So this is where our money goes - Barnet Supplier payments for December

This month’s supplier payment s have been released and as previously blogged we have a very large bill from Capita for  £7,384,960.23. This is for services provided on the NSCSO (CSG) contract which involves making hundreds of Barnet based staff redundant and moving the call centre to various points around the UK operated by Capita.

Our friends Agilisys who continue to advise the council on the implementation of One Barnet billed £188,917.67 in December. Personally I simply cannot understand why after the contract has been operational since October that we still need to be shelling out almost £10,000 each working day on this contracts which is now over £8 million for a contract that councillors were told would cost “circa” £2 million. Frankly if that is how the implementation partner’s contract has been managed I hold out no hope that the Capita contract will be managed any more effectively.

Barnet Lighting  the wonderful PFI contract for street lighting in Barnet billed £970,742.49 in December. Given that they dug up three perfectly sound lighting columns in my road to put in new ones with “brighter lights” and then spend £4 million to allow them to dim the street lights just shows me how imprudent our council has been.

Comensura, the company that supplies the council with agency and interim staff billed £710,668.41 in December. Someone did ask me why I thought this was a cost for One Barnet and my response was that ever since the council announced they were going to outsource the service a significant number of key staff have left the council, not fancying the prospect of being either made redundant or transferred on to Capita’s payroll. The council have equally found it difficult to recruit new staff to those posts for exactly the same reason – why take a job you know you are going to lose in a few months. Then there are all the interim staff, some who have been with the council for rather a long time but who have no loyalty to the council. On procurement we saw one consultant after another come and then leave after six months, each time requiring the new person to go through the learning process of the workings of Barnet all over again. Even worse is that we are still paying out over £35,000 every working day when hundreds of council staff are being made redundant, something we ultimately pay for through Capita’s charges.

GVA Grimley who are property and planning advisors billed £138,338.95 against the DRS contract – I wonder if this is to do with the Brent Cross development?

A company called Insight Direct who are suppliers of computer hardware billed £129,611.33 on the NSCSO contract. Is this for more laptops/desktops  - it looks like it as it is spread over 21 separate invoices. Given so many staff have left or been made redundant, there must be a large pile of high spec tablet computers sitting in a cupboard somewhere so why are the council buying more?

Our friends NSL, responsible for managing the parking contract managed to bill a sizeable £575,289.98 in December. My fellow blogger Mr Mustard has written at length about the dismal performance of this contract which seems to be costing more than when it was run in house. Is this yet another example of Barnet’s failure to manage its outsourced contracts.

And last but by no means least, our friends at Trowers & Hamlins, the lawyers who have been assisting the council on the One Barnet contracts. They billed £92,063.42 in December. Again I am a loss to understand why this is still clocking up fees given the contract was awarded in August.

I would think it was in everyone’s interest to have a much greater degree of scrutiny of these payments but my suggestion to do just that, made over three years ago, has fallen on deaf ears. Maybe that might change after the elections in May.

£82.9 million in 9 months - the bill One Barnet

For a very long time I have been monitoring Barnet Council's spending on One Barnet. Today we have a definitive answer thanks to a question asked by Cllr Jack Cohen at tonight's council meeting. Cllr J Cohen asked:


"In the financial year to 31st December 2013 how much money has been paid to the following suppliers /companies:

• Agilisys
• Trowers and Hamlin
• Capita
• RE
• Commensura (sic)

In each case can the Cabinet Member please provide month by month breakdown of payments, the amount of any outstanding invoices and in each case a brief description of services rendered".

For those who are unaware,Comensura  are suppliers of agency and interim senior management staff at the council; Agilisys and their subcontractor iMPOWER have been helping the council to implement One Barnet for the last three years; Trowers & Hamlins are the council's legal advisors on One Barnet; Capita - well we all know who Capita are; and finally RE, that is the stylish and incredibly innovative name (not) for the council's joint venture on the DRS contract run by Capita.

The answer is somewhat staggering and may at last make some people realise why the Barnet Bloggers and other concerned citizens have been so keen to bring this massive issue to the attention of every single council tax payer in Barnet. The response is set out below:

Yes you did read it correctly, the cost for implementing One Barnet in the last 9 months is £82.9 million. There is an ironic postscript to this table which states, "This expenditure helped create contracts which will save the Council £160 million over ten years".  Somehow that does not look an entirely convincing statement when half the savings were spent in the last 9 months of 2013. It also doesn't look convincing when you consider that the Council had already spent at least £6 million with Agilisys before the start of this financial years plus £millions on the other numerous interims and consultants who have gone before.

This has cost council tax payers a massive amount and the savings are certainly not in the bag. Indeed, last week Capita were asking either for more money or to reduce the service standards for housing benefit registration because loyal, and now redundant, Council staff were doing the job more effectively before Capita signed the contract. The issues of One Barnet are not going away. The problem is that the consequences of this massive outsourcing madness will be felt by every resident of the borough.

Money for consultants and new bin lorries but not for the elderly or disabled?

Barnet's October supplier payments are out and as readers will know I read through them carefully.
The bin lorry saga continues. Last month Barnet put through £2million worth of invoices for the new bin lorries. I requested these invoices under FOI and found that this was only a PART PAYMENT. This month a further £4 million of invoices for the new bin lorries was put through and I understand there may be another £2million  worth of invoices still to appear. Some have said that we had to buy new lorries because the old contract had come to an end. However it is common practice to purchase usable equipment at the end of a contract for a written down value. EU statistics in 2011 showed that the average age of heavy duty vehicle fleets has increased to 11.5 years. People are running their cars longer and to my mind that seems like a sensible strategy so long as the vehicles remain reliable. However the culture in Barnet seems to be spend, spend, spend if there is a budget for it. That is neither frugal nor prudent.

And speaking of spend, spend, spend, our friends at Agilisys received a rather sizable £198,947.40 whose bill for implementing One Barnet is now over £8 million. I would have thought that now the One barnet contract has been let we would have seen an end to this massive spending but clearly that is not the case.

Legal advisors Trowers & Hamlin billed the council £385,648.74 in October, long after the judicial review is at an end, so I wonder what this is for?

And as for Capita or RE Ltd to give them their Barnet DRS trading name, they billed a cool £5,177,323.95 in October. When this contract was being discussed I specifically asked if Capita's bill would be broken down or whether we would simply get a single massive bill for their charges. Well yet again I was misinformed, misled or otherwise deceived into believing there would be complete openness.

With two massive outsourcing contracts in place I had foolishly assumed that the bill for agency and interim staff would have come down. Not in Barnet. In October the Council spent £1.22 million with Comensura  who handle all temporary or agency staff payments yet at the same time hundreds are staff are in the process of being made redundant. This seems utterly wrong.

All of these massive payments need to be set in the context of the cuts that are taking place to adult social care and children's services. Anyone who watched the report from the Task and Finish Group into the changes taking place at Your Choice Barnet cannot failed to have been moved by the plea to reinstate services for those with real needs yet we are still wasting vast amounts of money on professional fees.

Did Barnet pay £2 million for the new recycling bin lorries?

Barnet's Supplier payments for September are out. No large payments to Capita this month but having being paid over £30 million in the last couple of months I think they have had more than enough already.

Following a relatively modest billing £106,001.10 in July and £120,801.60 in August, Agilisys bounced back with a £292,640.83 in September. Given we now have Capita running Barnet I find it puzzling why we are still spending more than a quarter of a million pounds a month on consultants to implement One Barnet.

A couple of payments which did catch my eye are for just over £2 million pounds payable to Go Plant Ltd who supply refuse vehicles to the Council and are based at the Brittacy Hill depot at Mill Hill.. The payments are for "Equipment and Materials Purchase" and attributed to the Environment and Operations department. I am investigating this further but I wonder if this is to pay for the lovely new recycling bin lorries. If it is, it will take the total bill for the new recycling system to just under £6 million.

Barnet still paid over £1 million for temporary staff in September which seems shocking given we have Capita in place.

Another Month Another Massive Consultant's Bill for Barnet

Barnet's supplier payments for April are out after having to look for them buried away under last financial year's figures. The usual suspect are present; Agilisys billed £230,822.34 which brings their running total to £6.55 million. Trowers & Hamlins put in a comparatively modest bill of £60,977.09.

The Barnet Group which includes both Barnet Homes and Your Choice Barnet received just a shade under £7 million but interestingly there was a bill for consultant's fees of £928,003.42 - I will be investigating further.

One unusual recipient of £3,400 in April was The Claddagh Ring - I assume that to be the Pub just down the road from Hendon Town Hall used for a training venue. It seems like quite a significant payment to me.

Another recipient was the Crown Moran Hotel, a very nice venue on Cricklewood Broadway which was paid £3,666.50 for venue hire. I wonder what that was for and was it really necessary to hold it in such an expensive venue.

There was a payment for £54,167 to Parkeon Limited who supply parking meters - I suspect that was for the new credit card parking payment machines which have been introduced and which I used just the other day. It is just a shame that they ripped out perfectly good payment machines in the first place.

Harvest Energy win the prize for the most diverse range of payment headings. They were paid £153,941.39 for services which included: Agency staff, gas, training, equipment and materials, building repairs, printing and software. That will need a bit more digging!

The One Barnet Consultant's bill hits £6.3 million

In February our dear friends Agilisys, who are helping Barnet Council implement One Barnet  billed a rather modest £55,244.55. At the time I wondered if we had seen the end of their huge six figure bills. Today Barnet have published (early) the supplier payments for March and surprise, surprise Agilisys have come back with force, billing the grand sum of £460,228.20 for the month, Interestingly, only one invoice for £990 is allocated to the One Barnet programme. Perhaps that is how certain councillors can get away with saying One Barnet hasn't cost that much but it fools no one.

In the financial year 2012-13 Barnet Council have paid Agilisys £3,513,760.99 - yes £3.5 million in one year to one firm of consultants and it brings the total paid to Agilisys to £6,324,366.68 since the start of the One Barnet implementation contract.

Back in July 2012 I raised the issue of Agilisys costs with Barnet’s external auditors, Grant Thornton. This included:

That councillors had been led to believe this contract was going to cost around £2 million and that it looked like on present spending it was going to cost £6 million. As such, were officers legally allowed to exceed this budget by so much without getting further approval for the spending by Councillors and did this make that spending ultra vires.

On the first point the auditor said, 

“With regard to your point on the level of spend, it is clear that the £2 million figure is an indicative one.  The Council's 2010/11 budget estimates costs of setting up the programme and projects at £3 million. The spend to date on the contract is approaching £4 million. Although ongoing spend and value for money is monitored by the Council's Corporate Directors' Group, there is nothing in the Council's constitution that requires the reporting back to members for this contract on the basis that there is no maximum contract value set. From the review of working papers, I am satisfied that there is no need for me to take formal legal advice as to the legality of the £4 million contract as I have not seen evidence that the council has acted outside of its powers. Based on these findings, I have concluded that the Council has followed its own rules in terms of the nature and level of spend under this contract and that there is no legality issue that would impact on my ability to certify the 2011/12 audit closed.”

 

The Auditor added as a footnote,

“I have discussed your second point around the governance of the level of spend on the contract and the Council agrees that it would be good practice to take an update report to the Cabinet Resources Committee. The Council is drafting this report which will update members on the level of spend to date, revised projections for level of spend over the three year period of the contract, value for money considerations (including an update on improved terms negotiated by the Council this year) and plans for the procurement of further support when the current contract ends next year. The report is planned to go to Cabinet Resources Committee at the end of September.”

 

Well Mr Hughes, was that September 2012 or September 2013 because as far as I can see no report on this matter has as yet been sent to the Cabinet Resources Committee.   12 months on and we have gone way past the £6 million mark yet not one councillor has formally raised the issue of such a massive overspend. 

 

Personally I think that this is nothing short of a scandal. How a £2 million contract can hit £6.3 million and no one, other than members of the public, asks any questions, is beyond me.

One Barnet Bill Rises Inexorably

Barnet Council's supplier payments  reveals that the cost for One Barnet advice in January 2013  was £456,131.45 or around £22,800 every working day of the month.
 
Agilisys, the Council's One Barnet Implementation partner, billed £274,283.82. This brings their bill to date to £5.8 million - not bad for a contract that was due to cost 'circa' £2 million and still has 6 months to run. The Council's legal advisors, Trowers & Hamlins, billed £181,847.63 (this excludes charges for advice to the Housing Revenue Account).

Interestingly, if you were to search the supplier payments spreadsheet looking for One Barnet Programme payments, it would show costs are only £65,395.62 including £34,000 of Trowers & Hamlins fees and not a single penny of Agilisys payments. Transparency of One Barnet costs is poor and without that analysis how can the Council fully understand what it is actually costing them? Maybe they just don't want to know.

December bill for One Barnet professional advice - £650k

December supplier payments for Barnet are out today and yet again, One Barnet Implementation Partner, Agilisys, have been billing prodigiously . In December they billed £485,682.03 or more than £25,000/day every working day of December. That brings the total paid to Agilisys in 2012 for the implementation of One Barnet to £3,862,550.32 and over £5.5 million since the contract started. This is the contract that was originally expected to cost "circa £2 million".

Legal advice from Trowers & Hamlins for the Commercial Directorate (which means the One Barnet project) was £164,928.86. So between Agilisys and T&H, it cost Barnet residents £650,000 in December.

Richard Cornelius was saying any delay in implementing One Barnet will cost the council £1 million a month. I now understand why - it's all those bl***y fees.

One Barnet costs us £450,000 in professional fees in November

Barnet's supplier payments for November are out and they reveal that, yet again, One Barnet has cost us a fortune. In addition to Trowers & Hamlin's bill for £202,058.87, our long standing Implementation Partner, Agilisys, billed £248,727.97 bringing the total billed by Agilisys to over £5 million with 10 months still to run on the contract. Not bad for a contract that was estimated to cost "circa" £2 million in September 2010.

It is also interesting to note that the legal service now outsourced to the London Borough of Harrow cost Barnet residents £348,947.62 last month. I wonder how that compares to what the service would have cost us if it was still in house.

Doesn't bode well for the Capita contract does it?

One Barnet - 447,197 Reasons to Pull the Plug

Barnet's supplier payments for September have just been released and yet again Barnet's Implementation Partner have submitted a huge bill. In September they billed £447,197.21. That is £22,360 every working day of September. Since January 2012 Agilisys have billed over £2.5 million, more in 9 months than Councillor were told in would cost over the entire three year contract. So far this contract alone has cost us £4.2 million and there are numerous other consultants and legal advisors who are merrily billing us with great delight.

Trowers & Hamlins, who are providing legal advice on One Barnet, have also billed £123,259.79 in September or £6,163 per day.  Oh, and welcome to new consultancy supplier Sticky Change Limited who were paid a rather modest £6,539.50 for some consultancy work for the commercial department.

Barnet Councillors keep saying there is no alternative to One Barnet. Frankly I cannot see how we can keep paying out such huge sums to consultants when the two outsourcing contracts still haven't been let. It's a bit like a gambler who, every time they lose their bet, double up on the next bet in the hope of winning back their losses. The council needs to go consultant cold turkey, break this costly addiction and start using common sense to make savings.

One Barnet Bill for August - A Third of a Million Pounds on Professional Fees

Every month the bill for One Barnet consultants and lawyers continues to rise. The August payments are out and Agilisys have cut back slightly billing only £226,538.27. The Council's legal; advisers Trowers & Hamlins have also billed £106,767.70 making almost exactly a third of a million pounds this month on One Barnet in fees. When the Council have the cheek to tell us that services have to be cut because of the need to reduce costs remind them how much money they have frittered away on professional fees in the last three years on this mad One Barnet project.

Arrogance, Overspend, Complacency and the Audit Trail that Leads Nowhere

Imagine the scene. You want a loft extension for your house. You employ a builder but to safeguard your interests you also employ a project manager. “How much will this extension cost me” you ask the builder. “Approximately £20,000” says the builder. “OK”, you say knowing that the project manager will be keeping an eye on the bills. Eight weeks later the loft extension is still only half built and you are presented with a bill for £40,000 on account. Turning to your project manager you say," Hang on a minute, I thought it would be approximately £20,000 but it’s double that and it’s still not finished". “Yes”, says the project manager “but it wasn’t a fixed quote and they are lovely people”. You leaf through the invoices and there are bills for gardening work, resurfacing the driveway and hosting a barbeque for your neighbours. “Hang on a minute,” you say, “what is all this for”. "Well" says the project manager “it didn't cost that much and it needed doing so while they were here I thought I would just get them to do the work ”. 

Now I know this sounds like an implausible story but is very similar to the one being played out in Barnet right now on the One Barnet project.

Back in July 2010, Councillor Dan Thomas signed a Delegated Powers Report awarding the Implementation Partner Contract for a three year period to Agilisys working with iMPOWER. The value of this contract was in excess of £500,000 in the first year of delivery with circa £2,000,000 identified as potential contract delivery cost over a three year period.

In the last two years Agilisys have billed over £3.5 million and, at the current run rate of £275,000 a month, is likely to hit £6 million by the end of the contract next year. So Councillors were told it would cost "circa" £2 million it is already almost double that figure and by the end of the contract period will possibly be treble the figure agreed.

To his credit, Councillor Jack Cohen queried this contract at the Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Sub Committee in September2010  and as a result (and if I recall correctly, with the key vote of Councillor Mark Shooter) the Committee referred back the contract “to the Cabinet Member for Resources & Performance (Councillor Thomas) for reconsideration with particular reference to the precise role of the contractor and overall cost of the contract”.

Councillor Thomas subsequently decided to “retain the original decision without amendment”. In other words P*** Off!

I keep a watchful eye over the council’s spending and when I had the opportunity to query the accounts in July with Barnet’s external auditors, Grant Thornton, this contract was one of the particular issues I raised. I had two concerns:

1. That councillors had been led to believe this contract was going to cost around £2 million and that it looked like on present spending it was going to cost £6 million. As such, were officers legally allowed to exceed this budget by so much without getting further approval for the spending by Councillors and did this make that spending ultra vires; and
2. Part of the money paid to Agilisys was to develop the Council’s new website which was outside the scope of the original contract and therefore potentially in breach of EU procurement rules.

 Now, I’m not sure what I expected in reply from the auditor but it certainly wasn’t the response I received.

On the first point the auditor said, 

“With regard to your point on the level of spend, it is clear that the £2 million figure is an indicative one.  The Council's 2010/11 budget estimates costs of setting up the programme and projects at £3 million. The spend to date on the contract is approaching £4 million. Although ongoing spend and value for money is monitored by the Council's Corporate Directors' Group, there is nothing in the Council's constitution that requires the reporting back to members for this contract on the basis that there is no maximum contract value set. From the review of working papers, I am satisfied that there is no need for me to take formal legal advice as to the legality of the £4 million contract as I have not seen evidence that the council has acted outside of its powers. Based on these findings, I have concluded that the Council has followed its own rules in terms of the nature and level of spend under this contract and that there is no legality issue that would impact on my ability to certify the 2011/12 audit closed.”

So Councillors, there you have it. By adding the word “circa” to the estimate of costs it means that officers can spend what they like and they have no constitutional requirement to report back to you when it goes massively over budget. I wonder how the members of the Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Committee feel about this statement. They queried a contract that they were led to believe would be “circa” £2 million. Maybe an overspend of £100,000 or £200,000 might be acceptable within the term “circa” but given this contract may end up costing £6 million, I do not think that could be reasonably viewed as circa £2 million by any normal person. But the auditor says it’s OK, so tough luck.

Obviously this has made certain people at Barnet Council very uncomfortable so the auditor has added that:

 “I have discussed your second point around the governance of the level of spend on the contract and the Council agrees that it would be good practice to take an update report to the Cabinet Resources Committee. The Council is drafting this report which will update members on the level of spend to date, revised projections for level of spend over the three year period of the contract, value for money considerations (including an update on improved terms negotiated by the Council this year) and plans for the procurement of further support when the current contract ends next year. The report is planned to go to Cabinet Resources Committee at the end of September.”

So how comes it takes an ordinary member of the public to get the auditor to talk to officers to draft a report updating councillors that a contract is millions of pounds overspent? Is it something the 63 councillors paid just under £1.1 million a year should be doing? Is it something the Chief Executive paid £200,000 a year should be on top of? Either way it shouldn’t be down to me.

On the second point about Agilisys being given work to develop the council’s new website the auditor was, in my personal opinion, equally dismissive. I set out quite clearly that the Implementation Partner was awarded the contract on something called a framework agreement. This is a central government agreement with a number of suppliers for specific services and alleviates the need for councils like Barnet to go to a full open tender. The implementation partner contract was let on a framework for BusinessConsultancy Services  for which Agilisys is an approved supplier. I know it was let on a framework agreement because back in 2010 I specifically asked a question about it. There is a completely different framework agreement for Website Development  lot 6, for which Agilisys is not an approved supplier.

The auditor’s response was as follows:

“The element of spend that is with Agilysis is on business consultancy associated with the customer services transformation which is clearly a wider project than just website redesign. It makes sense that consideration of the website be dealt with as an integral part of the wider customer services project. I note that the technical element relating to pure web design included in the business case document is a small proportion of the overall project budget.

We therefore propose to take no further action in respect of your contention that this arrangement breaks EU procurement law. We remain of the view that no compelling evidence exists to suggest that this transaction represents expenditure which is outside the Council’s powers and for which we would seek legal advice”.

Given that Agilisys have been paid more than £300,000 specifically for the website development and this is above the EU procurement threshold, then in my humble opinion the fact that it is a “small proportion” of the £3.5 million paid to Agilisys to date is irrelevant.

I have reached an impasse in my dealings with Grant Thornton and I really wonder whose side they are on? I do not do this for political motives as I am not a member of any political party. I do this because I am a resident of Barnet and am utterly fed up with the cavalier way residents’ money is being spent without adequate regard for the checks and balances that I would expect to be in place.

As a disillusioned resident I have no confidence in the officers and the way they spend our money, I have no confidence in councillors keeping the officers’ spending in check and I am rapidly losing confidence in our external auditor to take issues like this one seriously. Something is deeply wrong in Barnet and if this attitude is replicated with the One Barnet contract, I can see the residents being right royally ripped off with absolutely no comeback.

Barnet Supplier Payments - is spending out of control?

The supplier payments for July are out this morning and yet again Barnet Council's Implementation Partner have been well rewarded. They have billed £276,454.77 this month and there seems no sign of the spending on this contract slowing down. For a contract that was originally budgeted to cost 'circa' £2 million and could end up costing close to £6 million, I am constantly surprised at the relaxed approach the council take to this contract.

Please read this blog on Monday as there will be some very interesting details about this contract.

I also note that the new parking contractor NSL has billed £588,195.32 this month. I hope that this represents a saving on what the previous in house team cost. Perhaps the Council would care to enlighten us?

My question is who is monitoring all this spending other than the Bloggers?

One Barnet Consultants - another £272k last month

The Barnet Council supplier payments for June are now out and once again Barnet's Implementation Partner, Agilisys, have done well. In June they billed £272,787.30 bringing their total invoices for the first six months of 2012 to £1.56 million.

Every single penny of that money is discretionary spend. It didn't have to be spent. There was a clear Officer/Cabinet decision to spend that money. Last month I thought their spend was slowing down as it was 'only' £165,575, but in June it is back to the levels we saw in January and February.

Cllr Cornelius, how much longer are you going to let the senior officers and your young but entirely inexperience cabinet colleague pull the wool over your eyes. This is a budget that is out of control and someone needs to get a grip. If you don't take any action a quarter of a million pounds every month is going to continue to be squandered on just one firm of consultants to give you a solution which 70% of local authority Chief Executives and senior officers believe reduces control and increases risk.

One Barnet Costs Out of Control

Back in  August 2010 Barnet Council issued a Delegated Powers Report, 1134,  for the award of the Implementation Partner Contract for the One Barnet project and was awarded to Agilisys/iMPOWER. (Mysteriously that report is now missing from the Council's website).  In that report the value of the contract was estimated to be in excess of £500,000. I raised this contract award at Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 13 September 2010 and it was also picked up by Cllr Jack Cohen who asked for the report to be called in. At the meeting Cllr Cohen asked for the maximum value of the contract but because this was declared to be exempt information, the public were forced to leave the meeting.

Subsequently the Barnet Bugle submitted a Freedom of Information request to ascertain this maximum value. Following an initial refusal and a request for an internal review, the response which came back eventually stated:

"The establishment of an Implementation Partner contract enables the provision of consultants for specific assignments based on end to end process of phased delivery requirements. This means that the forecast cost of  the contract cannot be fully predicted it will be in excess of £500,000 [in the first year of delivery with circa £2,000,000 identified as potential contract delivery cost over a three year period.]" The section in brackets is the important information which was originally withheld.

The call in was reviewed by Cllr Dan Thomas who had originally signed off the DPR and he said he had decided to retain the contract without amendment - so from his point of view Cllr Thomas was happy with the contract as it stood.

Now just two years on, the bill for Agilisys at at 31 May 2012 is a shade under £3 million  (£2,972,667.37) £1 million more than forecast and there is still a year to run on the contract.

I don't know who is keeping tabs on this spending (other than me) but if I had signed off a contract that was running 50% over total budget with a third of the contract term still to run, I would be kicking up merry hell asking what on earth was going on.

During the Inspection of Accounts I did try and review the details on the invoices submitted by Agilisys and reconcile them to the contract but according to Barnet Council that information is commercially sensitive so both invoices and contract were excessively redacted to the point that I could not see how many days they have billed or what daily rate they have applied.

I have raised this matter with Grant Thornton, the Council's external auditor, as I wonder if this additonal £1 million should have been spent on this contract without any subsequent authorisation or if any further spending with Agilisys is ultra vires. I will have to await a response from Mr Hughes but irrespective of the outcome it illustrates that the Council's "relentless desire for efficiency" doesn't appear to extend to monitoring supplier payments.

Accident Black Spot at Barnet Council - Democracy in Intensive Care

The culture of secrecy and paranoia was alive and kicking at the North London Business Park this morning. I was attending to inspect some invoices and contracts as is every resident’s statutory right under Sections 15 and 16 of the Audit Commission Act 1998. I was accompanied by Mrs Angry and Mr Mustard and a gentleman who had a specific interest in the parking contract.

I had given the council 10 working days notice of my requirements yet sadly two contracts were still not available to inspect as they were still busy redacting their contents.

Last year, names were redacted but I was at least able to see how much Barnet was paying for services.  This year the black pen was in overdrive.  On many of the invoices the only visible figure was the total amount, something which is already available in the supplier payments list. For example, the invoices from Agilisys, the Council’s One Barnet Implementation Partner, did not show daily rates or even the number of days work provided just the total figure. Given that Barnet Council paid Agilisys £2,168,555.05 in the financial year 2011/12, I think it is perfectly reasonable to know how many days work we got for that fee.

One less redacted invoice shows that Barnet are still buying those delightfully expensive HP tablet computers .

When I looked at the contracts this is where the obsessive redaction really had taken over. In one contract all of the fee rates had been redacted because the information was “commercially sensitive”. However in the contract there is a section where a supplier can state what elements they wish to be considered commercially sensitive and they had written “N/A” against each line. My interpretation of that is the contractor had not declared the information to be commercially sensitive but that Barnet had declared it "politically sensitive".

Another contract associated with the One Barnet programme had the bidder's entire submission redacted; page after page of black pen. Fee rates had obviously bitten the dust but in their proposal all that remained was the contents page and section headings. Why, for example,  are we not allowed to reviewed the contractors approach to dealing with conflicts of interest and confidentiality of data. Surely there is nothing commercially sensitive about that? 

In one contract there is a detailed clause stating that even though a contractor may deem information commercially sensitive it may not be, for example, once a contract has been awarded. The contract goes on to state that “Tenderers should note that no information is likely to be regarded as exempt forever”. It should have added “except to residents” as every single cost schedule was redacted.

This is our money the Council is spending and every resident should be able to inspect the accounts as set out under the 1998 Act. However, in Barnet they are obviously so afraid of what the bloggers might find that they are happy to ignore their own contract rules to prevent us from seeing the truth.

Escorted to the toilet, I did at times feel a bit like a prisoner. I paid my £2.28 to get copies of the invoices I asked for (the black toner cartridge must have been working overtime). 

North London Business Park is adopting a siege mentality to residents. This will not end well.

One Barnet Bill Continues to Rise

Reading through the Barnet Council supplier payments for May the usual suspects appear on the payments list. The BarnetGroup which includes Barnet Homes and adult social care received £4.6 million, Greater London Authority also received  £4.6 million, Veolia Water received £1.5 million but these are elements which we have no choice in paying. However, when I look down the list  I see a few suppliers where we do have a choice as to whether we should be paying for their services.

Agilisys, the One Barnet implementation partner clocked up another £180,532.68 in fees in May along with Trowers & Hamlins who are providing legal advice to the council, billing £165,575.69 for the month of May.  Together that is over a third of a million pounds just in May. Not all of Trowers & Hamlins may have been spent directly on One Barnet projects  but I suspect it was a significant proportion. However, due to the secrecy and lack of scrutiny that surrounds the entire One Barnet project we will never know.

Someone kindly left an anonymous comment that the implementation handover for One Barnet outsourcing now looks like is will be May next year, some five months after it was originally scheduled. With fees being clocked up at the rate of £300k per month that could mean another £1.5 million of fees clocked up just because the project is running late. This project was budgeted to cost £9.4 million to implement but with another year to go what will the final bill be? £10 million, £15million, £20 million? The residents of Barnet are not allowed to know, we can't ask questions about it and speaking to some Councillors they just don't know either.

 If I was a Barnet Councillor I would be demanding that senior officers provide a detailed monthly briefing paper on One Barnet, published on line for every council taxpayer to see, to understand just how much money is being poured down this black hole and how much longer this is going to continue. 

Kerching! Barnet Council pays millions to one firm of consultants

Barnet Council published their supplier payments for March today and this means we now have the payments for the complete financial year. This month sees some large payments to various suppliers including:

Barnet Lighting £1,458,123.15
City Suburban Tree Surgeons Ltd £352,790.06
Civica UK Ltd £436,493.51
Trowers & Hamlins £171,562.09

However one number which jumps off the page this month is the payment to Agilisys, the One Barnet Implementation Partner. In March Agilisys were paid £619,656.75. That brings the total fees paid to Agilisys for the first three months of 2012 to over £1.1 million and over £2.8 million since they started.

I am sure that Agilisys do an excellent job but at a time when massive cuts are being made to the services of the most vulnerable, have Barnet Council got their priorities rights spending over £2.8 million with just one firm of consultants.

One Barnet is a project shrouded in secrecy. Residents are not allowed to discuss it at residents forums. How much longer can Councillors spend such vast sums of money without openly discussing this subject with the ratepayers of Barnet?

Agilisys - £248k fee in February

Barnet Council published their supplier payments for February last Friday. Sadly the Council's love affair with their One Barnet implementation partner just keeps on rolling. In February Agilisys were paid £248,169.40, slightly down on the £270,719.50they were paid in January. So in the first two months of 2012 Agilisys have been paid over half a million pounds of council tax payers money to help implement One Barnet. Yet this is something we are not allowed to discuss at the residents forums.

In the year to date Agilisys have been paid £1.55 million and when coupled with the £642,050.64 they received last financial year they have now billed £2.2million. That is £2.2 million to just one firm of consultants.

Only in Barnet!

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

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

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

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

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

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