My responses to the Barnet Budget Consultation

Barnet Council are currently consulting on the budget for next year which you can find here. It is both complex and time consuming but it really matters as, based on this budget proposal, Barnet are facing a massive budget shortfall over the next five years.

Originally Barnet had planned a 2.99% council tax increase plus a 2% social care precept to get closer to closing the gap but the government reduce the threshold at which point a council has to hold a referendum from 2.99% to 1.99% so Barnet have opted for the lower figure. They are proposing many cuts but the issue is whether they are achievable or acceptable and even with these cuts, we will still have a massive on-going shortfall.  I would urge everyone to at least speak with their local councillor about the budget proposals even if they don't have the time to go through the consultation.

For what it's worth I have set out below my comments that I submitted as part of the consultation. Commenting on each budget cuts in each area:

Adults - you are using capital budget for community equipment which will not have an asset value, which cannot be transferred and which is a one off purchase. As such you will be constantly drawing from the capital budget which is not what the capital budget is for. Has this change been approved by the external auditor and if not is there a risk it will have to be reallocated to the revenue budget? The review of care packages to step down the accommodation setting to a less intensive option sometimes goes against the wishes of families and the individual which is unacceptable. The same issue is true for mental health packages. Purchasing nursing care packages from other boroughs means that friends and relatives will have to travel further to see their friends and loved ones and may mean they become isolated. Does the over-delivery against projected income from the GLL leisure services contract take into account the £700k of lost revenue to date caused by the closure of Finchley Lido?

Childrens: How can you be confident of delivering the savings of remodelled placements while at the same time delivering the same or better care. This seems a very large saving which, if it could have been made, would have happened before now. The service is demand led and due to the on-going austerity means that demand may continue to increase. The 4 day week for back office staff appears entirely implausible. If staff are not needed, then make the post redundant. The risk is that staff will end up doing 5 days work in 4 days, either causing burn out of staff, staff turnover to rise, or work not being done properly which could place children or staff at risk.

Environment: There is no supporting evidence to justify the £5 million of savings for "Smart Cities" whatever that means or for parking charges. The other issue for parking charges is that there are restricted services on which the special parking account funds can be spent so how confident are you that even if the money can be generated (for which there is no evidence) that it can be spent on services that are under cost pressure. Does the £700k of savings/increased revenue from advertising mean that the borough will become plastered in ugly advertising signage and with the continue shift of advertising revenues to online/social media what confidence is there that this is a robust and continuing revenue stream.

Housing: While all the new accommodation will generate more council tax there seems to be no recognition that more people means more demand for services. So with one hand you are making cuts to services yet with the other you are actively creating more demand by encouraging more development. It seems ludicrous to say you will generate £203k a year from subletting Barnet House when it is costing £65k a month for the next 12 years because the council moved offices to Colindale without exiting the lease at Barnet House. Exiting the lease at NLBP was always planned and part of the business case for moving to Colindale. This entry in effect shows the saving twice.

P&R: You are planning to reconfigure commercial, performance and executive support at a time when more rigorous control and enforcement of contracts is vital and when contractual failings have been repeatedly identified. This seems like a massive false economy. Are the cuts to the CSG contract real or on paper only?

On the proposed Council Tax Increase:

Barnet itself identified that you needed to increase council tax by at least 2.99% and that this has only been reduced because the government limit for a referendum has been reduced to 1.99%. To accept this cut in your planned budget is financially irresponsible. It is clear you need to increase council tax by more than 1.99% and if you refuse to make further increases it simply makes the problem worse as every year goes by. You have to act responsibly and if that means people have to pay more then so be it - you engineered this problem by 7 years of council tax freezes. To get to a balanced budget you need to take an 8% increase in CT in year 1 (+social care precept of 2%) and then 2.99% CT + 2% social care precept thereafter to get even close to a balanced budget by year 5. If you fail to act now you risk bankrupting the council in the next 3-5 years as your reserves chart clearly shows.

The problem is the public haven't been able to comment on any of these savings at committee stage because so many meetings were cancelled in the election purdah period and the public are now gagged from making comments or asking more than one question at committees. Consultation only has value if it is meaningful. Even opposition Councillors at the Policy & Resources Committee on Monday made the point that the details are so sketchy and that if a Councillor doesn't understand the detail, how can the general public be expected to understand them.

Barnet Budget Consultation - Not at the Residents Forums

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.

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

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?

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.

My One to One with Cllr Thomas

I was very disappointed that the public consultation was cancelled so it was some comfort that Cllr Thomas agreed to ring me yesterday to listen to my views. I will not report what Cllr Thomas said. I respect his privacy and I do not want to mis quote him but I will share my side of the conversation with him.

My starting point was that before we start salami slicing individual services it is important to look at the structure of Barnet Council and how the Council is run. My view is the council is remote from the views and ambitions of the residents and the splendid isolation of North London Business Park (rental cost £1.7 million in the last six months)simply reinforces that disconnect.

I expressed my concern that there is insufficient control over spending and that is evidenced by some of the invoices coming through on the suppliers list. Barnet publish a magazine called Everyone's A Winner and it is distributed at leisure centres amongst other outlets. Great, except according to the accounts this magazine cost £117,154.69!

Why, at a time when people are being made redundant, have the council spent £397,283.38 on job adverts. Why has the Council spent £5.5 million on agency staff in the last six months including £1,292,856.83 since July with Calco Services. I know there is the debate about flexibility of agency staff and the ability to get rid of them when they are no longer required but I question the scale of usage of agency staff.

I have worked on out sourcing projects for many years and I have seen some organisations who see outsourcing as a way of getting rid of problems rather than facing up to them. I fear this could be the case with Barnet.

This led me on to another issue and that is the role of consultants at the council. According to the suppliers list Barnet has spent £19,052,664.44 in consulting fees the last 6 months. Before we start looking at how we cut front line services like the libraries we need to start making inroads into theses big non-essential costs first. I touched on a number of other areas during our 1 hour discussion but I finished up on the point that the Council needs to start talking and listening to residents; we aren't stupid and we do have a contribution to make. I sincerely hope Cllr Thomas listens and takes on board the views of residents. If not I suspect that they will achieve the worst of all worlds, making hideous cuts to services but failing to realise the savings they are looking for.

Please note that all of the figures I have quoted have been taken from the Barnet Council Vendor Payments over £500. I have tried as far as possible to be accurate in analysing the figures but going through the 25,662 separate entries occasional errors may occur.