. What a surprise when I saw that a certain Cllr Michael Freer from London Borough of Barnet was one of the board of the LDA at the time.

Perhaps I should leave it there and let people form their own views.

Leisure Consultation, One Barnet, expensive consultants and a total contempt for residents

2012-02-02T09:08:00.006Z

Mr Reasonable has shown a great interest in the leisure facilities in Barnet for several years, largely because of Barnet’s determined approach to run the leisure facilities into the ground. At Residents Forums over the last three and a half years I have been asking questions as to when the Council are going to start taking leisure seriously. One thing I have repeatedly asked for is a leisure strategy starting with a sports facilities audit. Until you know the condition of your current facilities and how much life they have remaining, how can you plan what you need over the next 20 years?

Back in February 2009 I asked at a Residents Forum: “When is Barnet Council planning to undertake a sports facility audit and when will it develop a sports facility strategy that identifies Barnet’s sport and physical activity facility gaps and future investment priorities?”

The response from Barnet was: “The Council will produce a leisure facilities strategy in 2009/10. Discussion of the scope and timescale will begin soon but accordingly no public consultation or any other part of the work has yet been scheduled".

Now move on 18 months to July 2010 and I was still chasing for the Leisure Strategy. Unfortunately Barnet Council told me that: “We are in the process of starting a piece of work around forming a Leisure Facilities Strategy this strategy will show the facilities we have their age, location and what activities are offered. The strategy will also look at the growth in population the councils expects in the coming years. From this we will look to bring in funding and investment where possible but at this time there is no long term plan for the leisure facilities in Barnet”.

Barnet pulled out some figures about the provision of swimming pools that were completely and utterly wrong. When I asked for the evidence they provided a long list of leisure clubs in Barnet including LA Fitness and David Lloyd. I was told that they counted towards the provision of swimming pools in Barnet because they offer “community usage” i.e. you can buy a day pass. A friend of mine who was also concerned about this problem (and a true community champion) rang around the various clubs and found that the cheapest day pass was £15/person with several operators not allowing day visitors. So yes we have lots of leisure facilities in Barnet but at £60 for a family of four for a single day pass or a family annual membership of over £1,000 a year it is definitely beyond the reach of many.

Nevertheless the chap from Barnet Council agreed that we could have a meeting to talk about the forthcoming strategy and an appointment at NLBP in August 2010 was confirmed. Sadly just a week later the meeting was postponed indefinitely.
Jump forward a year and in September 2011 the Cabinet consider a report on the “Strategic Leisure Review” where the main thrust of the report was how to cut £1.2 million out of the Leisure Budget in the next two years. Given that the current spend is only £1.7 million per annum that represents a cut of 35%. In the report it talks about “detailed consultation, which will be carried out with users and non-users of the leisure facilities, will support this objective and will enable an understanding of the changing user and resident needs in all sections of the community, including those members of the community who are protected under equalities legislation”.

As a follow up to the cabinet meeting, a public consultation was listed on the wonderfully difficult to find and expensive consultation hub website http://engage.barnet.gov.uk/. However since that time the consultation has been postponed twice. The last time it was postponed, in December, the public consultation was rescheduled to commence on 1 February. I duly logged on at 9.00 am all ready to give my views but no it was still showing as about to commence. I tried to email on the link given on the website but that didn’t work – what a surprise.

In the afternoon I was told that this consultation has been handed over to the Council’s One Barnet Implementation Partner, Agilisys/iMPOWER because the Leisure Strategy is now a “One Barnet project”. But do they have the requisite skills I wondered. No, so Agilisys/iMPOWER have drafted in a leisure expert, Duncan Wood-Allum from a specialist consultancy Sport, Leisure, Culture Consultancy . Apparently he will be preparing the strategic overview case which will then go to Cabinet and if approved will move forward to the business case. The problem is that once again the agenda will be set by a consultant and residents will only get consulted on the options the consultant determines are best for us. Residents will once again get left out of the policy development stage - it seems to be the One Barnet way.

What I want to know is how the council gets away with it - public consultation cancelled, no facilities audit and why the hell have the council designated this a One Barnet project and employed yet another expensive consultant.

The Council have p****d about for almost four years on this review, they have failed to engage with the public and now they want to spend a fortune on yet another consultant. In the last 18 months Barnet have paid Agilisys/iMPOWER £1.6 million on One Barnet, money that could have gone into delivering services and they now want to spend even more. Sadly I won’t be able to ask any more questions about the leisure review at Residents Forum because that is policy and One Barnet and therefore banned under the current repressive regime. Barnet Council is yet again demonstrating its utter contempt for the public.

It’s Sandbanks time again!

2012-01-31T22:20:00.004Z

It’s that time of the month when Barnet Council release their supplier payments for the previous month. The usual suspects are present on the list.

Agilisys, the Council’s One Barnet implementation partner, billed £182,774.75 last month bringing their running total for this financial year to just over £1,030,000 and there are still three months to go this financial year. When added to the £642,050.64 from last financial year it is clear that Barnet Council is a very lucrative contract for Agilisys.

Barnet Homes received £2.2 million this month and Barnet Lighting £541,970.39. Catalyst Housing received £572,834.04. I also noticed a payment of £3,920 to Newsquest(London) Limited which was for the four page cover to the Times Series newspaper to tell us all about the parking by phone service and the lovely new parking scratchcards - I have my 30 minute scratchcards, I just need to be able to drive again.

But what’s this I spy? It is the delightful Sandbanks Hotel again, a glorious venue for an education conference at the oh so modest cost of £16,416. Well, we all need a little break don’t we.

One unusual payment I did come across was for a company called AAndersen Limited carrying out consultancy work for the Deputy Chief Executive’s Office. At first I thought it was a typing mistake or some left over from the old Arthur Andersen. But no, this is a company run by a Mr Mohammed Sarfraz Khan whose principle activity, according to the amended accounts of 2010, was ‘Security Service’. Now the fees aren’t large, just £6,500 but this company was issued with a Striking Off notice which was discontinued. A previous company run by Mr Khan, Aanderseninformationsecurity&compliance Ltd, at the same address, was struck off and dissolved in August last year. I am intrigued to understand what services Mr Khan was providing to the Council.

Mr Reasonable will continue to keep an eye on supplier payments during 2012.

Barnet - a Council out of touch with its electorate

2012-01-24T17:46:00.004Z

We all know how unhappy people are about the parking by phone system that was imposed without consultation or discussion. I had a card registered but it expired and since then I have had huge problems registering the new card. Yesterday morning I tried to buy some 30 minute scratchcard on line. I wonder how long they will take to arrive? We see the old ticket machines still languishing on the streets covered in black bin bags. If they had kept the machines but created incentives for people to use pay by phone I am sure over time many people would have gradually moved over to pay by phone. Barnet council say that the machines were always breaking down and that is why they had to be replaced but I had a look at the figures given in an FOI on this very subject and while there were a number that were problematic, the majority had only occasional failures. Yes, there were some occasion when a lot of machines went wrong but when I looked in detail at the dates it coincided with days when we had the snow last winter (which I think stopped the solar panels on top of the machines from working).

Another topic where the Council seems to be out of touch with residents is the proposal to let out the parks to private groups. In my local Oakhill Park there is an area by the cafe which has been designated for use by private parties. It also happens to be the cricket square during the summer and is an area widely used because it is flat and close to the cafe. At tonight’s council meeting a question has been asked about the consultation on this subject. Interestingly the reply states that:

“As of the 12th January 2012 the Council has received over 650 response to the consultation of those 464 have been analysed thus far, the breakdown is as follows 428 are against the policy, 9 are in favour and 47 have taken a neutral position”.

So that’s 92% opposed and just 1.9% in favour. Pretty clear cut in anybody’s terms but will the council listen or will they plough on regardless like they do on every other topic like selling the Church Farmhouse Museum and pushing through this mad outsourcing programme.

Barnet Council continues to distance itself from the people it is supposed to represent. This cannot continue much longer before something snaps. Either someone will try and stage a coup within the Council or the residents will start a revolt. Either way, the current approach of the cabinet doing what they want and arrogantly ignoring any public views is untenable.

Barnet Council - please start listening!

Barnet Outsourcing Leak - Update

2012-01-21T15:00:00.004Z

Oh dear! Barnet Council have asked the Barnet Eye to remove the leaked document containing details of the Development and Regulatory Services tender shortlisting process. Roger T has complied pending further legal advice and as such I have removed my previous post containing commentary on the document.

What I would ask the Council to consider is just why everyone is so incensed by this process.

1. There is no democratic mandate for this massive outsourcing project. Back in 2010 I do not recall seeing any of the Conservative election leaflets talking about wholesale privatisation of the council to large commercial companies. Indeed Future Shape was actually about working collaboratively with other public authorities such as the NHS or Police. Just read Mike Freer's interview in the Guardian back in February 2010. Compare what was discussed then and what the residents of Barnet have had imposed on them and the difference is quite striking.

2.The lack of openness and transparency. There was one scrutiny committee that tried to hold the process to account but the council simply disbanded it. There is a great deal of concern about the way this whole process is being driven by faceless consultants who have no ties or committment to Barnet. These consultants are being paid millions of pounds yet we know nothing about them, their ties or relationships with other companies or where their loyalties lie. Given the value of the contract I would have liked the opportunity for the public to be able to question these consultants who are allegedly acting on our behalf.

3. The lack of robust evidence that it will actually work. The business case was incredibly weak, full of assumptions and aspiration but incredibly short on hard evidence. Indeed when the business case was reviewed by a independent expert and former Section 151 officer he said,

"During the thirty years that I have worked in local government finance as a local government officer and management consultant, including some time as Finance Director of a Borough Council, I have seen and written many business cases, business plans and options appraisals. This business case is remarkable for the apparent lack of robust evidence to support its main conclusions that £28million of savings and increased income is achievable and that this can only be delivered through outsourcing.”

4. Lack of public engagement. The council are unwilling to allow any public debate on the entire outsourcing project. Not allowed to discuss it at Residents forums, no public meetings on the topic, no scrutiny committee at which public could at least attend and ask questions.

There are 350,000 people in Barnet whose lives will be affected by this outsourcing project yet no more than a handful are privy to the detail or involved in the decision making. What is taking place here is wholly undemocratic so it is not in the least bit surprising that people are leaking details and even less surprising that there is a desire to make these leaked documents public. Rather than hassling Roger T perhaps the Council should be spending more time engaging with the residents to explain what the hell they are doing and asking why the staff are so unhappy that they feel the need to leak these documents. Doing long term mega-outsourcing deals without public consensus and scrutiny is a both a disgrace and, in the long term, politically unsustainable.

Residents Forums-Reinforcing a Rotten System.

2012-01-13T12:04:00.001Z

Last year Barnet Council sought to emasculate the residents forums by restricting the topics that could be discussed. Proposals were forward at the Special Committee (Constitution) which flew in the face of the council's own research and which ignored the views of speakers at the meeting. The new format Residents Forums have created a great deal of discontent with many of the attendees by restricting what they can say and refusing to discuss topics which are deemed “policy”.

I have challenged the Council to show me where in the Constitution it defines what can be discussed, because of course it doesn't. At the Special Committee meeting coming up next week, they are going insert a definition of what can be discussed into the constitution, merely reinforcing the chronically undemocratic structure that is now in place. There are also reinforcing the unhelpful start time set at six o'clock which precludes many people who work in central London from attending.

Given that the Residents Forums have become so unpopular, one would have thought that now would be a good time to review whether they are actually working effectively before reinforcing the old and discredited structure. There are a number of options they might consider. They could use them to test opinions on specific policies, they could use them to engage with the community and listen to what we have to say. Varying the start times with some in the day and some at weekends might give more sections of the community a chance to attend. But not in Barnet.

I remain convinced that the Council's underlying objective is to make the Residents Forums so impotent and unpopular they simply fizzle out due to frustration or lack of interest. That way the Council can quite happily ignore the view of the ratepayers and carry on regardless, just as they are use to doing.

Mr Reasonable's New Year Message

2012-01-04T16:27:00.006Z

Over the Christmas period Mr Reasonable has been indisposed and somewhat incapacitated. While being indisposed it has given me plenty of time to think about what is taking place in Barnet, about the key instigators within Barnet Council and how they are de-constructing Council services which have taken decades to develop.

This year we will see a large number of council services being outsourced yet the evidence to support this process is either sketchy or missing altogether. I work in a business world where evidence, facts and benchmark data prevail. Sadly what I've seen in the business cases for outsourcing is assumptions, aspirations and desires; not the strongest base for critical decision-making. Looking at the underlying drivers for outsourcing they seem to be based on thinking which is many years out of date. Back in the 1980s when Mr Reasonable was at business school, the lean organisation which outsourced most of the services was flavour of the month. That can work for manufacturing organisations and we have seen many of them ship their production overseas to low-cost nations such as China, India and the Far East, leaving the research and development and marketing functions here in the UK. While this has given us cheap commodities it has caused major social consequences with the UK manufacturing base being decimated and the former industrial areas of Britain with high levels of unemployment and an over-dependence on the public sector jobs. “It must be right”, cry so many, yet in Germany they still have an immensely powerful manufacturing base. Why have they managed to buck the trend and remain so successful?

So now we see the move to outsourcing of the service sector and, in particular, of local authorities. There is a fundamental difference between a manufacturing organisation which is sourcing an incredibly well defined tangible product manufactured to a detailed specification and, for example, a planning department which requires a high level of judgement and common sense and skill based locally. Yet in Barnet we are seeing these highly technical services being outsourced to companies which have little or no experience in operating these functions. Another example is Environmental Health which has statutory responsibilities to ensure the health and well-being of local people. I am struggling to understand how any external organisation can provide services such as environmental health or planning or a number of other regulatory services significantly more cost effectively without cutting the skilled people who undertake these roles. Ironically when these departments were benchmarked they typically came out well above the average, yet the in house team have been precluded from bidding. I remain puzzled as to how the Council can demonstrate best value has been achieved without allowing the high performing in house teams to submit a bid. I suspect the Council may face a legal challenge on that one later in the year.

I have asked numerous questions over the last 2 years, none of which have been answered satisfactorily. Even worse, the one avenue for challenging the outsourcing process, the One Barnet Overview and Scrutiny Panel, was scrapped. The cost of consultants supporting this outsourcing programme has been immense, millions of pounds to dozens of consultancy firms.

My biggest complaint however, is that the senior management of Barnet Council have spent far too long focusing on the One Barnet programme, and far too little time focusing on the day-to-day running of the Council. As a result of the misaligned management objectives, we have seen significant problems with the IT systems, hundreds of suppliers without a contract, significant concerns about the procurement system and a parking system implemented without detailed consultation, consideration or common sense. There was the case of the £2 million of pension contributions that the council "forgot to collect" a sum of money that could have delivered a great deal of care to many of the most vulnerable. Sadly it is those most vulnerable, the elderly and disabled in the borough who have been most affected. They have been slapped with huge increases in charges for care services which many simply cannot afford. Laughably called the “Fairer Contributions Policy” we have seen the number of people liable to pay a contribution to the social care rise from a third to 59%. Of that 59%, almost half (44%) have to pay the full contribution which is, on average, £84 a week. Imagine if your elderly relative was suddenly faced with a bill of £400 a month for care charges out of their fixed pension, how would you feel? I attended one of the consultation events where people made it clear to the council that these charges would be a major problem for many elderly people but their comments, as usual, were ignored.

In addition, this year we face the prospect of London hosting the Olympic Games while at the same time Barnet Council are closing leisure facilities, something which sends a dreadful signal to the youth of this borough. Perhaps a greater focus on getting the basics right, not spending millions on consultants, and running a much leaner senior management team may have reduced the need for cuts to these services.

This year will be a tipping point the Barnet Council. Many residents feel increasingly estranged and disengaged from the council and what it is trying to do. Councillors appear increasingly remote and irrelevant. When the consequences of outsourcing start to bite, hundreds of people are made redundant, and services disappear or decline I wonder what councillors will be telling us then. The Greater London Authority elections may give us the signal as to how the residents of Barnet perceive the current regime. I hope everyone's sake of the electorate send a very clear signal that our councillors are out of control, out of touch and out of step with the nation. Only time will tell.

Barnet Council - Indecisive or obstructive. 11 months and still waiting for a decision.

2011-12-16T09:51:00.009Z

Back in January Barnet Council launched its Pledgebank website to great fanfare. At a cost of at least £30,000 it was aimed at encouraging the community to volunteer for civic activity. It states:

“The website is based on the simple principle that the person making the online pledge will work to make it happen “but only if” a number of other people commit too”.

So on January 12th Mr Reasonable submitted the following pledge:

“I will pledge to give up 4 hours of my time every month to scrutinise and challenge all invoices over £10,000 to help the Council reduce unnecessary spending so long as five other people will make a similar time commitment to sit on the panel and that Barnet Council will genuinely participate in the process and listen to the advice and opinions given.”

Now there was a very good reason for offering this pledge. I had already raised significant concerns about purchasing and procurement monitoring at the council and genuinely felt that having an external panel of people to review and scrutinise these invoices would have helped the council. Perhaps this panel would have picked up things like the MetPro scandal and RM Countryside situation earlier. Perhaps it could have discovered a number of other contractual problems which have been highlighted over the last six months.

But Barnet Council don’t like residents asking awkward questions. So having submitted my pledge on 12 January I waited and waited and waited......
By the end of April I thought I had waited long enough so on 27 April I sent the following email:

Dear Barnet Pledgebank,
Back in January I submitted a pledge – see the email below. It was not accepted but I have never been told if it was rejected. Please can you let me know if it has been:
a) Accepted - and if so when will it be put on the pledgebank website so others can sign up;
b) Rejected - and if so on what criteria;
c) Undecided - and if so when a decision is likely.
Thank you for your help.
Kind regards

I waited for a response. Now I am a patient man but no reply was forthcoming, not even an acknowledgement. Complete and utter silence until September when reading the response to a Freedom of Information request (not submitted by me) that my pledge was still “under consideration”. I duly email Barnet again with yet another polite email:

Dear Barnet Pledgebank,
I submitted a pledge on 12 January 2011 for which I have never had a response. Indeed, I wrote again on 27 April chasing up this pledge but again I did not even receive the courtesy of an acknowledgement. Yesterday (2 September) in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, Johnathan Schroder, Internal Communications Manager, Chief Executive's Service at Barnet Council stated that my pledge was “under consideration”.
Given that it is now 9 months since I submitted my pledge, please can you tell me how much more time you need to consider my pledge and when a decision is likely.
I look forward to an early response.
Thanks

Now you would have thought that might have elicited a response – but you would be wrong. No reply not even an acknowledgement. So after a couple of weeks I rang the council. "Someone will ring you back". No they didn’t. Four weeks later I rang again “Someone will definitely ring you back”. Are you sure? “Yes someone will definitely ring you back today”. Guess what – not a peep, no one rang back.
By November my patience is wafer thin. I rang again but this time, when I was told they would ring me back, I asked to speak to their manager. A few seconds on hold and then told he had just left the office but that he would get back to me. Who is your manager I asked. “Chris Palmer, assistant Director of Communications.” Ah, a Senior Officer and someone who has some clout, maybe? So on Monday 21 November I at last received a response from Mr Palmer.

I am responding to your request for an update on your pledge earlier this year.
This is being reviewed again and I will give you a definitive answer tomorrow.
The criteria for inclusion on Pledgebank are:
• Does this support a civic activity?
• Does the pledge include a deal by at least two parties, to a common end?
• If a pledge requests an action by the council, it should support council priorities.

Pledges may be rejected if:
• They are political by nature
• They are promoting a commercial activity
• The transaction does not support a civic activity.
• The pledge runs counter to the council’s stated policies and objectives.
• The pledge is a statement rather than a deal.
• The pledge maker makes no commitment themselves
• The pledge asks for a commitment from the council that cannot be supported within current resources. “
Obviously Pledgebank is intended to encourage activity outwith the council, i.e. civic activity was always intended to mean activity across society rather than simply further activity from, or about, the council. Your pledge has represented a conundrum in that it does not match the original intentions for Pledgebank and has therefore been a source of debate within the council. For that reason I apologise for asking you to bear with us again, but I will respond in full with a final decision tomorrow.
So, in answer to your question below, c) and 22 November.
Yours sincerely
Chris Palmer
Assistant Director, Communications.

Now as far as I can see my pledge meets all of the relevant criteria so you might expect a swift response as promised. Not at Barnet Council.
Further chasing has still not brought a definitive response. I emailed again last week and again received a reply saying there was still no decision.
Barnet Council, you have had 11 months to make your mind up. I reckon that if this pledge had been accepted it could have benefited the council and more importantly Council Tax Payers by highlighting wasteful spending. It might have picked up Metpro earlier. It would have certainly challenged the huge spend on companies who do not have a valid contract with the council. It might have asked pertinent question like why we are spending millions on consultants with no tangible outcome. It might not have stopped these thing happening but it would have at least added some checks and balances. I was offering half a day a month of my time for free. Not a penny of expenses or allowances. Nothing at all. My only objective to help save the community money.

Barnet Council hate people looking at what they do. At cabinet resources committee on Wednesday Cllr Coleman made a sneering remark about the detail of the increase in charges being something that “the bloggers can pore over at midnight”. Surely everyone should be looking at what they are going to be charged. Public scrutiny should be embraced not sneered at. That is what is wrong in Barnet. They expect us to take what we are given without debate or challenge. Well that must change.
We need much more public scrutiny of Barnet Council and we need it now.

Last Night's Audit Committee - a toothless talking shop?

2011-12-09T08:43:00.006Z

Last night’s audit committee was a long and unsatisfactory meeting. I’m afraid that due to work pressures this is a rather perfunctory blog. I was aware right from the start that there was a tension in the air, referred to by Cllr Rayner as “the elephant in the room”, the subject of RM Countryside’s contractual relationship took over two hours before it made a brief and unsatisfactory appearance.

Mrs Angry and I had asked a number of questions, all successfully evaded or denied in the written responses. The one response that surprised me was the admission that One Barnet, the council’s transformation programme is “inherently risky”.

Procurement remains a running sore in Barnet and the latest date for centralising the purchasing function is June next year, almost a year since it was determined that it should take place.

I have long maintained that many of the problems identified at the audit committee last night are straightforward business issue that should never have happened in the first place. I am convinced that they have arisen because senior management have spent far too much time concentrating on implementing One Barnet and far too little time making sure the day to day business of the council is operated efficiently and effectively.

Procurement is a serious and immediate problem. At the same time, £200,000 a month is being paid to just one firm of external consultants to help implement One Barnet. If Barnet were to divert some of that consultancy spend into speeding up the centralisation of procurement I’m sure it could have been implemented by now.

Sadly, the audit committee is a bit of a toothless tiger; it may roar (or purr rather loudly) but ultimately officers don’t give a stuff because the committee has no power to call officers to account, admitted several times by chairman Lord Palmer. Cabinet members are the only people who can do anything in Barnet and, whilst that remains the case, the audit committee will remain the impotent talking shop it has become.

Barnet Council Procurement Scandal - Another MetPro?

2011-12-07T10:07:00.002Z

Move over MetPro: here comes another Barnet Council procurement scandal, and this one is even bigger.

Barnet bloggers earlier this year exposed the scandalous use by Barnet Council of MetPro, an unlicensed security company which was paid a total of more than a million pounds worth of residents’ money despite the absence of any tender process, contract, or properly regulated payment system.

MetPro proved to be just one among hundreds of similar irregular arrangements sanctioned by the Tory authority, which is currently negotiating the outsourcing of £1billion worth of our council services to the private sector under the One Barnet programme.

During the months of the outsourcing tender process, in blatant defiance of the government’s stated policy commitment to transparency and greater accountability by local authorities, Barnet has consistently resisted, delayed or obstructed Freedom of Information requests by bloggers in relation to matters of public interest, including the much criticised procurement of contracts with service providers. We think we know why that might be.

At this coming Thursday’s audit meeting, 8 December, we are submitting questions to the committee about another case investigated by local bloggers involving the council’s long term use of another private company, RM Countryside, which has been paid more than £2 million pounds of local tax payers’ money with an apparent lack of compliance with the proper processes of tendering, contractual arrangements and the regulations set out in the Constitution.

We are questioning the efficacy of the internal and external audit procedures which are supposed to regulate the commercial activity of the London Borough of Barnet.

The integrity of the One Barnet outsourcing programme is clearly fatally compromised by the failure of the authority to regulate its own procurement, contractual and payment processes and we call therefore for an immediate halt to be made in this programme, and for an urgent, independent inquiry to be held into the disastrous lack of control of the authority’s commercial activities. MetPro was a warning: a warning which has been ignored. Now is the time to stop, investigate and hold the authority to account to the residents and tax payers of Barnet.

Signed:
Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

Oh Yes It Is - Oh No It Isn't - The Bin Lorry Depot Saga Continues

2011-12-03T19:53:00.009Z

This morning I trotted off to see my local councillor at their surgery in New Barnet. A couple were already ahead of me in the queue very unhappy with the proposals to let out the parks for private hire. Cllr Evangeli spent 35 minutes with them trying to address their concerns. I couldn't hear what was being said but when they came out I got the impression they were not convinced. Now it was my turn. I came straight to the point why do the council want to build a satellite depot for bin lorries in Oakhill Park. Ah but they don't said Cllr Evangeli, "I have been reassured by the leader that it will not happen". Well that's all very interesting but I held in my hand a copy of a delegated powers report authorising an architect to prepare drawing in readiness for a planning application no later than 31 March 2012. "No it not going to happen" repeated Cllr Evangeli. Well my problem is that the Commercial Director of the Council Mr Craig Cooper has authorised the retention of an architect at a cost of £51,800 PLUS an additional allowance of £35,000 for any necessary surveys. Now Cllr Evangeli says it won't happen but Mr Cooper has just authorised a spend of £86,800 to make it happen. Talk about left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. I made it clear to Cllr Evangeli that when the Council is cutting from line services, a senior officer frittering away 86 Grand is frankly nothing short of a disgrace. I await what happens next.

East Barnet Residents beware - Bin Lorry Depot to be Relocated to Oakhill Park?

2011-11-25T19:14:00.006Z

At last night's residents forum a little birdy told me to look again at what first seemed a rather innocuous Delegated Powers Report which related to the appointment of an architect. Looking further into the report it appears they want the architect to prepare plans for "The redevelopment and expansion of both the Copthall and Oakhill Satellite Depots to provide fit for purpose facilities for the Council’s Parks and Cleansing Services and to facilitate the regeneration of Mill Hill East by moving these services out of the existing Depot into the newly developed Satellite sites". What I had not grasped is that the small parks depot in Oakhill looks like it is to be turned into the bin lorry depot for this side of the borough. Now for those who don't who know the area in Oakhill Park it is a small fenced area immediate off the car park and is tiny. Perhaps it would hold 3 bin lorries at most. Immediately behind the small area are houses for the elderly, owned by the Lancelot Hasluck Trust. It also transpires that this issue was one of the questions refused at last night's residents forum. So the council want to sneak in a great big bin lorry depot down a very narrow road (Parkside Gardens) in the park car park and immediately behind a cluster of elderly peoples homes. Oh and we aren't allowed to discuss it at the residents forum. When were our local councillors, Cllrs Rams, Evangeli and J Tambourides going to tell us about this proposal?

If these plans are true then this is a disgrace and ever single person in East Barnet should be queuing up at the next councillors surgery on Saturday 3 December at New Barnet Community Centre, 48-50 Victoria Road, New Barnet EN4 9PF.

Cllr Coleman - expect a letter from Cllr Evangeli

2011-11-25T08:18:00.007Z

At last night's Chipping Barnet Residents Forum there were just three questions on the agenda. Four questions has been excluded on the grounds that they did not meet the criteria for the new censored forums. To her enduring credit Cllr Kate Salinger handled the meeting with a politeness and empathy that is sadly missing elsewhere in the council.

The first question related to a petition for either traffic lights or a zebra crossing on Brunswick Park Road The gentleman who presented the position made a very strong case saying that a child had been knock down on this stretch of road in September and that it had previously been the site of a serious accident. The highways officer acknowledged that there had been speed checks on this stretch of road and a number of speeding fines being issued. It was agreed that the matter should go straight to the Environment sub committee which immediately follows the forum.

Next question came from that "manifestly unreasonable" troublemaker Mr Reasonable and related to the council's latest madcap scheme to let out parks for private hire. I made the point that in Oakhill Park one of the areas designated will be next to the cafe an areas that is very well used by the public. Cllr Salinger mentioned that this was something that she had seen in America and Australia. However the general opinion of the meeting was that this park belongs to the public and using it a revenue generator was unacceptable. Do we believe the council will listen to the public's views - not likely.

Last question related to the automatic barrier on Netherlands Road. Result, the council have repaired it.

The chair of East Barnet Residents Association asked where was his question which related to private hire of the park. Not a valid question pipes up the governance officer. Cllr Salinger, to her credit said she would meet straight after the meeting to discuss the disallowed questions.

Cllr Salinger now said she would move on to the action list from the last forum. Oh no piped up the governance officer again, you are not allowed to do that. An uncomfortable shuffling between Cllrs Salinger and Evangeli. Well, said Cllr Salinger, seeing as we have finished the business of the forum I suggest we discuss the issues list and that is precisely what she did.

The first issue which sparked some debate related to PayPoint. Interestingly Cllr Alison Cornelius made the point that not all PayPoint shops participate in the Barnet parking scheme with none in Totteridge making a mockery of the system. We were graced with the presence of the Barnet Parking Manager who seemed somewhat surprised at this remark and would take up the matter with PayPoint. He said that pay by phone was the main method of parking and that currently 99% of people were paying by phone. Well surprise surprise if you block off all the meters, the scratchcards aren't available yet and Paypoint has just been introduced but nobody can find a local outlet then it is hardly surprising that 99% of payments are made by phone! There remains huge public dissatisfaction with the parking set up in Barnet and Cllr Coleman's steamroller approach shows his contempt for the people he represents.

There was some hanging about till 8.00pm when the Environment Sub Committee starts. First thing was agreeing the minutes of the previous meeting normally something which is simply nodded through. Not this time. At the last meeting and following on from a strong debate at the residents forum the Environment Committee had asked officers to reinstate the light controlled pedestrian crossing at the junction of Oakleigh Road North and Whetstone High Road. However the minutes seemed to have been "adjusted" to say something subtly different. The minutes say that "officers be instructed to investigate the feasibility of re-instating the pedestrian crossing lights" whereas they had instructed officer to simply reinstate the crossing - no feasibility. It was made worse by Cllr Coleman issuing a Delegated Powers Report stating that the lights will continue to remain off. Now given that 5 of the 6 committee members are conservative one might have expected them to just roll over. No. After consulting with the governance officer they agreed, unanimously, to instruct Cllr Evangeli, as Chairman of the Committee to write to Cllr Coleman making it clear that the instruction from the Committee was to turn the lights back on. Now if Cllr Coleman simply ignores this letter it will show that actually the Environment Sub Committees are, like the new format forums, utterly impotent and as such a waste of everyone's time and money.

As ever, it seems that one man runs the council, Brian Coleman. He trumps everyone else and whatever he says goes. I cannot think of a time when Barnet Council has ever been so unpopular, so remote and out of sync with the public it is supposed to represent.

Residents Forum Shown Two Fingers by Council

2011-11-17T20:35:00.007Z

At the September Chipping Barnet Residents Forum there was a very sensible discussion about the withdrawal of the light controlled pedestrian crossing at the junction of the Whetstone High Road and Oakleigh Road North. It was quite clear that many elderly residents were very concerned that the removal of the light controlled signal (covered up) had made the junction very dangerous. Interestingly it was noted by the Chair, Cllr Kate Salinger that when the trial had been introduced on the other side of the junction (in Totteridge ward) a certain councillor of that ward had demanded that the trial be stopped and it was withdrawn just one month after being introduced. Cllr K Salinger was quite insistent that officers should sort this matter out quickly and it was raised at the environment committee which immediately follows the residents forum.

So did the council listen to what people were telling them. Did the council listen to what the elected councillor for the ward was saying? No. In today's batch of delegated powers reports there is a report signed by Cllr Coleman saying they want to keep the trial going because it saves money. How much? £3,480. So if you are elderly and find it difficult to cross the road, tough luck. Keeping the cars moving and saving three and a half grand is more important.

As for the role of Residents Forums this action shows quite clearly, the council don't give a stuff what residents think. Oh and by the way we can't raise the subject again for at least 6 months. What a bl**dy joke!

Leisure, a walk in the park but only when its not hired out

2011-11-09T19:29:00.005Z

In the Barnet Times this week, Cllr Tom Davey says in response to a question about the council’s lack of expenditure on sport facilities, “My personal opinion is we shouldn’t have anything to do with leisure. People can walk or jog in the park for free. That’s the attitude we have to take because we only have a set amount of money to spend.” Well I think that gives us all a very clear indication where the leisure review is going, a consultation due to start on 29 November.

Pretty radical but that isn't a surprise coming from Cllr Davey. What makes this even worse is the council's current consultation of the hiring our of our parks. The council have identified four separate categories for hire, Commercial, Charitable, Community and Private Hire.

In a desperate attempt to raise money, the council are proposing to let out our parks to whoever is prepared to pay. They have failed to say of there is a limit to how often the park can be hired out. Given the councils zeal to raise cash we face the prospect of our parks being turned into showgrounds. In my local park, Oakhill, they have identified a lovely area adjacent to the cafe for private events. But hang on a minute these are public parks. Just because someone can afford a wad of cash it doesn't mean they should deprive the rest of the community of using these facilities. This council are utterly ruthless, close the leisure centres and jog in the park but only when we haven't hired them out. Only in Barnet

Barnet Council on the Brink - an open letter to Barnet Residents

2011-11-07T11:07:00.002Z

The MetPro scandal, exposed by Barnet Bloggers, was a shocking case of incompetence and poor practice that continued over a period of several years. It placed vulnerable people at risk but it took local residents only a few weeks to uncover the problems. On Friday 4 November an equally serious issue was uncovered, again by a Barnet Blogger; an issue that runs to the very heart of democracy in Barnet and in Britain.

On 16 May this year Barnet Council applied to the Information Commissioner’s Office to complain about one particular blogger, to question whether they should be registered under the Data Protection Act and to ask if they had breached the act. The Information Commissioner’s website suggests that if such a situation exists you should “First, tell the organisation concerned and give it an opportunity to put things right. Many data protection problems can be solved quickly without us getting involved”. Did Barnet Council inform the blogger concerned? No, it simply submitted the complaint.

On 7 June the Information Commissioner’s Office responded that it did not consider that a blogger should be registered as a data controller and had therefore not breached the Data Protection Act. For most organisations that would have been sufficient and they would have left the matter there. Not Barnet Council. They responded on 23 June citing a European Court of Justice judgement, not something which just comes immediately to hand. Appealing a decision of the Information Commissioner’s Office is not a step taken lightly. Taking this action must have required approval from someone very senior at Barnet Council and possibly involved taking legal advice.

The Information Commissioner’s Office responded to Barnet Council on 11 July again rejecting the Council’s complaint. It went on to say in its reply:
“The balance of privacy versus freedom of expression relies on taking a proportionate approach. Requiring all bloggers to register with this office (ICO) and comply with the parts of the DPA exempted under Section 36 would, in our view, have a hugely disproportionate impact on freedom of expression”.

This incident comes on top of changes to the borough’s constitution limiting debate in Council meetings, imposing draconian new rules for residents forums and disbanding the only committee able to scrutinise the One Barnet programme.

For all that Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities, talks about the need for armchair auditors, the reality is that local councils, and in this case a solidly Conservative Council, see them as a nuisance and something to be disarmed at all costs. The fact that a local authority should have worked so hard to stop citizens exercising their legal right to ask questions should be something of great concern to every single voter in Barnet.

Over the last few years the Council has looked increasingly out of touch with the community in which we all live. In recent months this tendency has escalated. A much more strident approach has been adopted by the most senior managers and cabinet members, an approach which is becoming unsustainable. The Bloggers of Barnet recognise that there are thousands of hard working council staff struggling to deliver good quality service whilst under immense pressure to cut costs and worrying whether their jobs are about to be privatised or deleted altogether. These people deserve our praise and recognition. It is the very top layer, the officers and consultants on six figure salaries and the Cabinet elite that work with them, that are the problem.

We call upon the Council leader to pause for reflection, for councillors to re-engage with their residents, and senior officers and councillors to start listening to citizens. This should include:

• The Council setting out in a public document fully and clearly what the One Barnet programme means for residents;
• Publishing all currently secret One Barnet reports;
• Allowing in-house team bids for all services;
• Stop putting out false information about bloggers; and
• Relax the rules and allow residents to ask any questions they like at the Residents Forums.

Failure to do so will lead to a Council that is completely isolated from the majority of residents in Barnet and one that ultimately will fail.

Signed

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

Barnet Budget Consultation - Not at the Residents Forums

2011-11-03T22:35:00.002Z

At tonight’s cabinet meeting the big agenda item was the budget proposal for next year. Rather than get into the detail of the budget at this meeting, where I know there is not a chance of getting a straight answer I thought I would ask a rather simple question:

Will the Council be using the forthcoming Residents Forums scheduled for November as one of those forums to consult with residents on the budget process.

The answer was, unsurprisingly a masterpiece in flim flam.

“Last year the Council organised a public meeting as a means of consulting residents on its entire budget. It was cancelled because less than five residents registered an interest to attend even though it was advertised for two weeks in the local press. Residents seem to prefer service specific consultation events and web based feedback. We plan to continue using these methods. Given previous lack of interest in a public meeting on the entire council budget, we are not planning to repeat last year's attempt in the form of one meeting or through Residents Forums. We will be making information available at each forum on how residents can get involved in budget consultation. I will ask the chairman to ensure that residents are aware of opportunities to take part.
This month’s Barnet First will include information about the budget and how residents can tell us their views”

So that’s no then!

As for residents preferring, “specific service consultations” well how about offering them a choice. As for last year’s meeting it was not clear that you had to register in advance before coming, difficult if you are elderly and have no internet access. The meeting was cancelled 48 hours before it was due to take place and who knows how many would have turned up if it had gone ahead.

The reality is that they can’t restrict who comes to resident s forums and they might actually hear something they don’t like. The constitution specifically allows for the new format residents forums to be used for consultations so there are no rules preventing it happening. No it is the simple fact that democracy in Barnet is under threat. There are a handful of people who control Barnet . Everyone else is irrelevant.

No open discussion on budget, no discussion whatsoever on One Barnet why bother when all the decisions have already been made. So the entire cabinet agenda tonight, all 246 pages of it was neatly dealt with in 30 minutes. If you bother going to the forthcoming residents forums ask why you can't discuss the budget. Oh sorry you can't ask that question.

The One Barnet Programme: a high stakes gamble

2011-11-02T16:54:00.002Z

Set out below is an open letter from the Barnet Bloggers on the revelations that have come to light on the One Barnet programme.

Dear Councillor,

As you know the Council is embarked on a massive outsourcing project, the One Barnet Programme. This programme has never been put before the borough’s residents for their comments let alone their approval. It was not in the manifesto of the winning party at the local government elections.

No Conservative councillor or senior Council officer has ever appeared in a public forum to defend the programme. It has been left to concerned residents such as ourselves to make their own investigations into the scope and implications of the planned changes.

We have recently seen a copy of the procurement principles adopted by senior council officers in March 2011, early in the process of beginning the outsourcing. They would alarm any resident who cares about the state of the borough. You can read the document here: http://barnetfutureshape.blogspot.com/
We do not know whether these principles have been modified in the course of the process. The fact that that we do not know is in itself a matter for deep concern and only highlights the problem that residents are being kept in the dark about what the Council is doing with their services and their money. We must insist on residents’ right to know more about One Barnet.

It might well be that councillors themselves are also in the dark about what the Council is doing. Yet you have a duty to represent your constituents and we think you should therefore seek out and share information about One Barnet with them. You should feed back any concerns residents have to the Council Cabinet and senior officers.

The document was produced before the MetPro and other existing procurement failures came to light. Nevertheless and in spite of this, we think that the principles we have seen probably are those along which the One Barnet Programme is proceeding. Those aspects of them that alarm us most and which we think particularly need public discussion are detailed below.

One Barnet is likely to cost jobs in the borough

The Council appears to have decided that there will be no requirement on the companies awarded contracts to create new jobs within the borough. Moreover, they have decided that services do not have to be delivered locally: that is, staff currently employed by Barnet Council could be made redundant and their jobs done by people in another part of the county or even overseas, most probably in a call centre.

Staff made redundant will be offered basic TUPE terms, which, as we have already seen with outsourced services in Barnet, usually means that sooner or later staff will be re-employed on worse terms. That is bound to affect the quality of the service to residents.

There is a high risk that residents will foot the bill if One Barnet fails

The document is shot through with anxiety about who will bear risks, including financial risks. For example, the Council is looking into taking out insurance against contract failure, and it is worried about the implications of outsourcing for paying the pensions of transferred staff. Here is one particularly startling quotation regarding the pension fund:

“At the end of the contract period, there are risks of potential large deficits being built up by the new employer during the contract period. A recovery plan will need to be put in place well before contract ceases.”

The ostensible reason for going down the outsourcing path is to save money, but if contracts fail in any way, it will cost us money and disruption in our services. Other areas of provision will wind up needing to be cut to make up gaps in the Council’s budget.

The quality of our services is in jeopardy
In the document senior officers acknowledge that contractors are interested in the One Barnet Programme for one reason alone: to make money. Take this, for example:
“There are... many examples of long-term partnerships where the commitment and enthusiasm of the provider has waned over the duration of the contract. Major... organisations will generally resource extensively during the first year, or two, of a new contract but this level of resourcing diminishes as the contract moves to a more stable business as usual position.”
Residents, however, care about the quality of their services, and councillors should too.
***
We believe that councillors have a duty to inform themselves about these issues as a matter of urgency so that they can discuss them with constituents.
The One Barnet Programme has major implications for the future of the Borough’s services and finances and for the way it is governed. One day the discussions behind closed doors must spill out onto the streets, as residents feel the impact of the changes to their services. That will be too late for them and you suddenly to be involved in the debate.
We therefore urge you to take an active interest in One Barnet now. Speaking for ourselves, we oppose the programme; we believe One Barnet will jeopardise local finances, the quality of services and democratic control over them.
You must act now.

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

2nd November 2011

Barnet Outsourcing - What a legal mess

2011-11-01T12:22:00.005Z

Today, every single Conservative councillor in Barnet should today be very very worried. Over the weekend certain documents have been leaked to the Barnet Bloggers which illustrate what a complete and utter legal minefield the One Barnet programme has become. You can read some of the extracts at the Barnet Futureshape Blog but trust me, there is much more and it is much worse.

The documents set out quite clearly just what a dangerous game the One Barnet protagonists are playing. Some of the roles within departments currently in the process of being outsourced cannot be carried out by anyone other than an employee of the council because they are statutory roles. Problem for the companies bidding? Oh no. To get round this problem the Council have spent a great deal of money getting their lawyers to come up ways around this legal duty.

The documents also reveal that the council don’t mind jobs being outsourced away from Barnet, either elsewhere in this country or overseas. It states that “The Council do not require services to be located locally except where the service specification demands it. The Council will consider both off-shoring and near shoring proposals”. In other words unless jobs have to physically be carried out here in Barnet then the council don’t mind if they are dealt with in India or the Philippines. I think this nails once and for all the garbage that has been put out by the council, especially Councillor Thomas when he said outsourcing is just about whose name goes on your payslip. Lies. Jobs will be shipped overseas if it is cheaper to do so. Given that the Council is one of the largest employers in the borough (along with the NHS), that doesn’t bode well for council employees and all the local shops and businesses where they spend their salaries.

The risks associated with this programme seem completely out of proportion to the potential savings the scheme might make. Just a few listed in these documents include:

- Risk of contract failure – the council are sufficiently worried that they are considering taking out insurance against the risk of failure, a cost which I doubt has been included in the incredibly flimsy business case previously submitted.

- Risk that if offered a long contract, the outsourcing companies “enthusiasm and commitment will wane” – so what are they doing, yes offering a long contract (10 years)with an option to extend for a further five years.

- In terms of pensions “there are risks of potential large deficits being built up by the new employer during the contract period”. And the response? “A recovery plan will need to be put in place well before contract ceases”. So the private company will get all the benefits and local ratepayers will have to pick up the bill at the end of it.

The list goes on and on. If there was a track record of these mega outsourcing deals going well one might consider the risk worthwhile but given the huge problems at Southwest One and the recent decision in Suffolk to scrap mass outsourcing, I would have thought that any rational, sane and business like person would have taken a step back to reconsider their strategy. And therein lies the rub. This isn't a business decison it is purely political. Private sector good public sector bad. Perhaps that is why they have not allowed the in house teams to bid for any of these contracts.

Barnet Council is at a tipping point. If they persist with this mass outsourcing strategy I think councillors could find themselves accused of breaching their fiduciary responsibilities. And don’t let them say this is all about saving money because I don’t believe it and more to the point no one has yet provided a single shred of reliable,sourced and validated evidence that it will. Yes we have lots of opinions and assumptions but where is the hard evidence – there isn’t any. Worse, the consultants’ bills for One Barnet continue to clock up. In September alone Agilisys, the Council’s implementation partner for One Barnet, billed £84,292. That’s a run rate of £1 million a year for just one consultancy firm let alone all the other consultants and lawyers providing advice on One Barnet. Just stopping all of that waste would save millions overnight.

Councillors, you may have been told that One Barnet was the answer to all your problems but it isn’t and if you aren’t careful it could end up costing Barnet residents millions because it is us ultimately who have to bail you out when things go wrong. Read these documents very carefully, ask difficult questions because it strike me that no one has been asking the right (or any) questions up to now. Failure to do so could cost ratepayers a fortune and you your seats at the next election.

Barnet Supplier Payments for September take a quick look

2011-10-30T16:46:00.003Z

It’s that time of the month again and Barnet Council have published the suppliers payments for September. In total they amount to £28,795,329.82 from over 4,800 separate entries. The usual large payments go to:

GLA: £4,579,494.21
Transport for London: £3,236,734.00
Barnet Homes: £2,243,051.89
Barnet Lighting Services: £1,099,754.61
Catalyst Housing: £1,198,583.77
North London Waste Authority £821,852.00

However there are a few interesting payments which could do with a bit more explanation.

Civica UK Limited who, in the past, have provided services to parking clocked up invoices of £599,725.74 in September. Given that in the whole of last year they billed £353,177.02 then it makes you wonder why Barnet have received such a large bill this month.

Agilisys who are helping the Council to implement One Barnet billed £84,292.00 in September However given the daily rates they charge (£1,350/day for a manager and £995 a day for a consultant) that sum can be clock up quite easily.

Hays HR Services for temporary and interim staff clocked up £574,537.84 in September, which when compared with the £2,638,561.09 for all of last year, again looks high. Perhaps some of the consultants who are now not appearing on the supplier payments schedule are being put through Hays.

Nabarro LLP who are lawyers, clocked up £49,113.10 in fees. I wonder which One Barnet element that relates to?

Penna PLC, consultants who are providing interim staff in the commercial directorate were paid £44,225.00; not bad for one month.

Randstad who are an employment agency were paid £29,108.00 for supplying interim staff for the Deputy Chief Executives department

Simply Performance Management Limited who charged a rather modest £5,750.00. What is interesting is that they specialise in Executive Coaching and it was charged to the Deputy Chief executives Department. I wonder who was the recipient at Barnet Council and will it make them a better manager? Only time (and possibly a few Freedom of Information requests) will tell.

I would urge everyone if the have a few minutes to take a look at the supplier payments lists. This is what the council is spending your money and you can’t whinge about it if you don’t know where it goes.

Incompetence, pedantry or something more sinister?

2011-10-27T08:57:00.005+01:00

The new residents forums have perplexed many people in Barnet. The draconian new rules have meant that a number of questions that have been submitted by members of the public have been declined as not meeting the remit of the new rules. Indeed I was subject to one of these refusals for the September forum when I received this response from one of the Governance officers at Barnet Council:

"I confirm receipt of below email. Please note that full Council at its meeting on 17 May 2011 agreed the type of issues to be discussed at Residents Forum meetings as per below in italics. As Issues 3 does not cover public works, I will not be including this on the Issues List".

I heard from a number of other people who had their questions refused so on 19 September I submitted a freedom of information request asking

"For the six residents forums held in June and September 2011 please
could you provide me with the following information:

1 How many questions were submitted by the public.

2 Of the questions submitted, how many were ruled invalid for
failing to meet the new criteria for question submission."

FOI requests are supposed to be answered promptly and within 20 working days as a maximum. Good old Barnet council don't stick to the rules so after some prompting, on 25 October I received a response:

"I can confirm the following:

Chipping Barnet

23 June 2011 – 6 questions and 3 petitions

20 September 2011 – 7 questions and 2 petitions

Finchley and Golders Green

23 June 2011 – 4 questions and 5 petitions

14 September 2011 – 25 questions

Hendon

23 June 2011 – 5 questions and 4 petitions

12 September 2011 – 17 questions and 1 petition

Part 2

I can confirm that the Council does not hold information for the second
question".

Now I didn't think I'd asked a particularly difficult question. The governance officers who deal with these forums could have answered these question is a matter of minutes. Why it took so long I cannot understand.

What I find so disturbing is the denial that Barnet Council holds any information on how many questions were refused. Is this incompetence, pedantry for not asking exactly the right question, or is it something more sinister. Is this a Stalinist approach to the facts, denying the existence those that are inconvenient.

I have asked for an internal review so we shall have to see what this turns up but I see this response as yet another example of the council's autocratic, controlling and high handed approach to residents.

Suffolk on mass outsourcing - "it simply didn't work"

2011-10-24T19:25:00.003+01:00

On the BBC today is an interview with the leader of Suffolk County Council. His view on large scale outsourcing was unequivocal. "It simply didn't work". He also made the point that "In trying to do this (outsourcing) so quickly we simply weren't taking the communities along with us".

Now it just so happens that one of the architects of the Suffolk strategy, Max Wilde, was also influential in setting up the One Barnet programme.

Barnet Council, wake up and smell the coffee! Stop trying to peddle this discredited One Barnet strategy, stop wasting millions on consultants and start running the council more effectively.

Yet More Financial Advice?

2011-10-22T20:41:00.004+01:00

Barnet Council have decided they now need KPMG to give them financial advice. With a call off contract the council "does not expect to spend more than £500,000". Given that last year they spent:
- £538,508.23 on Grant Thornton;
- £202,426.07 on PricewaterhouseCoopers;
- £41,730.00 on Deloitte
as well as £1,000 a day on a chief financial officer I would blooming well hope they don't expect to spend half a million quid on yet more financial advice.

Reading the report it appears that the dreaded One Barnet is the driver for this additional advice. When will the Council give One Barnet the chop, stop wasting money on all these advisors and just focus on delivering great quality services efficiently.

Are We Getting Best Value?

2011-10-20T08:25:00.005+01:00

The latest Delegated Powers Report reveals that Barnet Council are extending the contract with a company called Ebase who currently provide a standalone system for electronic forms. The contract is being extended for 6 months at a cost of £12,000 to allow time for a new system, JADU, to be implemented as part of the "Customer Services Transformation Programme" and the introduction of a new council website which has had a particularly long gestation.

According to the supplier payments record Ebase were paid £12,000 on 19 May 2011 Interestingly, the Council paid JADU £90,819 in August alone.

Barnet Council seem to have an endless pot of money to spend on IT systems yet front line services are continuing to be cut. I worry that no one is prepared to challenge the spending on IT so it just keeps going up and up and up and up.

Last financial year the council spent £2,970,628.68 on Hardware Purchases and Maintenance and £2,000,813.82 on IT Services. £5 million but is it money well spent?

£98k for another interim manager at Barnet Council

2011-10-18T12:02:00.003+01:00

Today's crop of Delegate Powers reports shows the appointment of an interim finance manager at a cost of £98,000. Interestingly, although the report is dated yesterday this is in fact a retrospective approval for someone who has been in post since 1 April this year. This interim finance manager will be working on the SAP Optimisation project. For those who aren't up with the jargon SAP is the giant computer system which helps run Barnet Council and which has so far cost over £23 million. On a day when some of the council staff are on strike for trying to protect front line jobs, it seems somewhat ironic that the council is appointing yet another highly paid 'interim' manager on this monster IT project. Perhaps if the council spent a bit less on all the expensive IT systems, consultants and interim managers (Chief financial officer £1,000 a day, Assistant Director HR £140k last year,to name but two) then they wouldn't be needing to make so many cuts to essential services.

The cost of going cashless

2011-10-13T22:43:00.003+01:00

In the latest Delegated Powers Report we see that RM Counrtyside Services have been appointed to take out all the 408 current pay and display machines. In addition, they will put in some regular time plate posts to replace the existing low posts. And the cost of this work? £80,244. Now what is interesting is that the council invited three companies to bid but "once the specifications were confirmed and the programmed timetable provided, two of the tenderers withdrew". Given the all the critisism of the Council's procurement performance I would have thought that they would have gone back out to tender. Oh no just award it to RM Countryside - they are "a known and trusted contractor that has worked with L B Barnet
for some time providing consistently high quality work". Are Barnet residents happy that at a time of cuts in essential services, £80,000 is spent to get rid of something many residents actually want? Only in Barnet!

Barnet bloggers respond to Councillor Gordon’s defence of Barnet Council residents’ forums

2011-10-11T10:07:00.001+01:00

An open letter to Councillor Gordon from the Barnet Bloggers.

Dear Councillor Gordon,

A letter was published last week in the Press group of newspapers from you concerning the Barnet Alliance for Public Services residents’ forum held on Tuesday 4th October.

We must correct a factual inaccuracy in your letter. The forum was not "private", it was open to all. All Barnet councillors were invited and would have been welcome to attend.

You state that Barnet Council’s own residents’ forums are not in any way hampered by the new rules governing them. Is this your opinion, we wonder, or have you asked the residents who attend? We think they would have a different view.

You state that the forums are "marred occasionally by the irresponsible actions of anti-council agitators". We ask you to withdraw this offensive remark. The undersigned have all attended numerous residents’ forums and have never witnessed an "anti-council agitator".

We have witnessed many local residents who disagree with the policies of the current administration, and we believe their comments are born out of deep concern for the direction of the Council and cannot be in any way construed as "anti-council".

We are also concerned by the description you give of the appropriate way to deal with residents and taxpayers. The phrase "with firm chairmanship, those individuals are fairly swiftly subdued" has highly oppressive overtones and clearly implies that residents are not welcome to express views at odds with the chair.

We would like to remind you, Cllr Gordon, that the forums exist for residents’ benefit, not for that of the chair.

We would also like to remind you of the circumstances in which you became chair, when it became necessary to instigate an investigation into the behaviour of the previous Conservative incumbent.

We remind you that Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has praised the concerned citizens of Barnet for their efforts in exposing the shambles that your administration allowed to develop in the Council’s purchasing department.

We are pleased that you have drawn attention to the next set of Council residents’ forums. We look forward to the opportunity to discuss your comments with you and your colleagues at these events.

Yours,

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

As a footnote, I would add that I, along with several other Barnet Bloggers, attended the meeting where the rules on Residents Forums were changed. The Conservative group ignored the independent research the council commissioned; they ignored represntations from the public and they ignore the options put forward by the council officers. Sadly we have no official record of this meeting as the Council refuses to publish minutes of meetings that propose changes to the constitution.

Alternative Residents’ Forum - Cllr Gordon Seems a Bit Upset

2011-10-06T18:15:00.000+01:00

I read in today’s Barnet Press a letter from Cllr Gordon talking about the “private forum” held on Tuesday. Firstly Cllr Gordon, it wasn’t private. It was open to the public and the press and I’m sure they can reassure you that no one was asked for the ID before being allowed to enter. Cllr Gordon believes that the Hendon forum is free from constraints and that a wide range of matters were discussed. Well that certainly wasn’t the case at the Chipping Barnet Forum where one of my questions requiring a simple yes or no answer was disallowed and where a number of people expressed concerns that we were not allowed to discuss matters of “Council Policy”. I was most interested in his comment that, “With firm chairmanship those individuals (people who he calls anti council agitators) are fairly swiftly subdued”. Frankly that sounds more like something Gaddafi would have said rather than an elected councillor. He notes that “it is unfortunate that they cannot find something for constructive to do with their spare time”. So we should just sit and accept everything Cllr Gordon tells us because of course he is a Councillor and he is always right.
Well Cllr Gordon, I can tell you that there are lots of unhappy residents of Barnet who are fed up being told what is best for them by a bunch of councillors who are both arrogant and out of touch with what many local people are saying. Ignore them at your peril!

The People Speak – Last Night’s Alternative Residents’ Forum

2011-10-05T08:42:00.003+01:00

They say a society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Judging by what I heard last night, Barnet is in severe decline driven in large part by ideological commitment to One Barnet. I will not go into great detail about what was said last night as all five of the Barnet Bloggers were present and I’m sure they will give a more accurate record of the meeting. However, what struck me most were the stories from people who have vulnerable relatives hit hard by the changes to the way support is delivered.

To their credit there were a number of Labour Councillors in attendance last night. They sat and listened, but there were no Conservative councillors and the Liberal Democrats sent their apologies. Ok, so some of the Conservative councillors were up in Manchester at their conference but I can’t believe they were all there. With no council committee meetings scheduled last night I would have thought a few representatives of the ruling group might have shown their face.

Last night showed me that there are a lot of angry people in Barnet and they are getting organised. Barnet councillors may say that residents care about pavements and bins but most people either have a child or an elderly parent or relative or next door neighbour that depends on council services. No one in Barnet will be unaffected, directly or indirectly, by the changes that are taking place and the consequences they bring. Should we be targeting the most vulnerable, often on the lowest incomes, to make sure that people living in their millionaire houses in Totteridge and Hampstead Garden Suburb can enjoy lower council tax bills.

Barnet Councillors and, in particular, the cabinet members who make all the decisions in Barnet, need to start listening to the people to whom they are accountable. Stop wasting millions of pounds on this ideological madness called One Barnet and start focusing on delivering what people need.

Barnet bloggers look forward to meeting Cllr Thomas to discuss Barnet council’s priorities

2011-10-04T10:07:00.000+01:00

Dear Councillor Thomas,

We, bloggers of Barnet, are most pleased that in your recent YouTube broadcast you express yourself keen to engage with local residents and discuss ways to improve Barnet.

As you are no doubt aware, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles recently commended the bloggers of Barnet for their great work exposing the MetPro scandal. The subsequent investigation has highlighted all manner of problems with Barnet Council's procurement procedures which we are promised will now be rectified.

Since we are all motivated by the desire to help you improve Barnet still further, we are pleased to invite you for a live, televised discussion, to be broadcast on www.GotSeeN.com, at a time to suit you.

We are sure that there are many subjects about which we could have an interesting and informative discussion.

As public spirited citizens we are willing to meet all the costs of staging this event and broadcasting it live on the internet. We also guarantee to afford it maximum publicity and coverage through our blogs.

We are happy to discuss any topic and suggest that if you let us know in advance the topics you want to cover, we will do our homework so as to ensure a fruitful discussion.

We would be happy to broadcast either from the Barnet Council offices at North London Business Park or a venue chosen by us.

Subjects we think you might be interested to discuss are: One Barnet, Cabinet Members’ allowances, executive pay, waste within the council, the number of highly paid contractors working for Barnet, cost overruns on projects such as Aerodrome Road, CPZ charges, Icelandic investments, overdevelopment and the strain it puts on infrastructure.

We look forward to hearing your response.

Best wishes,

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

Barnet’ s budget consultation – A lottery of the future?

2011-10-01T17:15:00.005+01:00

Good old Barnet Council. They really must be worried if the latest consultation wheeze is anything to go by. First of all you have to find the consultation page on the Council’s website not an easy thing to do so I have embedded a link here ensure readers can take a look at this wonder.

First we have Councillor Thomas with a professionally made video with lots of lovely chart telling like Private Fraser in Dad’s Army, “We’re all doomed,”. Take a careful look at the chart they show. The first one shows spending on Overseas Aid rising and Barnet spending falling. What’s the subtle message there Cllr Thomas? He then shows us another graph which seems to suggest that by 2022/23 adult social care and children's services will be consuming the entire council budget. Well I’m sorry but I simply don’t buy this one. Frankly I think this government will have been kicked out long before that happens. Also I don’t believe that council tax will not rise over the next ten years. It one of those clever little chart that are meant to frighten people without actually conveying any sense of reality.

So now we move on to the survey. Although I would absolutely not claim to be an expert I have carried out a few consumer surveys in my time. My golden rule is don’t ask a question unless you can do something with the results. What we are presented with is a list of 28 activities and then asked

Which of the following services are most important to YOU?
Which services do you think are the most important for the council and it partners to focus on FOR BARNET AS A WHOLE?

You are only allowed to pick 8 out of the 28 listed. It's a bit like picking your lottery numbers and hoping they come up. The list of activities is set out below.

1. Community safety services (tackling anti-social behaviour & crime)
2. Council owned leisure facilities
3. Doorstep recycling
4. Environmental health service
5. Fostering, adoption and children in care
6. Housing advice and housing benefits
7. Keeping vulnerable adults safe
8. Library service
9. Nursery and early years services
10. Parking services
11. Parks, playgrounds and open spaces
12. Planning and building control
13. Primary education (5- 11 yrs)
14. Provision for public space CCTV
15. Recycling facilities
16. Refuse collection
17. Repair of roads and pavements
18. Secondary education (11 - 18 yrs)
19. Street cleaning
20. Street lighting
21. Support for adults with a learning disability
22. Support for adults with a physical disability
23. Support for adults with mental health problems
24. Support for children with disabilities and special needs
25. Support to family carers of adults
26. Support to older people with care needs
27. Trading standards, consumer advice & licensing
28. Youth activities

Now let me see which ones are important to me? How do you prioritise secondary education over environmental health for example or how about fostering or refuse collection. And where do I think the "council’s focus for Barnet as a whole" should be? Support for adults with a learning disability, or repairs of roads and pavements.

The next question asks if there are any service areas you think the Council need to improve on.

The last question asks if you have used any of the services. Interestingly it appears to omit provision of public space CCTV, refuse collection, repairs of roads and maintenance, street cleaning and street lighting.

Now my question is what are earth are they going to do with this data. Are they seriously suggesting that if not enough people identify support to older people with care needs that they will stop providing it.

Perhaps if the council spent a lot less money on expensive lawyers and consultants dreaming yet more bizarre ways to “re-engineer the council”, hugely expensive IT systems, over paid senior officers on consultancy contracts and focused on running all of these services better we wouldn’t need to be answering such ridiculous questions.

If Barnet want to consult then let’s do it properly and based on informed decisions not some harebrained, petty, little on line survey.

Take it seriously Barnet and host open discussion sessions around the borough. If you can spend £30k of the pledgebank website (success 1 pledge)then surely you should invest a little in some decent consultation.

The Art of Rubber Stamping - A Barnet Masterclass

2011-09-28T08:57:00.003+01:00

Last night at the Cabinet Resources Committee we saw world class exponents of rubber stamping in action. With 17 items on the agenda and 155 pages of papers the sense of urgency was apparent from the start. Councillor Coleman shifted uneasily looking at his watch. I couldn’t sure but was he whispering “agreed” over and over again?

The meeting kicked off at a very brisk pace, Cllr Thomas using all his efforts to break the previous record of finishing the meeting in 22 minutes or less.

Oh Oh! First problem. Awkward resident wants to ask some questions. I appreciated Cllr Coleman’s genuine comments concerning my injuries as I hobbled to the microphone. Now Cllr Thomas runs a tight ship at CRC, so with good planning they had prepared answers in advance, alleviating the need to read out either the questions or the answers. Any supplementary questions? Mr Reasonable also likes to plan in advance so I duly read out my supplementaries. Not much point though. A slightly indignant Cllr Cornelius denying that the £1.7 million being spent at Hendon Cemetery was because of three years inaction. Well you commissioned consultants to undertake an option appraisal in 2008 so that looks like three years inaction to me. Leisure contract supplementary questions sidestepped by Cllr Rams.

Well that had caused a slight delay in proceedings. The 22 minute deadline looked lost. Ok next target looked like 30 minutes. Off they set running through the agenda items. 1 minute for each and they could all be out by 7.30pm.

Allotments was dealt with by Cllr Coleman, dismissing Cllr Thomas’s request to include fences to the responsibility of allotment holders. Mill Hill sports ground pinched to be used for new schools; Agreed! Cllr Harper spoke for at least 2 minutes on the new school places that will be created. Could he be jeopardising the chances of hitting the 30 minute barrier. Agreed Agreed!

Cllr Harper talked about early intervention and prevention commissioned contracts. Cllr Cornelius said that he could now understand what he was voting for but that the papers should have been written in plain English. Another couple of minutes closer to the deadline.

When we get to the item on Hendon cemetery Cllr Thomas had barely paused for breath before Cllr Coleman was shouting agreed, agreed. Three seconds for that agenda item. Could this be a personal best for Cllr Coleman!

Leisure contract item and Cllr Rams was about to start talking but the scowls from other committee members cut him dead. Any questions? No. Agreed!

We came to an item introduced by Cllr Rajput. He started talking but Cllr Coleman was still gently mouthing agreed, agreed. The 30 minute deadline was now starting to look tight. A couple of items now seemed to get Cllr Coleman to speak up. Clearly the 30 minute target was a goner.

Disabled and vulnerable people’s transport met with Cllr Coleman’s disapproval. If he had his way he would change the law so that Barnet wouldn’t have to provide transport for any of them. He definitely didn’t like the thought of working with London Boroughs of Brent and Hounslow.

Well that was it; the 30 minute deadline missed and still an item to go. A discussion around treasury management. Cllr Thomas reiterates that they have to be ultra careful. Yes we don’t want another Iceland. A question about whether the council has any money in Santander bank – No. What do they know that we don’t.
Time to exclude the public so we are finished and it just coming up to 7.35pm. Definitely missed the qualifying time for the Rubber Stamping Olympics - must be quicker next time.

An open letter to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

2011-09-26T10:07:00.001+01:00

Barnet Bloggers are fed up with the lack of transparency at Barnet Council, particularly their attitude to Freedom of Information requests. Set out below is an open letter to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

Dear Mr Pickles,

In June last year, as part of your stated policy of commitment to the principle of ‘localism’ and greater accountability by local authorities to the communities they represent, you issued the following statement:

New era of transparency will bring about a revolution in town hall openness and accountability

“Getting council business out in the open will revolutionise local government. Local people should be able to hold politicians and public bodies to account over how their hard earned cash is being spent and decisions made on their behalf. They can only do that effectively if they have the information they need at their fingertips.

“The public should be able to see where their money goes and what it delivers. The swift and simple changes we are calling for today will unleash an army of armchair auditors and quite rightly make those charged with doling out the pennies stop and think twice about whether they are getting value for money.”

As part of your programme of action to make local authorities more accountable you have created an obligation for them to disclose details of expenditure and have expressed the intention to compel councils to allow citizen journalists to film, photograph and tweet reports of council meetings.

In conjunction with these new directives, you have expressed the wish that residents use existing legislation in order to scrutinise the processes of local government, including, most importantly, the rights given in the Freedom of Information Act of 2000.

All of these suggestions are commendable, and should indeed further extend the powers of scrutiny to local communities.

It is deeply regrettable, therefore, that here in the London Borough of Barnet, rather than embrace a policy of greater transparency, the Conservative administration is making every effort to resist any obligation to be more accountable to its electorate, and is, in direct opposition to your wishes, obstructing the efforts of the armchair auditors that you so applaud.

In a speech at the CIPFA conference in July this year you made the following remark:

I was shocked by a recent case in Barnet. The council had hired a private security firm, MetPro, which included “keeping an eye” on local bloggers - at a cost of over a million pounds. The contract had been awarded without a tendering exercise, without a written contract, and no proper invoicing. An internal audit showed there “serious deficiencies in current procurement arrangements”, and there were no guarantees that against a repeat of such practices.

Irony of ironies - this misuse of public money was uncovered thanks to the determination of local bloggers and activists, including Barnet Eye, Mr Mustard, and Mrs Angry (as she had every right to be.) Exactly the same people MetPro snooped upon.

I've got news for Barnet. Live blogging from council meetings. Microjournalism. Call it what you like. It's here to stay. In fact this citizen samizdat - local people reporting on their local council's triumphs and shortcomings - is the perfect counterblast to town hall Pravdas.

As you know, Mr Pickles, here in Barnet bloggers have had to fight for the right to film council meetings, and we have made huge efforts to uncover the ‘deficiencies’ which lay at the heart of the MetPro affair, as well as bringing to the attention of the community a number of other serious issues of concern to all residents.

Earlier this year, in defiance of the move to greater transparency and accountability, and to a more meaningful engagement with citizens, we have seen Barnet’s Conservative administration attack the local constitution, restricting the right of elected councillors to speak at meetings, and worst of all, censoring the local Residents Forums so that absolutely no discussion of any council ‘policy’ may now be raised, nor any issue alluded to within a six month period be submitted for inclusion. These and other draconian and undemocratic regulations are read out in detail at every Forum, and their imposition has caused enormous anger and resentment amongst residents.

Even more worrying, perhaps, is that the culture of secrecy and fear of transparency which is so endemic in this local authority has now extended to the council’s flagrant abuse of the Freedom of Information Act.

Barnet bloggers and armchair auditors – and other residents – who have submitted FOI requests to Barnet Council are increasingly having their enquiries obstructed or needlessly delayed, particularly enquiries on issues of political or financial sensitivity.

Two FOI requests submitted by residents in regard to the MetPro affair, for example, were only answered a few days ago, on 16th September, after an inexplicable delay of several months.

One request had been made in early April, the other in early May. As you will know, the statutory period within which responses must be made is 20 days.

Another request made in relation to potential declarations of interest between senior officers of the council and a major private company was ignored for months and then obstructed on a pretext, despite a current outsourcing tender process for a package of services worth a staggering £750 million in total, in which this influential company is now one of those shortlisted.

In Barnet there is no open declaration of interests, gifts, or hospitality given to senior officers, and one response given to an FOI request by a blogger in regard to such declarations was sent with the identities of donors withheld, invalidating the information and again obstructing the purpose of the enquiry.

The FOI request in regard to the tendering company was reported to the external auditors at a meeting in July: despite an assurance that the issue would be investigated by them under the terms of their remit, we are not aware of any progress in their enquiry.

After struggling to hold the authority to account for FOI responses which were withheld, delayed, or misleading, one Barnet blogger has recently been sent, in reply to a perfectly valid question regarding a hugely over budget IT system, a response refusing to address his request for information, on the grounds that it is ‘vexatious’ and because of the alleged number of previous enquiries.

In Barnet, bloggers, armchair auditors and residents are obliged to resort to making an increasingly large number of FOI requests in response to an obstinate refusal by the authority to comply with the intentions of your stated commitment to greater openness, accountability and transparency, and in order to place the necessary information in the public domain, in a medium easily accessible to all.

Despite the demonstrably inadequate state of preparation revealed by the MetPro audit report, and despite the concerns of so many backbench Conservative councillors, a highly controversial programme of massive outsourcing is being promoted by Barnet’s senior management team and council leadership as the keystone policy of the ‘easycouncil’, One Barnet agenda. There could hardly be a time in which a need for openness and accountability could be more pressing. Public confidence in the governance of this borough is, however, at an all time low, and we, as residents and citizen journalists therefore ask that you, in defence of your stated policy of localism, investigate the obstructive and anti-democratic practices employed by this authority in a sustained attempt to prevent proper scrutiny of its actions and decisions.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

The problem with contracts – Lessons to be learned for One Barnet

2011-09-25T18:02:00.002+01:00

On Tuesday there is a Cabinet Resources Committee which will deal with a number of subjects. Item 15 on the agenda relates to the leisure services contract with Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL).Back in 2003 the Council entered into a 15 year contract with GLL. Move on 8 years and the Council is now under pressure to cut the budget. It is also losing sites that are attached to the academies like the leisure centre at QE Girls school.

What Barnet want to do is cut the £1.7 million per annum contract by £733,000 this financial year and by £467,000 next financial year. The council have been informed by their legal advisors, Bevan Brittan, that “alteration of the contract, in the manner proposed, would, for the purposes of European procurement law, constitute a material change to the content and nature of the original opportunity such as to amount to a ‘new’ contract”. What this means is that Barnet will have to terminate the contract with GLL 7 years early.

I suspect that GLL will be seeking a significant compensation package for having such a long contract cut short.

So what, you may say. Well I suppose what this illustrates to me are three things

1. Nothing stays constant and the longer the contract the more likely events are to change;

2. When you contract out a service you lose all the flexibility you have with an in house service;

3. Contracts and EU rules are tricky and if you get it wrong you can be sued.

One Barnet is a huge and complex outsourcing project. The two contracts currently being tendered are worth £1 billion and will be let for between 10 and 15 years. Now let’s skip forward five years and things in Barnet are changing again. I wonder how easy it will be for Barnet to escape one of these new contracts. Will a major change mean the contract has to be retendered all over again at huge expense. Will it be possible to get out of the contract?

The current Conservatives in Barnet seem more wedded than ever to this highly risky One Barnet strategy. There were hopes that when Cllr Cornelius was elected leader he might see sense and call a halt to this madness. However he and Cllr Coleman seem keener than ever to embrace what many people see as a massive multi-million gamble. I think it was Churchill who said “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it". Tragically political dogma seems to trump commonsense in Barnet.

The Battle for Democracy in Barnet– Last night’s Residents Forum

2011-09-21T11:00:00.005+01:00

After last night it is apparent that Barnet Council have stepped up their campaign to destroy democracy in Barnet. Well guys we are made of sterner stuff. Your tactics will not work.

The Chipping Barnet residents forum was held at the All Saints Centre on Oakleigh Road North. What I didn’t realise is that there are a collection of buildings and halls on this site. Currently debilitated following an accident, I hobbled around looking for the meeting. Down one alley in this complex maze I found a very elderly gentleman also with mobility problems who was also looking for the forum. “Perhaps it’s been cancelled” he said. With not a single sign, and a hall full of young children practising judo, that was a very natural conclusion to come to. Knowing one of the stalwart of the forum I gave him a call. Yes, the meeting was going ahead and he would come out to direct us to its location. He emerged from an alley way and pointed us in the right direction. The elderly gentleman and I hobbled our way down the alley, crutches at the ready through a well hidden door. Now I know the Council is hard up but frankly I was shocked that they felt this venue was suitable. Dingy, dirty and difficult to negotiate, it was completely unsuitable as an accessible venue. Perhaps the Council think that if they make venues so hard to find people will stop coming but last night the hall was full. To her credit, the Chairman, Cllr Kate Salinger was equally disapproving and said that a meeting will never again be held in this venue.

And so to the meeting. I had missed the first couple of questions and the next question was regarding the covering of the pedestrian crossing lights at the junction of Oakleigh Road North and Whetstone High Road. Mr McKenny who is chair of the Whetstone Society asked why, after an 18 month trial and a clear concern that this was very dangerous for pedestrians, couldn’t the cover on these lights simply be removed. The officer from Highways gave us some old waffle about procedures and decisions and how it needed cabinet approval. The long and the short of it is you have to wait until someone is seriously injured or killed before it will spur them into action. There was general discontent from this reply, none more so than from the chairman herself. She made it clear that where this had happened on the other side of the junction, in Totteridge ward, a certain councillor had demanded the cover be removed and voilà the next day it was removed. No need to go through procedures, no cabinet approval. So why could it happen on Oakleigh Road North. Mutterings of discontent all round and a requirement that it should be dealt with at the environment committee immediate after the forum. We shall have to wait and see if it actually happens but no one can ask about this problem again for another 6 months. Those are the new rules.

Next it was my turn. I had submitted three questions but one question was disallowed.

The first question was regarding the closure of the Queen Elizabeth Leisure Centre as the assets have been transferred to QE Girls School as it is an academy. Apparently there is provision in the lease for the leisure facilities to be made available to the public outside school hours but it is not clear if this has happened yet. However, the fact that Greenwich Leisure (GLL) no longer runs the facility means that there is no link to the Barnet Leisure website run by GLL. So how are the public supposed to know what is available, when and how much it costs. No forward planning then.

My next question related to the car parks in East Barnet Road. I had to pick these car parks so that it was a local issue and not a “policy” issue which is FORBIDDEN at residents forums. The question involved the ability to pay for car parking with cash at a PayPoint outlet if you don’t have a mobile phone or credit card. The response was, we will put up signs telling people where they can pay when the service is operational. Given that this PayPoint contract was approved using a delegated powers report back in March I expressed my surprise that after 6 months this service was still not working. Cllr Salinger again spoke up saying yes, it is working. “Ah no”, said the officer “perhaps in October”.

So we move on to the missing question. Why is it not on the list I asked Cllr Salinger? “Because I have been given three different opinions as to whether or not it can be asked and that means I am going to wait” she replied. Now I have to make it clear that I respect Cllr Salinger even though we do not share the same political views. I believe she is a decent and honourable person. I sensed her discomfort at being placed in this invidious position. So what was this dangerous question that no one must even hear let alone have it answered?

“The One Barnet outsourcing will have a major impact on the delivery of public works locally. The constitution states that residents forums can be used “for certain consultations from the council”. Can the chairman indicate if outsourcing is a topic which will be considered for consultation at a forthcoming residents forum.”

As readers may know I take great interest in the constitution and it is clear to me that if the constitution says forums can be used for certain consultations from the council then asking if a topic will be consulted on at one of those forums seems to be a fair question. Otherwise I suppose we have to use telepathy to guess what topics will be discussed in the future. I wrote to the officer who dealt with my query copying in Mr Lustig expressing my concern as to why a question that would receive a simple yes or no answer could not be asked.

Now this problem isn’t going to go away. I am concerned that the line that has been spun at residents forums about the rules is actually not what the constitution says meaning that cllrs who are enforcing these rules are treading a very fine line. I say this for the following reasons:

1. The Council refuse to published minutes of the Special Committee which forms the basis of this change. Without the minutes of this meeting councillors who voted in favour of this change may not have realised that there was significant opposition from members of the public who spoke at the meeting, that councillors ignored the advice of their own research and that they ignored options put forward by officers.

2. The recommendation which was put to the vote at council is quite ambiguous. There is no definition of what local means, they say “basically” public works; what does basically mean? What does Public Works mean? It then goes on to say what type of matters COULD be covered but it certainly does not say what couldn’t be covered other than licensing and planning.

3. Ultimately it is what is in the constitution that counts and the constitution (Article 10) it is quite brief. All it states is “Residents Forums provide an opportunity for any resident to raise local matters (“Public Works”).” Again, the only specification it makes about what may not be discussed are planning and licensing matters.

I wonder what a lawyer would make of their interpretation of the constitution. Perhaps we will find out sooner rather than later?

Next up was the redoubtable Mr Dishman who gave the officer a detailed cross examination of the £5 million spent on energy saving nodes for the lampposts. The technology seems a good idea but I think Mr Dishman was right in describing the funding of this scheme as a “three card trick”.

There were three more questions about parking in High Barnet. The lady who spoke has spoken on a number of previous occasions on this and similar matters but it seems that nothing ever gets done. She will have to wait 6 months now before she can ask this question again – it’s in the rules you know!

A run through the follow up from last time and we were finished. A thoroughly unsatisfactory meeting. No we couldn’t ask about many of the things that really bother people in Barnet. The cut to services for the elderly, the problems with personal care budgets, the huge risks associated with One Barnet Outsourcing, the profligate waste on consultants. No, they are dangerous questions and must never be talked about.

Democracy in Barnet is definitely under sustained attack from the council, an utterly deplorable situation.

“Channel Shifting” In Barnet - Isolating the least advantaged

2011-09-17T16:02:00.004+01:00

In the papers for the forthcoming Budget & Performance Overview and Scrutiny Committee we start to see where Barnet Council is going with the outsourcing process and what will be required from the private outsourcing companies. They have included an example of the draft output specification for the new Customer Service Organisation, a service which currently costs a shade under £44m a year.

The output specification doesn’t tell the private companies how to deliver services. The council even states that it is “agnostic” about how they go about providing this service but it does set down some key principles one of which is something called "channel shift". It is a typical buzz phrase but in layman’s terms what they are saying is that they want to change the way people contact the council. They want to shift them away from calling the council on the telephone and or going to council offices to using email or the internet. The reason for this is quite simply financial. It is much cheaper to deal with an inquiry on the internet, which may be automated, than to pay someone to answer a phone or sit at an enquiry or reception desk.

Now in theory that sounds very plausible. However, it does not take into account the very wide diversity of people in Barnet and their very differing ability to access the internet.

Reading through all 797 pages of the very comprehensive Residents Perception Survey it sets out how people prefer to contact the council. Overwhelmingly, people prefer to contact the council on the telephone. Set out below is a brief summary of how people like to contact the council for different tasks:

The survey also breaks these figures down into range of different personal profiles.

I have shown a few examples below to illustrate how different groups access the council for advice and to request or apply to use a service.

First if we look at those people asking for advice or information.

• Overall 4% visit a council office whereas 13.5% of the unemployed visit a council office.

• Overall 24% use the web/email whereas only 12% of over 65 year olds use the web/email.

• Only 10% of council house tenants and 6% of housing association tenants use the web/email.

• 36% of Finchley Church End residents are use the web/email compared to only 14% in Hale ward.

If we now look at people who request or apply to use a service you see similar trends.

• 40% of 18-24 year olds use the web/email compared to only 14% of over 65 year olds.

• For the unemployed 76% use the telephone and 10% attend the office whilst only 13% use the web/email.

There are numerous other examples but what keeps coming out to me is that certain groups are much less likely to channel shift than others and often they are the least advantaged. If you are young, employed or living in an affleunt ward, that may be a great idea, but if you are old or unemployed or a council tenant, it may cause you real problems. Often these are the people who are most likely to need to access council services. A private contractor who is required to get people to “channel shift” (it is one of the key performance indicators) risks leaving a large section of the population disengaged from council services.

I wish the councillors would start looking at their own data in a bit more detail and realise that not everyone in Barnet has the advantages they enjoy. It also show how this outsourcing project could go horribly wrong.

Is this what you voted for?

2011-09-13T11:20:00.002+01:00

Back in May 2010, some 16 months ago, the Conservative voters of Barnet saw fit to re-elect the Tory administration for another four year term. I wonder how many of those Conservative voters would have been happy with the complete and utter mess the Council have got themselves into now.

Today some Barnet Council staff are on strike. Perhaps the Daily Mail readers amongst you will boo and hiss at this stage. Well I know John Burgess of Unison and I know a lot of people who work for Barnet Council and frankly I think they have been given no other choice. They have been pushed into this position by what seems to me a blind adherence to political dogma from Conservative Councillors whilst ignoring both common sense and the facts.

Even before the last election I was voicing my concerns about the whole Future Shape/One Barnet project. As a management consultant for the last 25 years I’ve learned the language of bulls**t and psychobabble and I can smell it at 50 paces. The Council is spending millions of pounds each year on very expensive consultants to dream up these harebrained schemes but sadly the supporting evidence is completely absent. I read both of the business cases in detail and if I had ever produced work of such weak quality I would have been sacked.

When you are embarking on contracts with a total value of £1 billion you need to be absolutely sure that :

• You are doing it for the right reasons;
• That you have considered all possible options;
• That there is strong and supportable evidence base to back up the assumptions;
• That you have considered and analysed in great detail all of the risks; and
• That the benefits are tangible and realisable.

I would say the current business case for this mass outsourcing fails on just about every count. Please be clear; I am not opposed to outsourcing. In fact I have earned a living over many years helping companies carry out outsourcing projects. The difference here is the scale and structure of the outsourcing. There are no trials taking place; no testing of just one service at a time. No, this seems to me to be the gambler’s all or nothing strategy. The problem is that this gamble impacts hundreds of council staff and if it all goes wrong, services will suffer and it could end up costing every council taxpayer in Barnet a pile of money.

Some people will say that this strategy is unavoidable because we have to make savings. Well we may have to make savings but from what I can see:

a) Staff have already made great sacrifices – 140 were made redundant at Christmas and there have been big budget cuts even before a single outsourcing company has set foot in Barnet.

b) There are still great saving to be made in areas such as hugely expensive consultants and lawyers – the budget for the company helping to implement One Barnet is £2 million and £500,000 for the lawyers to help draft the contract.

c) Employing consultants to fill full time senior council officer posts. For example, the Deputy Chief Executive is a consultant on £1,000 a day and last year he cost the council £206,000; the Assistant Director of Human Resources, cost £133,975; Assistant Director Barnet Communications, £114,912; Assistant Director Commercial Assurance, £105,204 and that figure doesn’t even represent a full year. I cannot believe that with so many unemployed we cannot find good staff at much more realistic salaries.

d) The huge amount being spent on implementing the SAP IT system (total cost to date in excess of £23 million).

e) And little things like buying every councillor a brand new laptop costing over £1,600 each, wasting at least £30,000 on the pledgebank website which so far has only had 1 successful pledge, £70,000 a year spent on the Council’s Barnet First magazine which I only see when Igo to the council offices.

Today is the strike. Staff wanted to strike only for the afternoon to minimise disruption to the public so what does the council do but locked them out this morning as well. We face library closures. Services to some of the most vulnerable are being cut, they got rid of crossing patrol staff, they have whacked up parking charges and allotment fees. They have closed the only two museums in Barnet and have cut the funding for the Artsdepot. It now looks like they are going to savage the leisure services. The opportunity to debate this with the Council has been stifled by the draconian new rules for the residents forums (contrary to the council’s own independent research) which now excludes any question on council policy.

Come on Conservative voters, is this really what you voted for?

Warning - Leisure Under Threat in Barnet

2011-09-09T20:18:00.003+01:00

On Wednesday evening the Cabinet are going to approve the commencement of a strategic review of leisure services in Barnet. This strategic study is something that has been promised for years so in some respects it should be welcomed. But nothing is ever that straightforward in Barnet.

According to the Cabinet papers, the total leisure budget is £1.7 million per annum which works out at approximately £4.85 per Barnet resident per year. What particularly worries me about this strategic review is that one of the key conditions of the review is that the leisure budget has to save £1.2 million over the next two years. Using my fingers and thumbs that looks to me like a 35% cut in the budget bringing the cost of providing leisure down to just £3.14 per resident per annum. Now is it realistic to assume that a good leisure service can be provided for £3.14 per resident per year?

The committee papers say that the review will be:

“wide ranging, evaluating the current service model, assessing the needs of users, and a range of options to reduce expenditure with the objective of modernising the service, meeting needs and improving performance. The review will also consider options to work with a range of different partners, community groups, and public service organisations to improve the quality of services offered”.

However, it also goes on to say:

“In order to deliver the required budget savings the current arrangement for the management of the Council’s assets is unsustainable. It is therefore vital that a strategic review is completed so that the Council can assess its priorities and that of its residents to ensure that changes to the way that leisure is provided in the borough are appropriate and evidence based”. To me that says facilities will close.

Now the Council makes great play in paper that according to the Residents’ Perception Survey,

“34% of residents think that Council owned leisure facilities offer a good or excellent service (an 11% increase compared to 2007/08)”.

However, elsewhere in the same Residents Perception Survey, 41.4% or residents are worried about the lack of recreational facilities and 55% worried that not enough is being done for young people. I am exceptionally worried that this strategic review will be yet another hatchet job finding good reason to close leisure facilities, something that will impact directly on young and old alike.

Given that, “The provision of leisure in the borough is not a statutory service”, every single Barnet resident who has ever used a leisure centre or swimming pool or who has children should be exceptionally concerned that there is a very real chance of leisure facilities disappearing in Barnet. Make sure Barnet council knows your views!

What on earth is going on? - An Open Letter to Councillors From the Barnet Bloggers

2011-09-09T10:06:00.002+01:00

9 September 2011

Dear Councillor,

We are writing to share with you our concerns about the recent decision of the Chief Executive Nick Walkley to erect posters throughout the council offices bearing an ‘Open letter to staff’.

The posters did not contain any new information that was not already conveyed to staff in an email on the same day. Why, therefore, were the posters necessary? What is clear is that at a time when the council is making cuts to valued services, this was an appalling waste of money.

Custodians spent valuable time putting the posters up when they should have been carrying out their normal duties. We are taking steps to find out the cost of these posters and will share the information with residents. We would welcome any light councillors can shed on this and on how the decision to approve the poster strategy was taken.

The overall effect of the posters is surely to further alienate much of the workforce from council management and bring more disastrous PR for the council. If they seemed like a good idea when the decision to use them was taken, surely seeing the effect when the entire council is plastered with identical copies of one poster – only, in different sizes – can only embarrass those who thought of them.

We hope you will agree, the whole poster episode has been ludicrous and ineffective, the impression given that the council management team is starting to panic.

What can be salvaged from this? It is time for the council to recognise that staff will not be bullied into accepting the “One Barnet” outsourcing project. (Our own view is that the programme should be scrapped.)

It is also high time that the council consulted fully and properly with residents over One Barnet. It is scandalous that the representatives of the bidding companies can meet with senior Barnet management, yet the council – neither the leading Conservative group, nor senior council executives – has never appeared in a public forum to justify to residents these plans which will have a profound impact on council services for years to come.

We invite your views on this matter.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

One Barnet Outsourcing - An Alternative View Point

2011-09-08T16:23:00.005+01:00

I see today that Barnet Council has selected the shortlisted companies to bid for the New Support and Customer Service Organisation who are as follows:

• Avarto UK
• BT
• Capita Business Services Ltd
• CSC Computer Sciences UK
• HCL Axon (consortium)
• IBM UK Ltd
• Serco.

Now the Council says that staff will be protected when services are outsourced through TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment) so from my rather simplistic view the big change that will happen is within the management.

All the reports I have read recently all seem to point deficiencies in senior management. So my question to Barnet councillors is therefore why don't you simply employ one of these companies on a management contract. Keep the staff as council employees and outsource the senior management. This way you can offer a much shorter contract, three - five years instead of the proposed ten years and base the management fee directly on their performance both financial and quality. The benefit to the council is that there is no huge transfer of staff, if the outsource companies fail to deliver the benefits then you can get rid of them and replace them quickly because all the people who deliver the frontline services remain employees. The other big benefit of this strategy is that it gives councillors a lot more flexibility to change, amend and adapt budgets and services as circumstances change. From what I can see these outsourcing companies bring new management ideas and "intellectual capital" to use a buzz phrase. In which case why go through all the pain disruption and cost of transferring all the staff when its actually the management you are after. Perhaps it would help to save the fortune that is currently being spent on high priced consultants and lawyers dreaming up these exceptionally complex and largely untested solutions.

Councillors, outsourcing the senior management offers you the opportunity to bring about real change whilst reducing the risk should the outsourcer fail to deliver and retaining the organisation's "corporate memory" with all those skilled middle and lower level management and frontline staff who deliver services to the public day in and day out.

Church and Politics - A Lethal Cocktail

2011-09-07T10:50:00.003+01:00

As many readers have probably already seen on various other blogs there were some unpleasant moments at the Friern Barnet Show. A banner belonging to the Barnet Alliance For Public Services was confiscated and subsequently lost by the Vicar of All Saints Church and he was very rude to an elderly gentleman that I know calling him a "rogue".

Normally I am a very reasonable chap but along with the other Barnet Bloggers I believe the Vicar overstepped the mark significantly. To register our concern the Barnet Bloggers have put our concerns in writing, a copy of the letter is set out below:

The Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury
Lambeth Palace
London
SE1 7JU
Via email to contact@lambethpalace.org.uk

Your Grace,

We the undersigned are writing to you to draw your attention to the behaviour of the Reverend Adrian Benjamin, the vicar of All Saints Church in Barnet. As you are no doubt aware, the London Borough of Barnet, like many other London boroughs, is suffering huge cuts to public services. A campaign, Barnet Alliance for Public Services (BAPS), has been set up to defend these vital services and has been active in opposing many of the policies being implemented by Barnet Council. The campaign is broad based and not aligned with any political party.

As part of the campaign, BAPS intended to operate a stall at the Friern Barnet Summer Show, a local festival. Rev Benjamin is on the organising committee. Originally Rev Benjamin gave BAPS permission to have a stall, but withdrew that permission at the last minute on the grounds that he deemed the campaign to be political.

The campaigners from BAPS were offered space on another person's stall and they took part in the festival after all. When Rev Benjamin learned of this he brought some other men with him, dismantled the stall, confiscated the BAPS banner and asked the campaigners to leave the park. When later asked to return the banner, Rev Benjamin replied that it had been lost and could not be returned. Since Rev Benjamin was also extremely rude to the campaigners, an unseemly row has now developed. Rev Benjamin spoke to one of our local papers, the Hampstead and Highgate Express and made the following statement:

“If someone came in with explosives then it would have been me who was responsible for disposing of it and as far as I’m concerned it [the banner] is as predacious as a bomb.’’ He referred to Mr Silverman (one of the campaigners) as ‘‘a rogue, a rogue.”

(The original article can be viewed here: http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/hampstead_archdeacon_called_in_over_row_with_minister_1_1009722)

Mr Silverman is a 74-year-old pensioner, who has worked tirelessly as a community campaigner in Barnet for many years. There are several questions raised by Rev Benjamin's behaviour, which we feel we must set out.

a) Shouldn't a minister of the Church set a better example in his dealings with members of the public? Publicly denigrating people who are clearly involved in community activities in the press is surely not acceptable.

b) Comparing local campaigners to terrorists is highly insulting and irresponsible. We believe that this shows an appalling lack of judgement.

c) The failure to respect the property of others and the failure to exercise a duty of care with materials in his charge shows a callous disregard for other people. The BAPS campaign has extremely limited funds and the banner will cost a significant amount to replace.

As Rev Benjamin is a part of the festival organising committee, we believe that he has brought the Church of England and the wider Christian community into disrepute. As leader of the Church, we call upon you to intervene. We believe that, at the very least, Rev Benjamin owes Mr Silverman a public apology and that he should pay for a new banner for BAPS. As to whether Rev Benjamin is a suitable candidate for such an important role in the community and the Church of England, we will leave that to your wisdom and judgement.

Yours faithfully,

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

(Concerned Barnet residents)

Cashless Parking - Choices, What Choices?

2011-09-06T12:13:00.003+01:00

At last night's Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting there was a lengthy debate about the cashless parking system. The council has introduced a system where you can buy a parking ticket at shops that have the PayPoint service. Having watched the committee (thanks to the exceptionally community minded Barnet Bugle)it is clear that this is a sop and will be phased out as soon as possible. Indeed Cllr Coleman said the council would not promote the PayPoint service as they want people to use payment by phone only. The committee also confirmed that you will only get 3 minutes to buy your ticket at a PayPoint outlet before you risk getting a penalty notice.

Now some may say I am a cynic, but my guess is that Barnet will keep as quiet as possible about this PayPoint option and when no one uses it they will say they are vindicated in phasing it out. Having stood on a busy road with credit card in one hand, phone in the other, trying to listen to the instructions I can tell you it is not as simple as Cllr Coleman suggests. Also there are a great many people in Barnet who have English as a second language and who may find it much easier to pay at a shop.

Barnet Council talks a lot about improving choice so why didn't they consider prepaid scratch cards for parking which they use in Westminster. Westminster states on its website,

" While Pay by Phone parking offers customers a range of benefits, Westminster City Council is aware that there are motorists who are unable (because they don't have a debit/credit card and/or a mobile phone) to use the service and others who may feel more comfortable using an alternative payment method".

I guess the answer is because Barnet just doesn't care!

Pledgebank - Under Consideration?

2011-09-04T19:25:00.006+01:00

Back in January I submitted a pledge to the Barnet Council Pledgebank. My Pledge was as follows:

"I will pledge to give up 4 hours of my time every month to scrutinise and challenge all invoices over £10,000 to help the Council reduce unnecessary spending so long as five other people will make a similar time commitment to sit on the panel and that Barnet Council will genuinely participate in the process and listen to the advice and opinions given."

Now at the time I heard nothing back from Barnet Pledgebank; not posted, not rejected, not acknowledged. Having heard nothing I wrote to Barnet Pledgebank on 27 April asking what was happening with my pledge. Guess what? no reply, not even an acknowledgement.

On Friday Barnet Council published the response to a Freedom of Information request and guess what? My pledge was there at number 2 on the list. It hadn't been accepted as a pledge but equally it hadn't been rejected. It was Under Consideration. Well I have now written again to Barnet Pledgebank asking how much more time they need to consider my pledge. In my humble opinion, I think nine months is more than enough time to consider my pledge.

Setting aside the use of the site for Royal Wedding Street Parties (which would have happened anyway) and five Big Lunch street parties (which again would have probably gone ahead anyway)only ONE pledge has so far been fulfilled. To me it looks like the future of Barnet Pledgebank should be under consideration especially given the cost estimated in excess of £30,000.

I look forward to Barnet Council finally coming to a conclusion on my pledge and giving me the courtesy of a reply to my email!

Audit Committee - Stifling Public Scrutiny?

2011-08-31T15:35:00.006+01:00

Updated 8.00pm see below:

On 6 September the Audit Committee is due to meet. Amongst other things on the agenda is the External Auditors Annual Audit Report along with a formal document known as an ISA 260 report. It also deals with the annual governance statement. Public have the right to submit questions in advance to the committee but you can only ask about items on the agenda.
Barnet council published the meeting papers but carefully omitted these three key reports. So I know that the annual audit report will be discussed but I haven’t got a clue what is in it. Now here comes the catch. On checking with the Council this morning I was told that the deadline for submitting public questions to the Audit Committee is 10.00am tomorrow Thursday 1 September. At 3.54 pm on Wednesday 31 August these papers were published. So I have between now and 10.00am tomorrow morning to read 162 pages and to frame suitable questions.

Is this the way to encourage public participation? NO

Is this the way to stimulate openness and transparency? NO

This is nothing short of a disgrace.

Update: This evening I had a very courteous email from Barnet Council stating the deadline is in fact Friday at 10.00am, not Thursday as I had previously been told and that if I required additional time to review the papers to let them know. I will ensure that my questions to the committee are detailed and probing!

Brian Coleman abolishes pay and display parking in Barnet – bloggers call for Cabinet call-in and consultation

2011-08-12T10:07:00.000+01:00

Joint statement from Barnet Bloggers

It has been brought to our attention that Councillor Brian Coleman has signed off, using delegated powers, a decision abolishing pay and display parking in the London Borough of Barnet. We believe that this is much too important an issue to be left to just one councillor to use delegated powers, and we call for the cabinet to call the paper in for review by the full cabinet.
The relevant report states that call-in must be done by 15th August. http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/reports/reportdetail.asp?ReportID=10559The people of Barnet deserve better than to have such important decisions passed without debate. This change affects many residents, businesses and visitors to the Borough. We call on the cabinet to reject this change and follow the example of other Boroughs, where residents, businesses and other impacted organisations are properly consulted, before such changes are approved.

12 August 2011

Signed:
Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

MetPro urgent questions for Barnet councillors – survey results

2011-08-04T10:07:00.001+01:00

MetPro urgent questions for Barnet councillors – survey results

Five Barnet bloggers who exposed the scandal of Barnet’s Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies emailed nine questions to the 62 Barnet councillors on 13 July 2011. (The questions are printed at the end of this document.)
The questions sought to gauge councillors’ knowledge of the MetPro scandal, and their views on what the bloggers thought were the main issues raised by it. We did this in the wake of a damning internal audit report on the issue. Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, had paid tribute to the efforts of bloggers in uncovering the MetPro scandal. We thus felt the survey would be useful to Barnet residents, and told councillors we would publish the results.
We know that the vast majority of the councillors received and read the email. We chased up non-response with a second email on 21 July. Not all Labour councillors had replied by that date but we did not email them chasing a response, since Barnet Labour group had by then sent a group response. (Available at: http://alturl.com/dbyoy)
We have produced two tables to summarise the results of the survey:
Table 1. Response rates by party.
Table 2. Labour and Lib Dem councillors’ answers to the questions. Several councillors also made comments.

Results
Table 1. Response rates by party

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6126/6004696395_912e4f8608_b.jpg

Table 2. Labour and Lib Dem councillors’ answers to the questions

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6145/6005242616_dd32c466d5_b.jpg
The Conservative councillors did not respond to the survey. We therefore do not know what they think about the questions asked. A handful of Conservative councillors did reply to our initial email. The replies we received were:
Brian Gordon: I'm not wasting my time answering bloggers.
David Longstaff: Please remove me from your mailing list. As to your ‘urgent’ emails regarding procurement, which I found slightly manipulative, I’ll decide what’s urgent in my life, not you.
Hugh Rayner: I am not going to complete my questionnaire. I am a member of the Audit Committee and have (and will) express my views and opinions in that forum.
Table 2. Labour and Lib Dem councillors’ answers to the questions

Bloggers comment
The refusal to respond by Barnet’s Conservative group is extremely disappointing. The Coalition government has made a point of talking about empowering local government and about councillors’ accountability to residents. Barnet specifically has been mentioned as a borough that has not done this well lately, and this was a chance for the Conservative administration to start to make amends. They failed.
The response of the Labour and Lib Dem groups shows a better attitude to accountability. They have taken the trouble to tell residents what they think about these issues, and their replies to some of the questions show them agreeing with the reasonable expectation that councillors keep up-to-date with important issues (Q1), seek to affect events (Q7) and read important reports (Q8). It is disappointing that no one has answered that they have approached the Leader of the Council about the issue (Q4); neither, probably, is this only a result of the recent change of leadership. It would have been interesting to see whether Conservative councillors had spoken to the (Conservative) Leader, or whether this was just a matter of parties.

In comments, and in the Labour group response, opposition councillors referred to their wish to have more influence over the Council, and their sense of frustration that the scrutiny process was not working well. We share these frustrations and want an end to Leader and Cabinet government in Barnet which does not work well for local accountability.

The views of the Labour group and the responding Labour councillors and of the Lib Dem councillors on the substantive issues (Qs 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9) coincide with those of the bloggers.

Q2: In our view, the Council should have responded to the MetPro scandal with an independent inquiry that also included consideration of the security aspects of using MetPro. These were not addressed by the internal audit and show no signs of being addressed voluntarily.

Qs 3 and 9: Barnet Council’s Internal Audit needs more resources if it is to do its job properly; this is particularly important given the failings in Barnet Council’s procurement and contract monitoring, exposed by the MetPro internal audit and the Internal Audit Opinion on Barnet for 2010-11. We oppose the recent decision to cut staff from the procurement team, and to outsource procurement.

Q5: We believe that there are many more problems to be discovered in Barnet Council purchasing and we are submitting a number of FoI requests to uncover some of them, and continuing our own investigations.

Q6: We are opposed to the One Barnet Programme (OBP) and call on the Council to abandon it. We doubt that the advertised savings will materialise and we are alarmed at the cost of implementing the Programme and that Barnet Council is giving up control over vast, important areas of its services. But, in any case, we strongly believe that the Programme should be halted at least until Barnet Council’s outsourcing and procurement practices are improved substantially.

The questions
1. Are you aware of the issues concerning the MetPro security companies and Barnet Council?

2. Are you satisfied that the Council has managed the issue properly?

3. Do you agree with Lord Palmer that Barnet Council’s Internal Audit is under resourced?

4. Have you spoken to the Leader of the Council about your views on the MetPro scandal?

5. Besides the MetPro scandal, do you believe that there are other serious problems with purchasing in Barnet Council?

6. Do you think a halt should be called to the One Barnet Programme while investigations continue and basic procedures in procurement and contract monitoring are improved?

7. Do you think councillors have a responsibility to prevent such scandals arising in future?

8. Have you read the internal audit report into the MetPro scandal?

9. Are you happy with the decision to remove nine staff from Barnet Council’s procurement team?

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

4 August 2011

Mega-Relationship Outsourcing - Is it a flawed strategy?

2011-08-03T20:43:00.004+01:00

As I'm sure many of you know, Mr Reasonable has major concerns with Barnet Council's outsourcing strategy. Not opposed to the principle of outsourcing, my main issue is that the Council are putting all their eggs in one basket by letting very large contracts to single operators. Now my experience tells me that this is a risky strategy but it was interesting to read that some of the larger outsourcing contracts in the private sector have been going wrong and that it is causing companies to rethink the mega outsourcing contract strategy. The article appears in the Economist

Amongst other examples it gives are as follows: "There has been an uptick in legal disputes over outsourcing. EDS, an IT company, had to pay BSkyB, a media company, £318m ($469m) in damages. The two firms spent an estimated £70m on legal fees and were tied up in court for five months". In another case, "Boeing, America’s biggest aeroplane-maker, decided to follow the example of car firms and hire contractors to do most of the grunt work on its new 787 Dreamliner. The result was a nightmare. Some of the parts did not fit together. Some of the dozens of sub-contractors failed to deliver their components on time, despite having sub-contracted their work to sub-sub-contractors. Boeing had to take over some of the sub-contractors to prevent them from collapsing. If the Dreamliner starts rolling off the production line towards the end of this year, as Boeing promises, it will be billions over budget and three years behind schedule".

What the article goes on to say is that "Companies are rethinking outsourcing, rather than jettisoning it. They are dumping huge long-term deals in favour of smaller, less rigid ones. The annualised value of “mega-relationships” worth $100m or more a year fell by 62% this year compared with last. Companies are forming relationships with several outsourcers, rather than putting all their eggs in few baskets. They are signing shorter contracts, too. But still, they need to think harder about what is their core business, and what is peripheral".

Now this is in the Economist, not some radical left wing publication. It also makes tons of common sense. Barnet Council are proposing to enter into two large contracts, one for £250 million and one for £750 million which will last for between 10 and 15 years.So why on earth does Barnet Council insist on sticking to a strategy which the private sector is rejecting and has been proven unsuccessful.

Sadly I think the answer is that consultants who are pushing this process along have a vested interest in making it as complex as possible so that their contracts continue to generate large slug of fees. Also some officers and councillors will lose credibility if this policy is stopped. But rather a loss of face now than a loss of million of pounds when it all goes wrong.

Hokey Cokey at the Commercial Directorate

2011-08-01T15:24:00.010+01:00

On 1 July Barnet Council issued a delegated powers report (DPR1327) which had the subject heading "Redundancies within Commercial Services". As ever, the real details were hidden in the exempt report which us council taxpayers are forbidden from seeing. However, the general thrust of the public report was about a reorganisation of Commercial Services, how people would be chosen for redundancy, redundancy costs and so on. It also mentioned "Freezing external recruitment until redeployees have had the opportunity to apply for posts". OK. Now jump forward exactly one month and today I see a new Delegated Powers Report has been published, DPR 1383 seeking approval to appoint Penna Consulting at a cost of £14,500 to "assist with the recruitment to vacant senior posts within the Commercial Directorate" and quoting DPR 1327 as the approval for the restructuring of the Commercial Directorate.

I had to do a double take at this stage. The report on 1st July talked all about redundancy and the need to make savings and 1 month later they want to spend £14,500 on recruitment consultants to employ new staff. On top of this it is important to understand that the Commercial Directorate was only set up a year ago at an annual cost of £900,000 per annum. The report does say that Penna are offering them a good deal at this price. Well I'm not surprised they gave a discount given that (according to the supplier payments over £500) Barnet Council spent £306,566.21 with Penna Consulting last year.

So where are we? In, out,in, out. Sounds like the hokey cokey to me. Actually this is tragic because it says to me that every action taken in Barnet has become a knee jerk reaction, no long term view, no clear vision, no clear strategy, just firefighting and that worries the hell out of me!

IT at Barnet Council – What a disaster but who is to blame?

2011-07-31T09:55:00.005+01:00

Updated Monday 8.00am

Firstly, thanks to Rog T at the Barnet Eye for sharing the response he received to an FOI request. Rog has already blogged about RATS eating through the cables at the datacentre and the problems with security of personal data. I am sure that he and other Barnet Bloggers will be adding much more commentary on this lamentable situation. For what it is worth here is my perspective.

As I read through one of the documents, the LBB Information Systems “Action Plan”, I became increasingly cross as a number of problems that I have raised and be fobbed off by the Council, turn out to be just as bad, if not worse, than I had suggested.

So let’s start with something relatively simple – the price of tablet computers. Last year I complained to the Audit Committee about the outrageous cost of tablet computers (around £1,600 a pop with all the accessories). My complaint was that whilst there may be a few people who really need such expensive and complex machines the vast majority need simple straightforward machines that cost a fraction of the price. I was also contacted at the time by a number of desk based staff at the Council who were complaining that their desktop machines were in fact obsolete and made their job much harder to do as a result. The Audit Committee dismissed my concerns and the conclusion was it is easier to specify one top end machine for everyone than to look at different options. So what does the “Action Plan” have to say about this?
“Tablets are very expensive and not used to their maximum potential”.
“1/3 of the organisation has a problem with the desktop equipment which is impacting on the delivery of council services. This percentage will increase unless action is taken”.

What did concern me further was the statement that, “increased desktop volumes will lead to an overcharge in any outsourcing arrangement”, which suggests that One Barnet Outsourcing is still at the forefront of senior management thinking, ahead of the day to day running of the council.

So let’s move on to something which identified as part of my review of the annual accounts and have specifically raised with both the council and with the auditors Grant Thornton. This relates to the council’s IT infrastructure provider 2e2.

The “Action Plan” says: “ The lack of an Infrastructure Manager has left the service with no direction and poor management of the 2e2 managed services contract. 2e2 contract was put in place to transfer the operational management and risk of core infrastructure to a private provider. 2e2 no longer feel responsible for this and have passed all risks back to the council, on the basis that all equipment has reached End Of Life (EOL).

Now to set this in some context, according to the Supplier Payments over £500, Barnet Council paid 2e2, £1,077,913.62 in 2010/11. In particular, Barnet renewed it contract with 2e2 for last year at a cost of £400,000 on an invoice that did not appear to have been checked or authorised, a point I drew to the attention of Grant Thornton. Concerned that this apparently unchecked invoice had just been pushed through I asked who had authorised this contract renewal. A swift response from the council showed that this contract renewal was approved by the Cabinet Resources Committee in November 2009.
This contract was originally let in 2005 and has been extended twice. What I want to know is why on earth did the Cabinet Resources Committee approve this contract renewal given the issues set out above – or maybe it’s because they just rubber stamp whatever is put in front of them?

UPDATE: I have now seen the elements that were redacted on the original report and they make my blood boil! Under risks, the report states "2e2 will pass all risk back onto the council and not deliver to their contractual arrangements." There you have it. When the private sector don't like the contractual arrangement they shift responsibility back to the council. This illustrates the lie that has been peddled for the last two years by the Council over One Barnet that the private sector will take all the risks - no they won't! What is even more shocking is the proposed action to address this problem. We can now see that the redacted element states, "Improve the relationship with 2e2 and look into terminating the 2e2 contract early and bringing services and staff, under TUPE, in‐house, if necessary."

So there we have it, at least you can depend on the in house team to sort out problems when the private sector give up. I have read the One Barnet outsourcing business cases and basically they are a series of assumptions and aspiration but they have no benchmarks or comparison about contract performance. I have questioned repeatedly why the council has refused point blank to allow an in house bid (other than legal services of course because the private sector weren't interested). Well now we have some benchmarks - when the private sector no longer like the contract they shift the risk back to the council. That is bad enough with the datacentre but just imagine the problems when the £1 billion of One Barnet contracts start going wrong.

So now let’s move on to an old favourite of mine, SAP and the contract with Logica. I blogged about this back in April. I also raised the issue of the costs of Logica back in February. So what does the “Action Plan” have to say on this?

"Two Team Managers supporting SAP and other business applications, creating confusion in the business and the team around who is responsible for what. Team have been working on SAP optimisation, but neither of the managers are clear on who is the Business Owner for SAP, the sponsor for SAP Optimisation or the Project Manager. No structured project documentation exists for this programme.”

It goes on to highlight the risks that: “Lack of ownership of the Logica contract; confusion in roles leads to poor service delivery and an in efficient use of resources.”

On the SAP optimisation project it also says, “ No business owner for SAP means our council’s core business application has no strategic direction. This will lead to the need for expensive on‐going consultancy advise (sic) and a lack of benefits being realised from the application. Without an identified Programme\Project Manager there is a lack of understanding in the requirements from IT on the project, which subsequently can lead to project failure.”

On a system that has so far cost between £22 and £23 million I find this an utterly shocking and unacceptable situation.

Now we move on to the infamous One Barnet where the “Action Plan” identifies that, “No one in the IS team believe they are the lead for the service specification in IT and as such, nothing has started. None of the Managers have the breadth of knowledge across the whole of IT to develop a specification and the sheer volume of calls in the team questions whether any capacity exists.” This creates the risk that: “Specification will be poor and not reflect the needs of the council. Timeframes will be compromised”. So much for the constant reassurance that everyone knows what they are doing on One Barnet outsourcing.

Frankly, when I re-read this report I still could not believe the utter mismanagement of the entire IT/IS system. Added to this the “lack of formal project management in IS”, “there are no corporate KPIs set or reported”, “there is no IT strategy” leaves me totally without confidence in the way this council is run.

In Barnet Council we appear to have a clutch of highly paid senior manager apparently dependent on external consultants to sort out this mess yet no one takes the blame and huge amounts of money appear to be being wasted.

Perhaps if a lot less senior management time was spent ‘strategising’ and coming up with untested concepts like One Barnet and actually focused on running the council efficiently we would not have to make these punitive cuts that are destroying this borough.

Every single Conservative councillor should be utterly ashamed at the problems we see laid bare in this report. This is an organisation completely out of control and failing to get to grips with the basics of running the council. Councillors, it is your job to keep the management in check and you have utterly failed.

22 Minutes - What’s the point?

2011-07-28T21:53:00.004+01:00

Tonight I attended the Cabinet Resources Committee which was deciding, amongst other things, the sale of Church Farmhouse Museum, the sale of the old Hendon Football Club Ground, and the award of a contract for internal audit to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The public gallery had a good representation of people. Taking pride of place in the front row was the Barnet Bugle with his trusty tripod filming the meeting. (See his video of the meeting here) In addition Mr Mustard and Mrs Angry were scrutinising the proceedings with their usual rigor.

I had submitted four questions on the internal audit contract and another gentleman, Keith Martin, asked a question about Church Farmhouse Museum. Sadly, sports campaigner Gordon Kerr was denied the opportunity to speak about the sale of the old Hendon Football Club Ground.

Well I wish I could say there was a full and detailed discussion about the points. Sadly it was the usual rubber stamping job with the whole meeting over in 22 minutes. There were some really big issues here that impact the community but the council’s desire to engage with the people who they are suppose to represent seems minimal.

With so little debate and with such disregard for public participation I wonder why they bother holding a meeting at all. As the Barnet Press said in today’s editorial, “that no matter what, Barnet Council is going to do what it wants”.

Church Famhouse Museum up for Sale

2011-07-24T08:06:00.003+01:00

With indecent haste Barnet Council are seeking approval to flog off the Church Farmhouse Museum. In the papers for Thursday's Cabinet Resources Commitee the members are being asked to declare the Museum surplus to requirements and:

"That the disposal of the freehold interest be advertised on the open market to seek details of proposed schemes and initial bids."

How utterly tragic that this Grade II listed building with parts that date back to the 17th century should just be flogged off like a secondhand car. To add insult to injury the council has chosen probably one of the worst times in the economic cycle to realise the maximum value from this site. This looks like a desperately shortsighted strategy to raise a bit of cash.

An Audience with the Auditors - Part Two

2011-07-22T09:07:00.005+01:00

Last week I reported that I had had a meeting with Barnet Council's auditors, Grant Thornton. I also had the pleasure of Mrs Angry's company who has also reported on the visit. It was a very polite and well mannered meeting but Mrs Angry and I raised a number of very serious issues which we believe should be addressed by the auditors.

I subsequently wrote to Mr Hughes from Grant Thornton confirming the details of my concerns and he has had an opportunity to raise them with the council. I have set out in summary my concerns but I have not gone into too much detail as I hope several of the items are under detailed investigation.

As we know from the Internal Audit report, there are some serious issues with the procurement system. It is therefore a logical step to consider the workings of the payments system which was the focus of my investigations. I reviewed a sample of approximately 100 invoices and the key findings were as follows:

Most invoices do not contain a purchase order number, contrary to the Council Procedure Rules, Financial Administration 12.7 If this happened occasionally it would be understandable but, of the invoices I reviewed, over 80% did not have a purchase number on the original invoice suggesting this procedure is not being followed.

There is very little or no supporting information on over half the invoices I reviewed. This lack of detail prevents any independent person (such as an internal auditor) checking the validity of the invoice without going back to the originator of the purchase order. I showed Mr Hughes a number of examples where payments over £1 million had been passed without the sort on information that any reasonable person would have expected to be included.

Some invoices had not been stamped as checked and others had been stamped as checked but with no indication as to who had checked them or authorised the payment.

There were two invoices which gave me very serious cause for concern as the description given on the invoice could in no circumstances explain the enormity of the invoice. As Mr Mustard mentioned yesterday these invoices simply didn't pass the "Sniff Test". Now it may be that they are perfectly legitimate payments and it was simply that the invoice description that was wrong but these invoices had simply been stamped checked, one, the very next day after it had been submitted with no evidence of any questioning.

Taken separately all of these items could be explained away, but taken together they must raise sufficient concerns about the performance and operation of the payments department to warrant a more thorough investigation.

I remain concerned that the management focus on One Barnet had led to senior managers taking their eye off the ball on the day to day running of the council and this merely serves to reinforce that view. I look forward to reading the auditor's final report which will be submitted to the Audit committee on 6 September and hope that they have taken my comments seriously.

Misleading Supplier Payments list for 2010/11 - an Open Letter to Mr Travers

2011-07-18T13:58:00.002+01:00

Dear Mr Travers,

I write to you in your role as the Council’s Chief Financial Officer. As you may know, I take a great deal of interest in how the council spends council taxpayers’ money. As part of my scrutiny of the annual audit process I have made a number of requests for further clarification based on the Supplier Payments list posted on the Council’s website. In the past I have found a number of errors with this list but at least I believed that they were drawn from a list of supplier payments (which is only reasonable to do as they are called Supplier Payments).

As part of my review I found a number of duplicate entries on the list which suggested that payments had been made twice and which significantly alarmed me. However, I now find out that the Supplier Payments list for 2010-11 posted on the council’s website is based on a goods receipting system and not on actual payments. Not all credits were shown on this system and as a result the figures shown are unreliable. For example there are two payments for £258,153.96 listed in the Supplier Payments for August 2010 when only one payment has actually been made according to the SAP system.

I have been told that for the financial year 2011/12 all credits are being shown as well, so this should give a more accurate picture. In addition, the council is working with Logica to get a direct automated report from the SAP system (£23 million spent to date) which will show payments on a cash basis rather than an accruals basis.

I hope you understand that I find this a rather unsatisfactory situation. It is now a year since supplier payments have been listed on the website yet at no time has there been a clear statement that this data was not taken from actual payments and that is may not be reliable. It is also surprising that in that year, a suitable report programme from the SAP system has not yet been finalised.

The supplier payments list has serious significance; not only is it meant to provide transparency for council tax payers but it is picked up by a number of other bodies as a way of assessing how much is being spent with a specific supplier. I am now at a loss as to what to believe about the supplier payments list for last year as it has lost all creditability.

I would reiterate my comments made at the recent Audit Committee, that this is yet more evidence that the shift management emphasis to delivering the One Barnet Outsourcing Programme seems to have taken away the focus of getting the day to day operation of the council running properly.

Yours sincerely

John Dix

£300,000 wasted in Barnet

2011-07-15T12:25:00.004+01:00

Last year plans for the redevelopment of Brunswick Park Hub were hastily put forward. They were rather glossy plans and even included a new swimming pool to replace the ageing and “not fit for purpose” Church Farm Pool. However, one key issue was that they wanted to build part of the scheme on Metropolitan Open Land. With objections from the Mayor of London and the short timescale for gaining permission led to the situation where the Council missed the funding window and the scheme was dropped. The redoubtable Barnet Bugle has investigated this at some length and has unearthed a great deal of information through Freedom of Information requests.

One thing I was still unclear about was how much this has cost Barnet Council taxpayers. I still don’t know the full extent of the costs but as part of my audit investigation I have unearthed a bill from Elevate Partnership for £299,269 who worked on the design of the scheme. So much money for absolutely no return.

As the Barnet Bugle has quite rightly reminded me, the real tragedy here is that the old facilities were closed to make way for the new scheme, and the local community is now worse off than they were before.

An audience with the Auditors

2011-07-13T23:17:00.002+01:00

For the past couple of weeks I have been going through Barnet council accounts undertaking some sampling of invoices and asking follow up questions. Today was my chance to meet and discuss my concerns with the auditors and I was accompanied by Mrs Angry who also had a number of detailed questions. The meeting was, I believe, rational,constructive and well supported by evidence. At this stage I am not going to discuss the details of the meeting further as I am awaiting the response from Mr Hughes of Grant Thornton.

All I will say at this stage is that I think Mrs Angry and I gave him some serious food for thought.

I have invested a great deal of time freely and with no other objective than to make sure that every ratepayer in Barnet is getting value for money. I do however sometimes wish that councillors (who receive a rather generous allowance) would spend less time playing rather silly political point scoring games and focus a bit more on the day to day way in which the council is run.

Interestingly, back in January when the Pledgebank was launched I did offer my half a day of time time each month, free of charge to review council invoices in order to provide an independent perspective and challenge on spending, an offer which Barnet council chose to ignore even when I followed it up some months later. So much for big society!

Open Letter to Barnet Councillors

2011-07-13T10:07:00.002+01:00

Dear Barnet Councillor,

Many Barnet residents have been disturbed by recent revelations that Barnet Council paid the MetPro security companies more than £1.4 million without making checks on the status of the company, or even having a contract.

The authors of the Barnet blogs, recently praised by Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, for their work uncovering this scandal, are writing to you now to ask you to complete the survey below.

The results will be posted on our blogs to allow voters to see how seriously our councillors are taking their responsibilities. We will post the results ward by ward; we will also note non-response.

As councillors are accountable to the electorate, we think it is right and proper that you engage with the electorate and keep them informed of your views and opinions. This survey will help you to do that on a matter of keen public interest.

Questions:

1. Are you aware of the issues concerning the MetPro security companies and Barnet Council? Yes / No

2. Are you satisfied that the Council has managed the issue properly?
Yes / No / Neither / Don’t know

3. Do you agree with the comments of Lord Palmer, chair of the Audit Committee, that Barnet Council’s Internal Audit is under resourced? Yes / No / Don’t know / No opinion

4. Have you personally spoken to the Leader of the Council about your views on the MetPro scandal? Yes / No / I am the Leader of the Council

5. Besides the MetPro scandal, do you believe that there are other serious problems with purchasing in Barnet Council? Yes / No / Don't know

6. Do you think a halt should be called to the One Barnet Programme while investigations continue and basic procedures in procurement and contract monitoring are improved?
Yes / No / Don’t know / No opinion

7. Do you believe that as a councillor you have a responsibility to prevent such scandals arising in future? Yes / No / Don’t know / No opinion

8. Have you read the internal audit report into the MetPro scandal? Yes / No

9. Are you happy with the decision to remove nine staff from Barnet Council’s procurement team, as proposed by Craig Cooper at the General Functions Committee on 30 June 2011? Yes / No / Don’t know / No opinion

Thank you for your time. We look forward to receiving your answers to these questions. Of course, we would be happy to hear any comments you would like to make on the matters raised.

Yours faithfully,

Derek Dishman, John Dix, Vicki Morris, Theresa Musgrove and Roger Tichborne

More One Barnet Costs - when will they start saving money?

2011-07-07T07:42:00.000+01:00

The costs of the One Barnet programme continue to rise. Not satisfied with a huge raft of consultants, Barnet is now recruiting a “Service Lead for New Support and Customer Services Organisation”. This person will help with the negotiation of the contract and will be employed on a fixed term contract for a maximum of two years at a cost to Barnet ratepayers of £103,198 - £112,059 per annum. Just last week the council approved the recruitment of two more One Barnet project assistants at a cost of £150,000.

Someone really needs to get a grip on the amount of money being spent on the One Barnet programme. Highly paid staff One Barnet staff; consultants costing millions. Having spent several hours on Monday at North London Business Park ploughing through supplier invoices I am utterly shocked at just how much money is being paid out on various One Barnet initiatives. This is a classic “Emperor’s New Clothes” syndrome. For goodness sake Barnet councillors, wake up and realise One Barnet is a massive money pit and as yet there is no EVIDENCE that is will actually generate any savings whatsoever.

Yet another consultant running Barnet Council

2011-06-30T16:35:00.008+01:00

It has puzzled me for some time that Barnet Council's Head of HR is nether mentioned in the list of senior officers salaries nor mentioned in the supplier payments. Following the submission of a Freedom of Information request I can reveal that Jacquie McGeachie HR Consulting Limited was paid £140,803.28 in 2010/11.

I think it would be terribly helpful if all the senior officers who are paid as consultants were listed in the official list of senior officers salary that are included in the councils annual accounts. This is somethinmg I shall be taking uo with the Auditors, Grant Thornton when I meet them in a couple of weeks.

The tragic death that should never have happened

2011-06-28T08:51:00.003+01:00

A concerned Barnet resident has drawn my attention to the exceptionally sad case of Jesse Moores. He was a young man with learning disabilities, autism and Tourettes Sydrome, living at The Chine, a residential home run by Robinia Care, who died of a tragic and preventable accident in 2005.

I would urge everyone to read the Serious Case Review which has just been published and to think about why it happened and the risks of it happening again.

If nothing else it illustrates that there are exceptionally vulnerable people who live in our community and who need to the best possible care to safeguard their lives. When the government and local authorities talk about cuts, it is often the most vulnerable people who suffer. We must ensure that political dogma and the desire for efficiency savings never impact on those whose lives depend on receiving the best possible care.

Guest Blog - A new show hits town. A review by a troubled democrat

2011-06-25T22:30:00.002+01:00

This guest post is from a very repected member of the community detailing the Chipping Barnet Residents Forum on Thursday Evening.

Thursday 23rd June 2011 saw the first production of a new show which its sponsors hope will be the first of a very short run. Seeing as how the performance started at 6.01pm and finished at 6.52pm their wishes may come to fruition.
Following the long running Chipping Barnet Resident Forum produced by Easy Council the challenge was taken up by One Barnet under new management. The recently appointed director will be pleased to note that bringing the time forward to 6.00pm had the desired effect of attracting a new audience. From the audience of 30 over 75% had not been to a forum before. There were two councillors (David Longstaff and Pauline Coakley Webb) and two of Cllr Cornelius’s” usual suspects one of whom stomped out at the interval because he did not understand the script, modern language nor the sublimable message that was not so subtly being sent out by the Key Characters. A reporter was trying to take down the message from the stage but appeared to be as confused as the rest of the audience. She was assisted after the meeting by most of the attendees who gave her their version of events

Although Cllr Langstaff is an actor he was restricted to a walk on part at the end and the Lead was taken by Cllr Barry Evangeli who many will remember as the person who advertised magnum ice cream and said they were priced so that even a councillor could afford them from their increased allowances. He was assisted by a traffic engineer and clerk. There were no Senior Actors and the police failed to arrive. The performance had obviously been well rehearsed and the three spoke in a low monotone that was largely inaudible in the large hall at Coppetts Wood School (carefully selected as a venue as it is poorly served by buses and at the centre of a gridlock on the North Circular Road / Colney Hatch Lane junction especially at 6.00pm – rush hour).

The show open with a show stopping performance from the compere who r e a d o u t v e r y c a r e f u l l y an introduction setting out the constitution of the Area Forums under part V of the LGA 1972 and numerous other Acts. This set the scene – boring - very boring – yawn.
There then followed the new Arrangements and Procedures read again v e r y s l o w l y clearly setting out that the public could raise anything they wanted to except anything they had ever wanted to talk about in the past. Only appropriate items notified in advance would be considered. Only local street based items would be considered. Policy matters would not be discussed. Once it had been raised and accepted they could NOT raise it again for six months. The Forum could decide to take any one of six actions at the meeting. It was made clear the only action that was likely was Action One. “To do Nothing.”.

The performance had 9 acts the first 3 of which were petitions. Action Noted move on to act 4. The audience had obviously failed to comprehend the prologues so started to seek clarification but were told the compere was running the show not them. The six people from Barnes Court were not happy with the traffic engineers comments and insisted that a site meeting be held. That was not in the script but further audience participation ensured that a site visit by the engineer but not Councillors will take place.

That gave encouragement to the 4 people (initially) who presented their petition to save Friern Barnet library and it appeared that it might only get as far as the rubbish bin that night. Interventions from Cllr Coakley Webb led to animated discussions by the performers and the script was rewritten. It will go back to the Town Hall and then go in the bin. The petitioners wanted to speak but were told it was a policy matter so could not be discussed. The audience took a vote and decided it was street based local issue and was eligible under the rules. The petitioner spoke loudly and the compere softly so we heard the loudest voice.
The public participant for act 4 was not present so the matter was ignored.
Act 5 was mainly a solo performance by a regular attendee at these shows Mr Ashwood. He received a low key and even lower volume response which led to a performance of the ritual dance of the ouslam bird. They went round in ever decreasing circles until just as they were about to disappear up a very dark hole Mr Ashwood escaped through the door expressing concern at the undemocratic nature of the proceedings and competence of the actors ( this is a précis of the original)
At least eight people wanted to speak to Act 6 the traffic rat run between Colney Hatch lane and Friern Barnet Road. The compere said that it was on the following performance the Environment subcommittee where they could come and listen to the debate. Speaker” We are not happy with the officer’s report. There are a number of errors and omissions that must be taken in to account. Can we raise them at the subcommittee?
On no says actor two. You can only table questions in writing three days before the committee and you didn’t so you can’t. So there!!

But you told us the item was on the Forum agenda, you didn’t say it was also on the subcommittee. Long silence. Helpful member of audience shouts out “let them ask their questions now, write them down and then refer them to the subcommittee afterwards” long silence, scriptwriter’s conference followed by “No we will not take the questions now. It will be up to the chair of the subcommittee to decide if he will take the questions (Note chair of subcommittee is Cllr Longstaff who was sitting in the audience).

Right if we can’t ask our questions we wish to make some additional points about increased traffic including future refuse lorry movements.
Compere’s ears prick up “What lorries? Where are they going? Answer: Barnet refuse lorries going to Pinkham Way.

Explosion from stage. Voice raised 1.5 decibels at least Pinkham Way is planning. You are not allowed to raise planning matters. You have an opportunity at the planning committee so IT WILL NOT BE DISCUSSED TONIGHT.

Voice from audience “three people for 3 minutes is not consultation nor is it democracy”

Explosion from audience followed by mass audience participation including about 6 people from Pinkham Way although all joined in. Allegations of dictatorship, Agenda rigging, failure to understand Localism, partnership or democracy were met with a response from the stage in a low tone with an air of uncertainty. It appears that pages from Alice in Wonderland had got mixed up with the official script. At one stage we were told that the council knew what it was doing. This answer was probably given in error as the audience all knew what the play was all about and didn’t like it. All of a sudden there were thirty critics all shouting from the same script albeit not the actor’s version. (Please remember that 75% of them had never been to a show before).

Suggestions that the performance had much in common with a Kafka play went over the head of the panel as did references to 1984 ( They didn’t do history at school!!)
There then followed three questions about the Councils working relationship with the police. We were told about the Partnership, working together, Multi agency task force involving the Chief Executive and Borough Commander and at all stages below. We heard how well they talked together but there was a lack of examples of success.
Question “how often does the multi agency meet?” There then followed a quiet dissertation on pulling teeth from hens. Well that is what it sounded like the volume was so low. Eventually Cllr Longstaff was able to tell us it meets quarterly.
Question “and what happens in between”
Compere you have had your question answered we are moving on. The silences and non answers were most revealing.

Compere. We have covered the 9 questions so that is all for tonight Good Night. He picked up his papers and stood up.

Point of order from the floor “Will there be any notes of tonight session and when will they be available.” Long discussion on stage.

There will be notes and they will go on the web site one week before the next meeting.

Question “where are the notes of the January meeting which you must recall because there were so many angry people there. Even longer discussion on stage. This was not in the script.

Answer from Clerk “Tonight was the first of the new Forums so it was not appropriate to publish notes of a Forum that no longer existed”.

Shouts of rubbish from the floor. Could it be that Barnet made most of the previous clerks redundant in March?

The show having started at 6.01 it ended at 6.52pm including introduction and prologue and numerous intervals while the actors checked their scripts or worked out an improvisation.

It was not clear what the authors had in mind; It could have been a comedy, It certainly bordered on farce. There were moments of high drama although the audience was too restrained (just) to opt for murder. The outcome was a tragedy. It was tragic to see democracy killed off so brutally without even any finesse.

Would I recommend the show to a friend? Well no not if I wanted to keep their friendship. They would take it as an insult to their intelligence and would be horrified at the way the actors treated the audience.

It is a shame that George Orwell wrote his book based on his vision of 1984 but not even he could have foreseen what Barnet would be like in 2011.
Those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad. This play leaves the audience in no doubt as the future of Barnet. Now that is a tragedy

Shining a light on common sense – at last!

2011-06-25T16:20:00.003+01:00

I have been complaining about the street light replacement contract for the last 18 months since Barnet Lighting Services notified me that they were going to dig up three perfectly good lighting columns and replace them with three brand new columns. I took the time to go out and photograph the base of the columns and showed them to my local councillors – look no corrosion, the lights work so why go to all that expense when it is not needed. “Ah”, I was told, “it is a regulation and as it is a PFI contract you don’t need to worry about it”. Not surprisingly I was rather irritated by that response especially as in 2010/11 Barnet Council paid Barnet Lighting Services £5,295,243.80 plus a further £30,828.68 to David Webster Limited. I also raised it on the Barnet Councils Ideas website asking why we were replacing perfectly good street lamps at a time that budgets were being cut.
So what, you may say. Well in a new Delegated Powers Report it looks like someone has seen sense at last. They are going to stop replacing streetlights and instead divert the capital into “installing new technology to enable the implementation of energy saving measures”. Given that Barnet Council spend around £1 million a year in electricity costs for street lights anything which can help to reduce that cost should be welcomed.

My only complaint is why they didn’t listen to what local residents were saying and do it sooner .

It’s Official – Barnet Bloggers and Tweeters are a “Valuable Asset”

2011-06-24T11:21:00.004+01:00

Reading through the State of the Borough Report which can be read in full here, one thing caught my eye. On page 8 of the report it states:

“Participation and localism
Barnet residents feel less involved in Council decision-making than residents of other London boroughs (39 per cent versus 50 per cent) and 60 per cent of citizens believe that the Council does not listen to their concerns. However, a greater proportion of residents are satisfied with opportunities for participation than in previous years (50 per cent versus 29 per cent in 2008-09).

The local blogging community has expanded during 2010-11. In the last six months, almost 1,000 stories about Barnet have been posted on local blogs, and roughly 300 tweets make reference to Barnet (the Council, the place or other areas within the borough) every day.

An active and involved citizenry should be regarded as a valuable asset. The challenge for the Council and its partners is how to engage productively with residents to develop a balanced dialogue using new channels".

So there you have it; a clear admission that an active and involved citizenry is valuable to the community, and a challenge to engage more productively with us. What makes this statement all the more ironic is the report from Barnet’s most eloquent blogger, Mrs Angry about the shenanigans at last night’s Finchley & Golders Green Residents Forum where the views of “active and involved citizenry” in attendance were completely overruled!

I think there is something very strange going on at the Council. It’s an almost schizophrenic approach to the residents. Some officers recognise the value that bloggers bring and are helpful and constructive; others treat us with nothing but contempt. Likewise for members.

I would urge the more recalcitrant officers and members to embrace this view that there should be a more balanced dialogue but to do this the council needs to start building a relationship of trust. The change in format of the residents forum is just one example of where the trust is currently sadly missing in the relationship between citizens and the council. If the Council are serious about engagement then a sign of good faith would be to sweep aside the draconian and undemocratic changes made to the residents forums and to engage with local groups as to how the forums could be made much more effective.

PS, as a footnote the statement that “a greater proportion of residents are satisfied with opportunities for participation than in previous years” should be treated with a little caution given the survey methodology has changed fundamentally and in the full version of the Residents Perception Survey Report it comes with a big health warning stating, “Caution should be applied when making direct comparisons to the former Place Survey due to the different methodology”.

One Barnet - That'll be another £150k please

2011-06-23T21:20:00.004+01:00

The One Barnet juggernaut ploughs on consuming resources along the way. I read with interest in the latest Delegated Powers Report DPR 1345 that the One Barnet programmmes needs some more people to help keep it on track. Two Assistant Project Managers for a fixed term contract of 2 years, each person earning between £35,418 - £38,069 per annum plus on costs. Now given that Barnet initiated the tendering process for a mass outsourcing contract last week with a value of between £600 million and £750 million then I suppose another £150k seems like a drop in the ocean. However, given the Council has just been through a round of front line redundancies it does seem somewhat insensitive.It also worries me that One Barnet spending continues to rise which seems strange for a strategy that is suppose to save money.

Is Barnet Listening to its Residents?

2011-06-23T10:51:00.006+01:00

Yesterday Barnet released details of their long awaited Residents’ Perception Survey. This survey was last carried out in 2007/08 and replaces a major national postal survey (The Place Survey) which was scrapped by Grant Shapps last year.

The survey was carried out using telephone interviews in February and March this year and covered a representative sample of 2000 Barnet residents. The full details of the survey can be read here but I have pulled out a few elements which I found most interesting.

•40% of residents say that Barnet listens to the concerns of local residents. This represents a 12% drop since the last survey in 07/08 and 15% below the London average of 55%. I think it is rather bad timing that tonight the new "reformatted" residents' forums start, with an earlier start time making it much more difficult for working people to attend and with a much more rigid structure of what can be asked including no questions on the night.

•38% of residents agree that the council involves residents in local decisions, 12% below the London average. The results also noted that 17% of Barnet residents say they don’t know.

•Only 13% of residents believe that activities for children are excellent or good whereas 24% believe they are poor or extremely poor and 48% who simply don’t know.

•34% of residents believe council owned leisure facilities are good or excellent, 11% lower than the London average.

•A high proportion of residents rate the repair of roads, parking and quality of pavements as poor or extremely poor.

•Only 33% of residents agree that the council allocates its budget fairly across services. However 42% of residents say they ‘don’t know’.

•Only 36% believe that the government and the council are right to reduce spending, even if it means reductions in services and/or increases in charges and taxes.

•74% are worried that cuts in council budgets will affect me or my family significantly.

•43% of residents are satisfied with the opportunities for participation in local decision-making provided by the council while 11% ‘don’t know’.

•52% of residents would like to be more involved in the decisions that affect their local area. 21% of residents say it depends on the issue.

Some of the other results include the following:

•85.5% of residents are satisfied with their local area as a place to live – slightly down on the 07/08 survey.

•The top five issues which most worry local residents are:
- Condition of roads and pavements 31% - a new criterion for this survey.
- Crime 29% – down by 11% compared to the 07/08 survey and 9% lower than the London average.
- Rising prices/interest rates 27% – up 16% compared to 07/08 and 10% higher than the London average.
- Lack of jobs 24% – up 16% compared to 07/08 and 1% higher than the London average.
- Level of Council Tax 23% - down 13% compared to 07/08 and the same as the London average.

•89% of residents agree that people from different backgrounds get on well together in Barnet up 6% compared to 07/08.

•74% of residents feel strongly that they belong to their local neighbourhood compared to 65% of residents who feel strongly that they belong to the London Borough of Barnet.

•47 % of residents tend to or definitely agree that they can influence decisions that affect their local area – from my own perspective, the local fight by the community in New Barnet against inappropriate supermarket development shows that when the community speak and works together they can influence decisions that affect our local area.

•Surprisingly 58% believe that local people could work together to deliver some services that are currently provided by the Council. I am not sure people understand the full consequences of what this means but it support the statistics that people have a strong sense of belonging to their community.

•62 % of residents agree the council keeps residents informed about what they are doing, 9% below the London average.

I sincerely hope that Barnet read the results, listen to what local residents are saying and involve us much more in influencing the place where we live. The other thing that jumps out at me from this survey is the high level of “don’t knows”. I hope that Barnet Council act on this positively and develop a much stronger communication strategy to tell the residents of Barnet what is actually going on.

As a footnote, I would also note that it is disappointing that the actual questionnaire has not been published as an appendix to the survey which makes it much more difficult to understand how the questions were asked and to provide some context for the answers. I also hope that Barnet publish the raw dat very quickly so that we can examine the results in more detail.

Barnet residents respond to Barnet Council’s MetPro audit report

2011-06-21T10:07:00.003+01:00

On Thursday 16 June 2011 the Audit Committee of the London Borough of Barnet met to discuss the internal audit report into the MetPro scandal.

The report was commissioned as a result of pressure from Barnet residents, who alerted the Council to problems with the MetPro companies that the Council’s own procedures had completely failed to identify.

While the audit committee, under the chairmanship of Lord Monroe Palmer, did an excellent job of identifying many serious problems with this vendor account, many issues which residents were concerned about were deemed out of scope of this investigation. Furthermore, the committee has no powers to impose any remedy, and can only aspire to “inspire the executive to do better” (to quote Maryellen Salter, Assistant Director - Audit).

In addition to the serious concerns about Barnet Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies, there are wider implications of this affair for the Council as a whole. The problems which remain to be addressed are:

A) Legal issues. The Council’s Internal Auditor cannot exclude the possibility that fraud may have taken place. The Director of Corporate Governance Jeff Lustig indicated that since there was no evidence of fraud, there was no need to investigate. This is a highly unsatisfactory response and appears to be in breach of the council's own policies and procedures.

The Council’s financial regulations are clear on this point:
“Any suspected irregularity involving any asset, or the exercise of any function, of the Council must be reported by the appropriate Chief Officer to the Chief Internal Auditor to inform the overall assurance that can be delivered and to the Corporate Anti Fraud Team (CAFT) Manager for investigation.”

B) Contract procurement and monitoring. Barnet Council are pushing forward with the One Barnet Programme, a major outsourcing scheme, even though the audit team has identified serious and fundamental flaws in the Council’s contract procurement and monitoring processes.

The audit report into MetPro confirmed that there had been a breach of EU procurement laws which ensure fairness and anti-discrimination as well as best value. The internal audit report is silent on compliance with procurement law; however, given that only the largest 180 contracts out of 9,700 vendors are audited, it is likely that there are other legal breaches. In view of the shocking findings of the audit report and the recognition by the Audit Committee that the focus on change and the One Barnet Programme had been a contributory factor in these failures, we believe that all but essential contract renewals should be put on hold until an effective system of contract procurement and monitoring has been put in place and tested.

The multiple failings detailed in the MetPro report and in the Internal Audit Annual Opinion must be addressed, and Council staff working in procurement fully trained in the Council’s own Contract Procedure Rules before the Council can even consider embarking on an expansion of outsourcing.

The chair of the Audit Committee said that the audit department is unable to perform its duties owing to lack of resources. Barnet Council’s audit team should be strengthened and ways found to ensure that its recommendations are carried out.

C) Project management. In 2006, Barnet Council launched a SAP system to manage procurement, at an initial estimated cost of £8 million. This was done to modernise the control of payments and purchasing.

The cost of this project has spiralled to £25 million, more than three times the original estimate. Not only has this system failed to prevent the problems demonstrated by the MetPro report, it seems that the promised benefits of automation have not materialised. MetPro invoices have had handwritten numbers and notes on them. Payments have been made to non authorised accounts, and it seems that no proper audit trail exists. How can a system that cost £25 million have failed to address all of these issues?

The SAP fiasco shows that Barnet Council cannot manage large projects, cannot control costs and cannot implement outsourcing projects that work. They should not be considering One Barnet outsourcing until they fix the problems with their project management that the MetPro scandal has highlighted.

D) Safeguarding. The issues of safeguarding raised by MetPro have not been addressed. In light of the contact with vulnerable adults and children at Barbara Langstone House by MetPro employees who were neither SIA licensed nor CRB checked, Barnet Council should investigate in conjunction with the police whether there was the potential for or actual incidents of abuse, not only in relation to MetPro, but also in relation to any other security firms engaged by the Council. In addition, Barnet Council should keep central registers of all CRB, SIA and other required checks for all people working with the Council. This issue should be addressed immediately.

Barnet Council should work with residents who were illegally filmed by MetPro at the Council meeting on 1 March to address any data protection issues that arose from that episode, and possible other actions of this nature, instead of, as it has done up until now, trying to wash its hands of all responsibility.

E) VAT and invoicing. The Council do not have procedures in place to ensure that invoices meet legal requirements. The example on the Council’s own website is deficient. It is clear that staff are not properly trained in dealing with payments. A training programme must be instituted as a matter of urgency, to ensure compliance.

F) Culture. It is of great concern that the Audit Committee has made similar criticisms in the past, yet there has been a further deterioration. This should be a disciplinary matter for senior management, since it is accepted by the CEO, Nick Walkley, that this is a widespread problem resulting from lack of proper operational management. It is clear that attempts to inspire an audit culture have failed.

There is a culture of complacency at the top of Barnet Council. Senior officers know that they will not be held to account for any failings that take place under them, and that they can expect huge payoffs if problems are detected. Senior posts are filled by contractors on short contracts, with no vested interest in the future of the Council. No effort is made to replace these interim appointments with permanent staff. Until this culture of complacency is eradicated, nothing will improve. Senior staff should not be contractors on temporary contracts with no vested interest in improving the procurement culture, since it is clear that a root and branch review is likely to uncover more issues which will require addressing.

As concerned residents, we call for all of the issues above to be dealt with immediately. We want an action plan to be drawn up, with short timescales, and published for residents’ information. Without this, the residents can have no confidence in Barnet Council, its executive or its leadership

Signed:

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Adam Langleben
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

Barnet's £¾ Billion Gamble

2011-06-17T14:40:00.004+01:00

Last night we heard about the parlous state of the Council's procurement and contract monitoring systems. This wasn't just in relation to MetPro, but indicated a much more widespread problem throughout the council. Last night there was great debate about the role of One Barnet and the risk that it has resulted in senior officers taking their eye off the ball in the day to day running of the Council. Imagine my surprise then that today Barnet has published the tender notice for the New Support and Customer Services Organisation. This is a huge tender and will last 10 years with an option to extend for a further 5 years.

The services in scope are as follows:

o Procurement
o Customer Services
o Estates (Asset Management, Building Services, Property Services)
o Finance
o Human Resources
o Information Systems
o Revenue and Benefits

The estimated value of the tender is between £600 million and £750 million. No, I haven't got the figures wrong. The value is up to £¾ billion. Having been at the audit committee last night and heard the mess that the council's procurement and contract monitoring is in, I can only see the launch of this tender process as utter and complete madness.

I urge every citizen of Barnet to question their councillor and ask them how on earth they can take a £¾ billion gamble.

Last Night at the Mushroom Factory

2011-06-17T09:11:00.003+01:00

Last night I attended the audit committee dealing with the MetPro report and the Annual Audit Opinion. Now most of the Council meetings I attend seem to cover up and dismiss criticism and try and obstruct questions from the public. Last night it seemed there was a shift in mood. The reports were, without a doubt, utterly shocking but for once officer and councillors seemed to be in agreement. Yes it is bloody awful (I paraphrase here). The scale of deficiencies in the council’s procurement and contract management are staggering and if this had been discovered in a private sector company heads would have rolled. A number of councillors seemed shocked at the scale of the problems. Recognition should go to Lord Palmer as chairman and Councillors Rayner, Schama, Cooke and Brodkin for their tough questioning along with the two independent committee members Richard Harbord and Debra Lewis. The chief executive and the chief financial officer seemed contrite, yes it’s bad and we must change. Yes, but why the hell did you let it happen in the first place. I don’t feel they really got to the heart of the issue and I’m not sure the problem will be resolved but at least they recognise the problem exists.

However during the meeting there was then movement from the back of the room and up pops Cllr Dan Thomas. Sadly I think he must be living in a parallel universe. It was as if the report had never been written. Yes we are going to plough on with One Barnet. This report is just what we need. Our consultants, Agilisys will sort it all out. Now this is where the difference exists. Most of the people on the audit committee have got life experience and a few (or a lot) of grey hairs. Some of them have run businesses. They get it. They understand that if your procurement and contract management systems are fundamentally failing, then the last thing you do is embark on a huge outsourcing project. But not Cllr Thomas. This is where political dogma takes over from common sense and frankly that it terrifying.

Last night I accused the Audit Committee of suffering from Mushroom Syndrome, kept in the dark and fed horse manure. I hope they get a bit tougher and stop accepting everything they are fed from the cabinet and the senior officers and start asserting their positions as the guardians of the council’s finances.

Set out below is the speech I gave to the audit committee last night.

“I have read this report several times now and I still find its contents shocking. Barnet Council is a billion pound business yet some of the most basic administrative procedures are missing and frankly that is a disgrace. Coupled with the findings in the Annual Audit opinion that provides only limited assurance on the Council’s overall internal control environment, this report into MetPro is indicative of a much more serious and deep-seated problem in the way this council is run.

I don’t want to go through the specific details of the report which I am sure you have all scrutinised in great detail. What I do want to address is what is not in this report, the underlying causes of this problem and how the council intends to move forward.

Starting with what is not in this report, I am disappointed that it has not addressed the very serious issues of data protection and safeguarding and why the council destroyed illegally recorded film taken by MetPro. Frankly I think it was short sighted of whoever drew up the terms of reference to exclude these issues from this audit. These issues will not go away and it will continue to be a running sore in the side of Barnet Council. I urge the committee to recommend that these very serious issues are investigated and addressed as quickly as possible.

Something else which is missing from this report is who is to blame. No one seems to have been held accountable and without that how can the problem be resolved. The Council employs an extensive and highly paid senior management team yet not one of them appears to have taken responsibility for this mess. The constitution states that “Substantial breaches of Financial Regulations shall be reported to the Deputy Chief Executive by the relevant Corporate Director and may be treated as disciplinary offences”. So come on then, who is going to be disciplined?

I also disappointed that this report does not acknowledge who brought about this investigation. It was the concerned residents and bloggers of Barnet who investigated this situation and who demanded this inquiry and it would have been nice to see that acknowledged in this report.

So moving on to how the council proposes to address this problem. I have read the recommendations of this report and they appear to be both ill-conceived and utterly ineffectual. Seven of the ten recommendations are basically saying do what it says in the Contract Procedure Rules. Well I hate to tell you this but that won’t stop it happening again.

When read together with the Annual Audit opinion it is clear to me that there is a flawed management culture within the council that is the root cause of the problem and a defective management structure that has allowed this to take place.

The culture of change seems to focus on unproven and high risk consultant led initiatives. The language of change is everywhere and in every department. The problem is that it has resulted in managers taking their eye off doing the day to day basics of running the council properly. We have a senior management team who include a number of highly paid consultants such as the section 151 officer who by the very nature of their contractual relationship have no long term commitment to the council. The man who is designated to be responsible for implementing so many of the recommendations, Assistant Director Commercial Assurance, is another consultant CCMPS, whose contract according to DPR 1249 ends no later than January 2012. So much for creating continuity to follow these recommendations through.

The culture of Barnet Council has to change. The focus of the management team needs to concentrate on getting the basics right. If you think MetPro is a problem just wait till the outsourcing kicks in. Those contracts are worth hundreds of millions of pounds and at the minute it is patently obvious that the management systems for monitoring and enforcing those contracts are simply not in place.

As an Audit Committee you have an opportunity, no a duty, to safeguard the financial interests of every rate payer in Barnet by demanding much tougher actions arising from this report and the Annual Audit Opinion. I also urge you to instigate a much broader review as to the way in which this council is being run and to challenge the culture and structure of the council that is exacerbating this problem. Failure to take this opportunity may well see this type of situation arise again in the future except next time the problems will be on a much greater scale. In the past I get the impression that this committee has been suffering from Mushroom Syndrome, kept in the dark and fed horse manure. I would urge you to take a much tougher line in order to avoid this happening all over again”.

£1 million to leave Barnet Council

2011-06-16T12:25:00.005+01:00

Reading through the un-audited accounts I have come across some pretty shocking news. In 2010/11 Barnet council paid out over £1 million in "compensation for loss of office". In other words, people paid to leave. The largest payment was to Mr Brian Reynolds, former Executive Director for Environment and Development. He was paid the handsome sum of £280,485 to leave. Others payments for compensation for loss of office include the former:

- Director of Environment and Transport £143,832
- Acting head of Health Integration (Irene Findlay) £106,685
- Assistant Director Inclusion £103,955
- Assistant Director Building Control & Structures £96,692
- Principle Inspector Challenge Intervention £95,661
- Director of Strategy £67,793
- Director of Corporate Services £58,923
- Assistant Director Shared Services £42,675
- Assistant Director Regeneration £20,511

These are huge sums of money being paid out yet the council has advertised for a new Head of Planning Environment & Regeneration on £140,000 a year. What on earth is going on!

Metpro Invoices

2011-06-14T16:29:00.006+01:00

Straight after the Council meeting on 1 March I submitted a Freedom of Information Request regarding MetPro. One of the questions I asked related to the number of staff and cost. The response I received was that there were 7 Metpro staff on duty and the cost was £411 plus VAT.

In the last 24 hours the Metpro invoices have been disclosed and they show some very worrying signs of poor procedure like a hand written timesheet different charging rates etc. Of particular interest to me are the invoices which relate to the council meeting on 1 March. On closer examination the invoices for council meeting show only five staff on duty at a cost of £411 plus VAT, not seven staff as detailed in the FOI response. I duly emailed the FOI department to query this and almost by return was told that yes there were seven staff on duty but MetPro had only billed for five staff! I wonder how many times the reverse was true.

Barnet Internal Audit Report - It just gets worse!

2011-06-07T01:17:00.004+01:00

Having ploughed my way through the 268 pages of the Audit Committee papers I have to say that I am utterly shocked by what I have read. On top of what I have already reported on MetPro, the Internal Audit Annual Opinion Report goes much further on the various shortcomings.
The overall internal audit opinion is only “limited assurance”, that is one step above no assurance. Hardly a vote of confidence. Set out below are just a selection of the findings and there are many many more. I will be very interested to see how Audit Committee members address such a catalogue of failures. At some stage the committee have to stop looking at the symptoms and start addressing the underlying causes.

•With the exception of Adults, the role and responsibilities of devolved procurement teams/officers are unclear.

•There is no process in place to ascertain the performance of devolved procurement teams and if/where these teams add value to the Council’s procurement objectives.

•There are not effective oversight arrangements in place to ensure that monitoring complies with Contract Procedure Rules.

•The Procurement Code of Practice (PCOP) has not been reviewed since June 2009 and there is evidence of out of date information within the document.

•A complete and accurate contracts register is not in place corporately.

•There were no formal contracts in place for all contractors of SEN meaning monitoring against identifiable and specified contractual obligations was not possible. This practice was outside of the Contract Procedure Rules.

•Key projects were put on hold to ensure that the Pothole Elimination Project went forward, the risks of these scheme’s not going forward within Footway Maintenance and Traffic Management were not assessed or measured for impact.

•The Waste Prevention Strategy has been ineffective in delivery of outcomes.

•There were no support Business Continuity Plans for IT provision and Accommodation (facilities) as required by the Strategy.

•Environmental Health Management have not carried out a full risk assessment as required under Section 18 Standard of the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974). Management do not consider that they have capacity to achieve full compliance will by the March 2011 deadline.

•The service did not have a signed contract in place with the provider of cashless parking.

•The Parking Service has had limited success at implementing its overall Strategy.

•Significant issues within financial planning arrangements due to the lack of forward planning, and robust recovery plans to resolve the current shortfalls in income levels.

•There were incorrect accounting for and depositing of VAT monies and there is not sufficient checks in place to identify shortcomings in the VAT collection and reconciliation process.

•The parking service did not properly understand or document how the contractor was following up on fraudulent credit cards used in cashless parking transactions.

•Adequate processes do not exist to ensure routine reconciliations of amounts collected with amounts banked.

•Management did not have a process for checking the accuracy of charges applied by the contractor on individual transactions.

•There were delays (in excess of target times) between when street light service requests were received by the Council (including through Fix-My-Street route) and when they were submitted to the contractor.

•The contractor failed to undertake a significant number of customer satisfaction surveys resulted in under performance, and the analysis of responses by residents to these surveys ceased in April 2010. Officers did not seek adjustment relief from the contractor in light of this.

•There is currently no overarching Information Services (IS) level plan in place. Furthermore, in most cases, the service level business continuity /disaster recovery plans are incomplete or out-of-date.

•There are at least three single points of failure located within the IT network that, if realised, may have a severe impact on the continued availability of the network.

•The grants database/register was found not to be complete, accurate and up-to-date.

•The grant conditions have not always been recorded and updated in the grants register.

•There is no common process at a corporate level to confirm compliance to the CRB requirements across all service areas.

•Some CRB procedural processes have not been fully complied with.

•Only limited site inspections are being carried out to confirm CRB arrangements within supply management in Adults Social Care and Children’s Services, no policy exists setting out the approach to those contractors not visited.

MetPro - a catalogue of disaster.

2011-06-06T20:30:00.008+01:00

Well the Internal Audit report into the MetPro Scandal is out and it doesn't make pleasant reading. It is a catalougue of failures to stick to council procedures. It states:

"No procurement exercise had been undertaken to appoint MetPro, in accordance with the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules (CPR). No written contract between the Council and MetPro could be found. There is no record of an approval and authorisation for the use of MetPro for providing security services.

In the absence of a formal procurement exercise, we could not locate the following documents/confirmation for MetPro, which the CPR require:

- Financial viability of the company
- Equal Opportunities Assessment
- Criminal Records Bureau checks
- Confirmation of company’s Public Liability Insurance arrangements
- Confirmation of the company’s Health and Safety registration
- Confirmation on the SIA licence status of the Company Officers
- An agreed specification which outlined the service to be provided
- An agreed schedule of rates for payment of invoices
- A process for monitoring performance of service delivery to establish if the Council was receiving value for money.

There has been a failure to comply with the Council’s Policies and Procedures with regards to roles and responsibilities. Officers interviewed had assumed a corporate contract was in place and relevant checks on MetPro had therefore been undertaken. Recently, from September 2010, assurance was given to officers we interviewed that a corporate contract was being procured by the CPT as they were aware at that time that no contract was in place with MetPro. At the time of writing this report this procurement exercise had not started, however a detailed specification existed."

Not only that, but it appears that when MetPro changed from Rapid Response to Emergency Response, they gave an invalid VAT number. This may result in the Council facing penalties for the overrecovery of output VAT and as a result there has to be a review carried out to calculate the exact figure the Council has overpaid VAT on MetPro and to immediately contact HMRC.

What the report fails to mention is that this inquiry only happened because of the persistence of the bloggers of Barnet who forced the council to consider the evidence they had identified. If it hadn't been for the half a dozen concerned citizens, there is a good chance that MetPro would still be in place, without licenses and in breach of VAT regulations.

What this report also does not identify is who is to blame and how many other suppliers are operating in breach of council procurement policies. Reading this report I think any reasonable person would be calling for heads to roll and an immediate embargo on any further outsourcing until there is clear evidence that adequate systems are not only in place but are actually being used.

Lost - one scrunity committee - reward for finder!

2011-06-06T17:13:00.003+01:00

Looking through the council's list of committees I noticed that the One Barnet Overview & Scrutiny Panel wasn't listed. Maybe that is because it is a panel not a committee I wondered so I patiently scrolled through the council's on-line diary of meetings and guess what? The One Barnet Overview & Scrutiny Panel has disappeared. Does this mean they don't need any scrutiny of One Barnet decisions or did the questions just get too awkward. Either way it seems strange that some of the biggest decisions facing Barnet over the next 18 months will go unchecked.

Anyone who finds the lost panel will be rewarded with one of Mr Reasonable's tasty but thrifty Poverty Pies.

Priorities and what’s important in life!

2011-06-04T21:47:00.002+01:00

Today I spent the day with my dear old mum who lives in Bristol. She is 91 and has had some health problems recently. It has meant her moving out of sheltered housing and into a nursing home. Having decided to go out for lunch and with the motorway to Weston-super-Mare at a standstill, we decided to go to Portishead instead. There is a little cafe down by the sea front where she enjoyed a lunch of fish, chips with a cup of tea followed by an ice cream. She doesn't eat much but she enjoyed every mouthful! When we get together we always have what we call a family chain. Me, my mum, my partner and my children all sat round the table, joined hands and “sent the love around”. A very simple expression of love but one that reinforces the importance of families. My children love their granny and I just wish we lived closer. After lunch, I sat on the sea front with my Mum holding her hand while she had a snooze and my partner took the children for an excursion on the boating lake. When we got back to my mum’s we wrote all about our day in her visitors’ book. It helps her to remember what has happened. The children drew some lovely cartoons of us all having lunch together and of me and my mum holding hands. A day where there was no mention of Barnet Council, One Barnet or outsourcing, just a whole lot of lovin’. It just shows that the best things in life don't have to cost a fortune.

MetPro Scandal - Open letter from the Bloggers of Barnet

2011-06-02T10:41:00.003+01:00

As you may know, Mr Reasonable is exceptionally unhappy at the current outsourcing programme of One Barnet. There are enormous risks associated with this process and unless the right systems are in place and the evidence is clear, we could end up facing huge financial losses. The MetPro Scandal has highlighted major shortcomings within Barnet council's procurement and contract management procedures. Many people were hoping for a full inquiry into what happened but there are now real concerns that the Audit Committee which simply brush MetPro under the carpet so they can press ahead with this ideologically driven madness. Today, five Bloggers of Barnet are publishing this open letter which has also been sent to every Councillor in Barnet.

Please read this letter and then ask your local councillor whether they think the One Barnet outsourcing should still be pressing ahead with such undue haste.

MetPro and Barnet Council: contract failures call One Barnet Programme into question
On 16th June the Audit Committee of Barnet Council will meet to discuss the findings of its audit of the circumstances surrounding the MetPro Rapid/Emergency Response scandal. The signatories of this statement believe that, while it is far from a suitable way to address the issues raised, the audit is likely to expose shortcomings in Barnet Council’s ways of working that will lend force to our call for a full, independent investigation into the Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies.

Those responsible for the failure to regulate the Council's relationship with MetPro are in many cases the same people assisting with the review. As such they have a vested interest in the outcome. We believe that this review is therefore not likely to be sufficiently objective, however useful its findings might be.

Despite assurances from Lord Palmer we are not satisfied that the audit will cover all the problems revealed by the MetPro case, particularly those pertaining to breaches of residents’ data protection rights and their potential exposure to harm through contact with inadequately regulated security staff.

Furthermore, we believe that the MetPro case proves conclusively that there is systemic failure in Barnet Council’s purchasing and vendor management systems and processes.

Given this, we believe that it would be grossly negligent to allow a major outsourcing programme such as the One Barnet Programme to proceed.

We suspect that, far from being an isolated case, the irregularities in the Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies are likely to be an indication of serious mismanagement on a much larger scale. We call for a full investigation not only into the general process of contract tendering and allocation but also into the role played by respective responsible Directors. Our own investigations so far suggest that this would result in major cost savings for Barnet Council and Barnet Council taxpayers.

With regard to the MetPro audit, we have identified the following significant areas of concern and we ask the audit committee to address these questions:

1. Does your audit review show failings that have been identified and reported to the Council officers previously by Internal Audit? For example, the Head of Internal Audit reported to the Audit Committee (29 September 2009, Item 8, pages 30-31) that the then Director of Major Projects (Mr Craig Cooper) had confirmed that effective spend analysis monitoring and monthly vendor monitoring processes were in place.

See link below to access the report:

http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/reports/reportdetail.asp?ReportID=8541

2. Did the Directors agree to take actions to address reported failings?

3. Did the Directors fail to take actions to address reported failings?

4. Why did the Directors not take actions when they were supposed to?

5. What will the Audit Committee do to stop recurrence where Directors fail to address reported failings on time?

On the wider subject of the systemic failings of Barnet Council, we ask that the CEO Nick Walkley immediately institute the following measures:

I. A moratorium on all One Barnet Programme work, until such time as system failings can be shown to have been addressed.

II. A full investigation into the tendering process and the role played by the relevant responsible directors.

III. A review of the payment process including any transaction where purchase order was raised after receipt of an invoice.

IV. A process where all retrospective purchase orders are sent to executive level for sign off and review.

V. A full review of the democratic oversight process, to ensure that similar serious irregularities cannot occur in future.

As concerned residents we believe that these measures will go some way toward restoring public confidence in Barnet Council and, moreover, will save the taxpayers of Barnet a significant amount of money.

We ask all Councillors, regardless of Party affiliation, to support all of the above measures.

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

April Spending at Barnet Council

2011-05-28T12:17:00.003+01:00

Having had a quick scan through the April supplier payments over £500 at Barnet Council, a few things jump out at me. First of all, no invoice this month from Halliford Associates (Mr Travers, Deputy Chief Executive) or a number of other consultants.

Our friends LogicaCMG who have being working on the SAP system for the last 6 years were paid £961,412.57 in April. That pushes the total spent on implementing the SAP system to £22 million on a project that was originally budgeted to cost £2.5 million (see previous post)

As a footnote I see that the Sandbanks Hotel is popular again - £13,550.71. Am I the only one who wonders why there is a need to keep splashing out at this lovely hotel although why it is classified as rent in the payments seems a bit puzzling.

Cllr Cornelius and tax implications of Barnet's latest scheme

2011-05-26T12:10:00.004+01:00

This week Barnet Council approved the establishment of a new organisation, a Local Authority Trading Company (LATC) to provide Adult Social Services in Barnet. This trading company will also take in Barnet Homes as a subsidiary.

The council believe that there will be significant financial benefits to this strategy although the details of the business case are hidden away in an exempt report. What really caught my eye was the Barnet Times report of the meeting where it noted:

"Councillor Richard Cornelius urged officers to keep looking at the tax implications of setting up such a body and asked them to continue to take advice to protect the council."

Now this is very interesting because setting up an LATC actually raises a number of tax risks as detailed in the Cabinet Resources Committee papers. First of all the new organisation becomes liable for VAT on all non-employee expenditure, estimated at £344,666 per annum. Unlike the Council, this VAT is irrecoverable so it is a net loss to the organisation.
The LATC may also affect the taxable status of Barnet Homes. If that does happen it has been estimated that in 2009/10 it would have meant paying Corporation Tax of £187,000 which is currently retained within Barnet Homes.

I think Cllr Cornelius is absolute right to urge officers to keep looking at the tax implications which could mean over £500,000 of very valuable revenue simply going to the taxman when it could have been spent on some of the most vulnerable people in Barnet.

As ever I remain exceptionally concerned that Barnet seem to press ahead with novel schemes which sound good on paper but which could turn into massive problems.

Inspection of Barnet Council Accounts - Your rights

2011-05-23T08:14:00.006+01:00

Thanks to eagle eyed reader Jaybird for the tip off on this one.

Barnet Council are obliged under the Audit Commission Act 1998 to allow residents to inspect the accounts of the council. Bewteen the 13 June and 8 July any resident of Barnet is entitled to inspect the accounts and, most importantly,"books, deed, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating thereto".

If you are unhappy with what you find, on 13 July you can question Grant Thornton about the accounts and make any objections. These dates are pencilled into my diary!

I urge anyone who is concerned about specific contracts or the way your money is spent to take the opportunity to check for yourselves and to inspect the accounts. People can't moan about the way money is spent in Barnet if they don't bother to question it. Use your rights to check and question the accounts.

MetPro - SIA Licence - We had no proof and we didn't check.

2011-05-19T15:20:00.005+01:00

After submitting a Freedom of Information request on the evening of the Council meeting back on the 1st of March I have been trying to understand who checked up on MetPro to see if they held the relevant SIA licence. On the evening my suspicions were aroused as the staff were not displaying their SIA licences which I know is a legal requirement. I asked how many of the staff were licensed. The response I received was that the council were assured they were all licensed. I then followed up this response with the questions: what proof did you have and did anybody check. The response I received this afternoon is damning:

I write in response to your follow-on request, received by us on 1 April
2011, for the following information:

1. "What proof did the council have that the Metpro officers at the
Council meeting of 1 March 2011 were SIA licensed?

2. What actions did the council take to check such officers were SIA
licensed?"

We have processed this request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Under the Act we should have responded within 20 working days, I apologise
for us not meeting this deadline.

Response

After searching the council's records I confirm we hold no information
falling within your request. Council officers were assured prior to the
Council meeting that all Metpro staff were SIA licensed, but this was not
followed up formally in writing.

What mystifies me is that a simple check on the SIA website revealed to me on the evening of March 1st that Metpro were not SIA approved contractors and a quick check on Companies House Webcheck service showed that on 10 August 2010 Companies House had applied for a notice for MetPro to be struck off.

I intend to forward this information to Cllr Lord Palmer who is chairing the Audit Committee review into the Metpro affair. I hope this inquiry will be genuinely open and will take comments from residents.

Outsourcing - a time to pause and reconsider

2011-05-10T11:19:00.007+01:00

As many readers will know, I have very grave concerns about the outsourcing programme in Barnet. To my mind there are very real financial risks to this programme which is supported by virtually no evidence. Today, a number of the Barnet Bloggers have sent an open letter to councillors asking them to pause and review this policy before we go any further. The letter is set out below:

Time to pull back from the One Barnet Programme

Dear Councillor,

Next Tuesday 17 May is the council’s AGM. As residents we see this as an opportunity for the Council to do some stocktaking and signal a change of direction.

The One Barnet Programme (OBP) was initially presented as the new and innovative approach to the future of Council services. However, as soon as the first reports were published it became clear that there was little evidence behind many of the exaggerated claims being made by the consultants paid to advise on the programme.

We are aware that many councillors doubt whether OBP can deliver the savings and improved services Barnet residents expect. We share those anxieties.

Last week saw the publication of a number of articles in the mainstream press supporting the view that mass outsourcing does not save money, is high risk, and has a negative impact on staff morale. We hope you will take the time to read the extracts from some of those articles which follow.

The fate of Suffolk County Council
Suffolk County Council last September declared its intention to become the first “virtual council”. The Chief Executive pushing this programme, under the name New Strategic Direction (NSD), was being supported by Max Wide, on secondment from BT. As you know, Wide was one of the architects of Future Shape/One Barnet.

Since announcing their intention to outsource most services, Suffolk has been dogged by controversy. In December they were accused of ignoring a £100 million overspend on a deal with BT. (See article.)

In the last few days there have been big changes in the Conservative Party in Suffolk as a result of concerns about NSD, and the scheme has been halted. The Guardian newspaper reports:

The previous council leader, Jeremy Pembroke, who helped oversee the plans... stepped down in April amid concern about the deeply unpopular changes.

An inquiry was begun into morale at the council's legal department after an anonymous whistleblowing letter, sent to councillors, and believed to be from an employee, alleged staff there had been put under "unbearable pressure". The letter refers to "the poisonous atmosphere that exists at present" in the council.

(Full article here)

The BBC has reported on its website:

MPs were concerned that Suffolk County Council chief executive's policies threatened to "rip the heart out" of local communities. Negotiations are reported to be going on between the council and its chief executive Andrea Hill who has not returned to work after a holiday and is now reported to be on "extended leave".

Suffolk Central Conservative MP Dr Dan Poulter said he and fellow MPs had been worried about the direction the council was taking under Ms Hill.
(See the BBC interview with Poulter visit.)

Outsourcing should not be the automatic response to austerity

The public sector IT managers’ association SOCITM has published a research briefing called Costs of outsourcing: uncovering the real risks. The report’s author, Martin Greenwood, warns:

Outsourcing should not be considered an inevitable response to austerity. Even smaller organisations that need to gain economies of scale, and struggle to keep up with technological development, should consider collaboration and sharing with other local public services as a genuine alternative. If they do take the plunge into outsourcing, they should make sure they are aware of the pitfalls and know how to avoid them.

...It is a myth that outsourcing is cheaper, across most areas it is more expensive and people outsource for a range of reasons other than cost.
The report reveals that “when comparing the costs for any service, most elements will be more expensive if outsourced. The risks associated with benchmarking begin at the tender stage when suppliers will benefit from being experts at the process of negotiating contract terms, in contrast with the local authority that will go to market only rarely for a major outsourcing.” (More details)

The government is rowing back on mass outsourcing of public services

The BBC reported a recent meeting between the CBI and the minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, where the minister explained:

...the government is committed to transforming services, but this would not be a return to the 1990s with wholesale outsourcing to the private sector – this would be unpalatable to the present administration.

The government was not prepared to run the political risk of fully transferring services to the private sector with the result that they could be accused of being naive or allowing excess profitmaking by private sector firms. [Note of meeting by CBI]
(Read more here)

The articles above point to the folly of schemes such as the One Barnet Programme.

In the last two months the Council’s poor procurement and contract monitoring capacity has been demonstrated by the MetPro, Catalyst (legionella bacterium) and SAP cases. These have all harmed the Council’s reputation. Yet these are small contracts when compared to what OBP is proposing. With OBP the risks will be much higher.

We are asking the Conservative administration to bring OBP to a close before it is too late. Millions of pounds of public money has already been spent on consultants, with no discernible savings achieved, and the losses could well be multiplied many fold going forward. Residents and Barnet council staff are increasingly anxious about the future of Barnet council services. Councillors should be too.

Last September the Leader said “I would always listen to the community” when she reversed the decision to increase councillors’ allowances. We are asking you to listen now.

There is still time to put the brakes on the One Barnet Programme. We urge you to do so.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

I urge all Barnet residents to ask their councillors to think again, to consider if the evidence in place supports such a huge financial gamble, and to be brave enough to stop this scheme now before even more money is wasted.

£58million problem at Southwest One - Should Barnet be looking more closely at Its Outsourcing Strategy

2011-04-30T08:42:00.011+01:00

According to a report on BBC Points West the problems at SouthWestOne, where they have outsourced services to IBM, seem worse that first thought. According to Cllr Ken Maddocks, Leader of Somerset County Council, by tearing up the contract they have with SouthWestOne they could save £58 million. I know I had to do a double take as well. Listen to what conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has to say. I hope that every Barnet Councillor has read the details of what has happened here.

Latest council payments published

2011-04-28T21:29:00.002+01:00

The latest set of Barnet Council spending is available to view on line. I have only had a quick look but so far I have found a few items that are quite interesting.

In March MetPro Rapid Response were paid £43,818. At the same time Blue 9 Security were paid £8,490. But what is this, another company called Magenta Security Services who were paid £52,355.52. Now that seems a lot of security in just one month.

Then there is the Council’s implementation partner Agilisys who were paid £215,295.70in March along with various other consultants. Then there is Halliford Associates, the company of the deputy Chief Executive Mr Andrew Travers who was paid £51,000 in the period January to March.

One real oddity is the payment to a company called City Suburban Tree Surgeons Ltd. In the three months January- March 2011 they were paid £527,399.90. That seems a lot of grounds maintenance. Oh and a minor items £7,200 for venue hire at the Holiday Inn Elstree even though there are all those lovely meeting rooms at NLBP.
Finally, there are still an awful lot of redacted payments which we will never be able to scrutinise in detail.

Another £280k for One Barnet Staff

2011-04-26T20:07:00.006+01:00

Another day sees yet more staff recruited to manage the One Barnet programme. Today's Delegated Powers Report shows that the Council will recruit another project manager and three support staff at a cost of £140k per annum (excluding on costs) for a fixed term of two year. For a project that won't let a contract for another 18 months, it really seems to be proving an expensive process. It also seems rather strange that at a time when the council are making hundred's of staff redundant yet more One Barnet staff are being recruited. When will someone stand back and start asking some searching questions about the costs and benefits of this entire One Barnet Programme?

Lies, Damn Lies and FOI Responses

2011-04-24T20:29:00.006+01:00

Barnet Council have helpfully put a link to their publication scheme on the front page of their website. This lists information which may be of interest to the public. It also details the disclosure log which is a record of Freedom Of Information (FOI) requests that the Council feel are of a wider public interest. Clear there is a difference of opinion on what is of a wider public interest as there are a number of notable absences from the log such as:

• How long it takes to fix a parking meter in Barnet;
• How much is raised in parking charges and how much are parking maintenance costs;
• How many days did a parking meter collect zero funds (one meter took no income for 8 months); and
• How much loss/profit is made by Barnet council on allotments?

There are some interesting disclosures listed which include the £10,035 the Chief Executive was paid as returning officer and that he claimed no expenses in 2009/10. It also revealed that the total paid out for damages claims caused by potholes (including costs) was £168,283 with the largest single claim of £5,414.17 for damage to the gearbox of a Mercedes.

Now we come to the bit that really worries me and that is the discrepancies in some of the FOI answers provided.

First of all is the cost of replacing and upgrading IT equipment. In the published statement it states that “The cost of purchasing the new laptops and tablets is £270k.” Now we know that that cannot be correct because they it also states that they purchased 2,450 new laptops and tablet computers and we also know from a previous FOI request submitted by Barnet Bugle that the cost per laptop including all the add on bits (docking station, ultra slim battery, separate TFT screen, keyboard and a mouse) is approximately £1,500 each. So how do they arrive at a cost of £270k when it is closer to £3.7 million? Beats me.

Maybe the list of away days conveniently stopped before the lovely £15,000 awayday break at the Sandbanks hotel was clocked up.

Now we come to suppliers. The council produces a list of companies with which the council has contracts. A few interesting examples are as follows:

Council states Logica plc contract value £13k. Openly Local says the value for Logica CMG UK Ltd (which I believe is probably one and the same) £1,635,960 – bit of a difference there.

No mention of Norwest Holst, £8,204,569; Catalyst, £7,977,334; Dimensions (ADP)Ltd, £3,491,107; Barnet Lighting, £2,527,493; Ridgeland Properties, £2,338,036 and so on and so on. One contract noticeable by its absence is for MetPro – maybe because there wasn’t a contract just, an arrangement.

I would urge all Barnet residents to scrutinise these details very closely because it is our borough where we all live, it is our money they are spending and it is in our name they are acting. We all need to take responsibility to see how the council is run and to shout up if we don’t agree with the decisions taken in our name.

How a £2.5 million project ended up costing £21 million - Why we need to learn the lessons.

2011-04-21T20:47:00.004+01:00

This is a complex story that started back in 2003 but has huge relevance for the decisions being made at the moment on outsourcing. It started with an estimate of £2.5 million and today it has clocked up costs of £21 million and that is not the end of it. I have tried to assemble the facts correctly but if they are wrong I apologise. However, trying to get information out of Barnet Council has been exceptionally difficult and some of the information remains locked in exempt reports.

Back in 2003 it was identified that the core financials IT and HR/Payroll systems needed to be replaced. They estimated that the core financial system replacement would cost £2.5 million and that was the figure approved by the Council in March 2004. As they looked into this further they decided that this should now be treated as a business change project not an IT replacement project. Warning bells are starting to ring!
They put it out to tender in 2004 giving bidders three options:
• Option 1: A core financials system without HR/payroll
• Option 3: A HR/payroll system operated by the ‘bureau mechanism’
• Option 2: An enterprise-wide system with HR/payroll module included

Interestingly the Cabinet Resources report of 8 July 2004 states that “the response to Option 1 had been poor with no Best of Breed finance providers bidding for this option. The market response thus played a major role in informing the decision process”. So surprise, surprise the leading providers didn’t want to supply a basic and low cost solution; they wanted to sell their more expensive enterprise wide solutions. This is what happens when you let the market tell you what they want to provide. Sound familiar with what they are saying about the current outsourcing programme?
Right from the start it was clear there were problems. A memorandum from Audit in May 2004 (page 15) said,
“The Council is in the process “of modernising its core systems” with the aim to use the opportunities provided by the new system to modernise working practices.
Overall: at this stage no assurance can be given that the above objective will be achieved in an efficient, effective and economical way. Although a recognised project management methodology (Prince 2) is being used to manage the project, the initial stages of good project management have not been strictly followed and implemented.
In that report it also identified that cost estimates were now £8.3 million which included both internal and external staff costs. The risk register also identified the lack of a business case.
“As Pointed out by the Gateway review team there is a need for the Business Case to be developed by the Core Financials Project, to determine the project costs and viability”.
In July 2004 a business case was prepared and you can read it here (starts at page 26). I have read a few business cases in my time but the brevity of this one is nothing short of indecent. All the details may be locked up in the exempt report, which I have not been allowed to see, but to have 2 pages for costs and benefits without a single number being mentioned leaves me with a feeling that it was not one of the most thorough assessments. I may be wrong in which case, if Barnet Council care to provide me with a copy of the exempt report, I may change my view. However it also notes in the business case that they haven’t concluded negotiations with the suppliers yet. Again this has an all too familiar ring with the current outsourcing project.
So the Cabinet went ahead and authorised a company who we now know to be Logica to install and support the SAP system for five years with the option to extend for a further three years.
One year later in September 2005 the Cabinet ICT committee set out what was the budget in 2004 (someone with a black pen must have missed that). It shows that the capital budget was now £8.16 million and there were anticipated annual costs of £1.1 million with savings from the old system of £662,000.
Now six years later people are still talking about SAP and what else needs to be implemented. Through an FOI request I have been informed that the cost of installation was £7.8 million and the annual payments to Logica amount to £13.2 million. In addition there are a further two years to run on Logica’s support contract.
So what does all this mean?
• We started with a budget of £2.5 million and we ended up with a cost of £21 million.
• We started a process and got a long way down the track before a business case was prepared.
• We gave the market the option to tell us what they wanted to provide.
• The market chose not to provide us with the cheapest option.
• We have been locked into a support contract for 8 years which has consistently run at double or treble the initial estimated costs.
Now the SAP system may be great and it may be delivering all sorts of benefits but it has cost an awful lot of money. It’s a bit like the man who says a Porsche is wonderful value for money but most people can’t afford to run it let alone buy it. We need to learn lessons from the past to make sure we don’t repeat them in the future.

At the minute I am hugely worried that the current outsourcing programme is in danger of repeating all the old mistakes and it will end up costing us all a fortune. I have asked questions at numerous committees only to be fobbed off. The first contract being outsourced has an estimated value of between £270 and £290 million. This are not small amounts we are talking about and if these contracts do go wrong the financial consequences could be immense. Please Barnet Council, re-open the debate and open up the books. Give the rate payer of Barnet some comfort that this will not end like another SAP project.

Democracy RIP

2011-04-14T23:16:00.007+01:00

Tonight I sat through a very thorough dismantling of democracy in Barnet. Council meeting, number to be reduced,questions on the work of the cabinet eliminated, reduction in the number of opposition motions. Much debate but irrespective of the arguments Conservative group simply put it to the vote and pass what they want. Limited discussion on Delegated Powers Reports. Then on to residents forums. Officers prepared a range of options; someone has carried out research with residents, two people speak and then the Conservative group put up their own proposal. It is an example of control freakery in the extreme. Labour and Libdems fight a losing battle - put to the vote and that's it the conservative group's proposal is accepted. Mr Reasonable confidently predicts that by this time next year residents forums will be gone forever. One of the objectives for the review of residents forums was to make them more cost effective. Well closing them down will certainly achieve that objective!
I simply despair.
I am sure Mrs Angry will give a far more comprehensive witty and lucid report of the meeting but I had to get this off my chest before I go to bed.

MetPro - Delegated Powers Report confirms a catalogue of errors

2011-04-13T07:41:00.006+01:00

A rushed Delegated Powers Report highlights the failure to properly administer the MetPro Contract. Amongst other things the report confirms the following:

- MetPro Emergency Response took over a contract and operated it without the council's knowledge - even though all the bloggers of Barnet, but particularly Mrs Angry, had flagged it up much earlier.

- The report states that MetPro Rapid Response went into liquidation on 15th March 2011 yet they missed all the signs that they were in trouble six months earlier when on 10 August 2010 MetPro were issued a notice for the company to be dissolved by Companies House. At that time the company's correspondence was being directed to the insolvency specialists Bond Partners LLP.

- The report identifies that Blue 9 Security, the company who have taken over from MetPro, are actually cheaper than MetPro - so why on earth wasn't that picked up earlier? Perhaps it could have saved us some of the £1.2 million Barnet are supposed to have paid MetPro.

The Delegated Powers Report suggests this whole process was badly managed yet there will be no public inquiry. The report also states:

Section 5.7 of the council’s Contract Procedure Rules provides the delegated powers for Directors to take decisions on urgent or emergency matters. These decisions can also include the waiver of Contract Procedure Rules where justified. The justification in this case is contained in Section 5.8.2 of Contract Procedure Rules ‘the contract is for works, supplies or services that are required in circumstances of extreme urgency that could not reasonably have been foreseen.’

Strange then that at last night's council meeting the Labour emergency motion to discuss this matter was voted down because it was not urgent. This is a most serious matter, it runs to the heart of how contracts are managed at Barnet. With a massive outsourcing programme already commenced it is critical that the whole process of how contracts are managed needs to be examined now. We need a public inquiry now. An internal audit as is being proposed, will simply look like a cover up.

What is the future for Residents' Forums?

2011-04-08T15:13:00.004+01:00

The Special Committee(Constitution)are meeting next Thursday (14 April) to consider a number of issues including options for the future of Residents Forums in the borough. There is some market research at the end of the report which was drawn from 2 focus groups and they come to some interesting conclusions.

I would be very interested to understand what other residents believe should be the role of Residents' Forums and how they might be developed to enhance the feeling of democratic engagement in the borough.

Better still email Barnet Council and request to speak at the meeting. The link to make a request to speak is on the same page as the agenda items but make sure you get your request in no later than 10 am on Monday morning to make sure it is on time.

Goodbye MetPro - Hello Blue 9 Security

2011-04-05T21:05:00.001+01:00

MetPro have gone and, according to the Barnet Times report today, they have been replaced by a company called Blue 9 Security Limited. I find it interesting that according to their latest set of accounts dated 13 July 2010, Blue 9 Security Limited’s registered address was Building 6, North London Business Park, right on the doorstep of Barnet Council. Their registered address is now, according to Companies House, the same as their accountants over in Stanmore. Their website seems surprisingly blank but cached views suggest they are indeed supplying Barnet Council and there is an endorsement from Terry Campbell at Barnet Council saying they have been providing services for three years. According to the openly local website they have received over £155,000 from Barnet Council in the last financial year. According to Linkedin the managing director, Mr William MacGowan served as a Police Officer in Scotland for 17 years. I am sure many people will be pleased to hear that they are also a member of the SIA Approved Contractor Scheme so hopefully we can expect a good standard of service.

MetPro FOI Responses

2011-04-05T08:04:00.005+01:00

Following my experience on the evening of the council meeting on the 1st March I immediately submitted some FOI questions regarding MetPro. Yesterday, and overdue, I received responses from Barnet. Yes, there were 7 MetPro staff present and they charged £411 plus VAT for that evening.
No real answer as to why they were needed in addition to all the police officers present.

"The Council has for some time had security arrangements in place at Hendon Town Hall. The numbers of officers on duty at any given time is assessed according to requirements".

However on the matter of how many of the security guards were SIA Licensed the Council's response is interesting. They state,

"We were assured by the company that all staff are SIA licensed".

I asked this question for a very specific reason. My understanding of the SIA conditions of licence is that SIA licensed staff MUST "wear the licence where it can be seen at all times when engaging in designated licenseable activity".

If you look on the SIA website, all pictures of security staff show them with their licence on display. If this condition is not met the licence can be revoked or suspended. Although the council say they were "assured that all staff are SIA Licensed" did they have any proof and did anyone from the council check? Given that MetPro were not a member of the SIA Approved Contractor Scheme perhaps someone should have checked that:

a) Staff were SIA Licensed and that
b) MetPro were conforming to SIA regulations.

This is an exceptionally serious matter and receiving an "assurance" seems less than adequate from a risk management perspective.

If the council failed to check on this matter it doesn't bode well when they start contracting out the Development and Regulatory Services, a number of which are governed by specific legislation.

Overall a very bad business.

Call for a public inquiry into the relationship between MetPro and Barnet Council

2011-04-04T16:04:00.002+01:00

The following press release has been issued today by a number of prominent bloggers and concerned citizens in Barnet regarding the role of MetPro, Barnet's own private army. Mr Reasonable wholeheartedly supports the demands for a full public enquiry into the council’s relationship with MetPro Rapid Response / MetPro Emergency Response.

Press release — 4 April 2011

Call for a public inquiry into the relationship between MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response and Barnet Council

Barnet Council has been engaging private security firms MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response to control residents’ access to council meetings, in particular the council meeting on 1 March 2011. One of the company directors claims the company has also monitored blogs by Barnet residents, and filmed Barnet residents at Council meetings.

Despite holding contracts worth several hundred thousand pounds with Barnet Council, MetPro Rapid Response collapsed recently owing around £400,000, including £245,000 to HM Revenue & Customs. The firm is now in the hands of liquidators; however, MetPro Emergency Response, a company recently set up by the same company directors associated with MetPro Rapid Response, continued for a while to be employed by Barnet after the collapse of MetPro Rapid Response.

As well as providing security for Council meetings, these firms provided security at several council locations, including some housing vulnerable people.

At the meeting on 1 March, it appears that MetPro security staff did not wear visible identification, breaching Security Industry Authority (SIA) regulations, whilst working for Barnet.

Statements made by directors of the company regarding the scope of their work for Barnet have been contradicted by executive officers of Barnet Council.

The full facts regarding Barnet Council’s contract/s with MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response must be revealed to the public. We need to know about the use of data collected by the company (with full consideration for data protection and human rights implications). We need Barnet Council to reveal the extent of the MetPro companies’ activities on behalf of the Council. Residents and Council staff have a right to know what activities their Council undertake. They have a right to expect the Council only to engage firms with a proven track record for such activities and to monitor such, ensuring, for example, that they comply with legislation, eg, SIA regulations.

The only way that trust can be restored in Barnet Council, following the MetPro debacle, is to hold a full public inquiry. We the undersigned call on Nick Walkley, CEO of Barnet Council, and Lynne Hillan, Council Leader, to immediately engage an independent investigator, enjoying the confidence of Barnet residents, to look into the relationship between MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response and Barnet Council. We demand to know what Barnet Council asked MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response to do and what Barnet Council has done with any information about residents it has had access to as a result of MetPro’s work.

Signed:
Alexander Clayman (N12)
Derek Dishman (EN5)
Adam Langleben (HA8)
Vicki Morris (NW9)
Theresa Musgrove (N3)
Maria Nash (EN4)
Julian Silverman (N12)
Roger Tichborne (NW7)
Adele Winston (EN5)

Another Consultant at Barnet Council

2011-04-02T09:49:00.002+01:00

The eagle eyed Mr Mustard has passed on some very useful information to me. I have trawled through the supplier payments but this is one I missed. A company called Renouval Limited was paid £44,325 between July and September 2010 and £31,248 between October and December. The director of this company is a Mr Chris Palmer. Could this be the same Mr Chris Palmer, who is communications advisor at Barnet Council. How many more of the senior management people at Barnet are self employed consultants?

Democracy Costs Barnet Ratepayers £137,343

2011-04-01T21:17:00.004+01:00

Reading today's batch of delegated powers reports there is one that really worries me. It relates to a planning application to extend the Edgwarebury Cemetery that was dealt with back in 2009. According to the report at the time officers recommended that the application be passed but councillors voted for the application to be refused. The applicant took Barnet to appeal and won. They have now lodged a claim for costs of £137,343. Barnet are recommending paying out £82,500 immediately to minimise interest charges while they haggle about the balance. Now this is the hard part for me. Part of me thinks that those councillors who refused the application have cost us a packet by ignoring officers advice. However part of me also thinks that councillors were simply reflecting local residents' concern about an infringement of the green belt. It is a real dilemma and calls into question what role local people should have in the planning process. This is something very close to my heart. What really worries me is that this will now make councillors even more reluctant to disagree with officers and sometimes that is a really important stance they should take. I also worry that with reforms of the planning system coming soon it will make it even harder for communities to get their views heard when controversial schemes are considered. I think this is a topic that really needs further debate. Comments please.

Normal Service Resumed

2011-04-01T20:42:00.002+01:00

Sadly my sponsorship deal with a major supermarket was a cruel hoax and I have been told my poverty pie recipe is just a tad too unpalatable. So I have decided that it is back to normal blogging for me.

Mr Reasonable's Kitchen

2011-04-01T09:31:00.004+01:00

Times are tough in Barnet and I have been thinking of new ideas to generate revenue. It has been a hard decision but I have decided that my culinary skills have been undervalued. Following receipt of an email this morning, I am pleased to confirm that, as of tomorrow, my blog will be renamed Mr Reasonable’s Kitchen where I will share my famous tasty and economical recipes. To generate income I have been lucky to secure sponsorship from a major supermarket operator who, at this stage, wishes to remain anonymous. In addition, I will also be moving my blog behind a paywall where for a very reasonable £5 a week you will be able to view my finest recipes. Tomorrow’s first recipe is one of my all time favourites, Poverty Pie, a delicious potato and onion pie feeding a family of four for less than 30p a portion. Current readers will be able to access my first week’s recipes for free, just type in the code FILTHYLUCRE when prompted.

Five minutes, four men and a £270 million gamble

2011-03-28T20:15:00.016+01:00

I have just come back from the Cabinet Resources Committee where they were dealing with, amongst other things, the outsourcing of the Development and Regulated Services functions. It covers services from Planning and Highways to Environmental Health. It didn't start well. "Written responses have been provided ask your supplementary questions". Yes well they forgot to supply the answers to me. I asked for a couple of minutes to read the replies and to his credit Cllr Thomas offered to adjourn public questions for a few minutes while I read the answers. "No" said Cllr Coleman "Read out the answers and then he has to ask his supplementary questions". Cllr Thomas did say that reading out the answers was rather tedious so I dived in. But no point really. What is clear is that the four councillors present simply aren't interested in any comment or debate. What I find most shocking is that they didn't

1. What assumptions are councillors using for the anticipated level of investment that the private sector will make in the proposed outsources services and why are these assumptions not detailed in the business case report?

Reply by the Chairman of the Cabinet Resources Committee
Councillors are not making any assumptions about the anticipated level of investment by a partner. We do expect that in order to make the cost savings investment will be made by any future partner, for example in technology and equipment. The exception to this is the cremators where significant investment will be required; the delivery of this investment will be considered separately.
During the competitive dialogue process, the council will be specifying the outcomes it wishes to achieve. It will choose its partner based upon the most efficient and effective solutions put forward to meet those outcomes.

How can you prepare a business case and ignore investment. What will be the cost of that investment and how is it likely to affect the price charged by the outsourcing company?

2. Are councillors concerned at the lack of benchmark data and evidence from other outsourced councils to support the assumptions set out on pages 41-43 of the report.

Reply by the Chairman of the Cabinet Resources Committee
Benchmarking data for the services in scope is limited, and in many cases the services themselves believe it to be unreliable. Where possible, CIPFA data and national indicators were used to give an indication of potential cost reduction and income increases. Where it was not possible to use benchmarking data, these assumptions were based upon what the services believed was possible, and market research.

So no evidence then!

3. Do councillors believe that the rather simplistic +or-10% for the sensitivity analysis is adequate for such a complex project?

Reply by the Chairman of the Cabinet Resources Committee
The +/- 10% confidence range is an indicator to demonstrate a logical range within which we would expect the new expenditure to operate. This range helps to determine whether a new provider could provide the same level of service for less cost, and specifically considers:

- The cumulative annual improvement to reach specified benchmarks, and;
- The effect on revised gross expenditure.

This is part of the financial model which underpins the Business Case, which at this stage is a description of the reasons for the project and the justification for undertaking it (based on the estimated costs of the project, the risks and the expected business benefits and savings). For DRS in particular, it provides the indicative evidence on which to progress the project to the next phase of activity, and further detailed modelling will occur one (sic) competitive dialogue is underway and we are clearer about what solutions the market has to offer. As a dynamic document, the Business Case will then be updated on the back of this data.

From my perspective simply tweaking the answers by +/- 10% is not a credible sensitivity when the assumptions are not supported by any evidence.

4. Do councillors believe that 4 key risks as set out on pages 52-53 of the report are an adequate assessment of the risk this project is likely to experience?

Reply by the Chairman of the Cabinet Resources Committee
The risks set out within the business case are the key risks only and not a full risk assessment of the project. A full risk register will be maintained by the One Barnet Programme Office and managed according to the London Borough of Barnet corporate risk management strategy.

No operational risks in the business case doesn't give me any confidence. Given Grant Thornton's previous comments back in December I think we have every right to be worried.

With questions out of the way the actual agenda item was dealt with in less than five minutes. Outsourcing approved.

So what is the answer. Well fellow residents of Barnet we all need to keep our fingers crossed and hope that this outsourcing project goes well because if it doesn't (and currently there is no evidence to suggest it will) we will all be paying for this mistake for years to come.

The £270 million gamble - outsourcing at Barnet Council

2011-03-25T09:40:00.006Z

Today the OJEU notice has been published, kicking off the outsourcing process for the Development & Regulatory Services. In the Notice it states that value of the contract will be between £270 million and £290 million excluding VAT over a 10 year contract with an option to extend for a further five years. That seems to be a huge sum to gamble based on a business case which is flimsy in the extreme. The undue haste of this project is amazing. Interested parties will be invited to a bidder briefing day on 5 April. This seems exceptionally short notice and might suggest that all the potentially bidders have already been put on alert. All this and the business case still hasn't been signed off by the Cabinet Resources Committee. I am utterly shocked at the way the whole process is being driven through with such huge sums of money involved. Every single resident of Barnet should be very very worried and asking their councillors some detailed questions about the whole basis for this high risk project.

Council step back from cashless only parking policy

2011-03-24T14:39:00.005Z

For all the talk of a cashless only pay by phone parking system being introduced, it appears that the council are having to bow to the pressure of so many people who say they do not have mobile phones. I read in the latest tranche of Delegated Powers Reports that Barnet are contracting with PayPoint to allow people to pay for their parking in local shops which have a PayPoint terminal. PayPoint also operate the telephone payment system so the two systems should work together. There will be a fee to pay by cash of 5% of the value of each transaction, with a minimum fee of 15p per transaction.
Having tried to park at 4 separate locations in the last week only to find that on each occasion the pay and display machines were not accepting cash, I think this is probably a welcome step not only for drivers but also for shopkeepers and the Council who must be losing significant revenue from people who simply drive away when they can't pay by cash.