Sandbanks Hotel time again - £17,000 for a conference

Oh dear. It comes around every year. The time when the poor old head teachers of Barnet need to get away and do their professional development by the seaside. Barnet have just signed off authorisation for the annual conference at the Sandbanks Hotel, Poole, in October here. Barnet Council says that the £17,000 cost of this residential conference is funded by the schools who pay for places but frankly, given the cuts that are being made currently and the news today that Danegrove School is struggling to raise money to pay for essential play equipment, it does seem rather profligate. Lots of private business stopped resident conferences years ago, hosting these types of events closer to home and avoiding the cost of overnight accommodation. There are plenty of venues in North London with day delegate rates of around £50-£55 per person and that would be keeping money in the local economy. In a time of austerity is it right to spend so much on a conference? I don't think so.

Sandbanks time again - Teachers have a £17,000 holiday in Poole

It that time of year again when the Assistant and Deputy head teachers of Barnet pop off to the delightful Sandbanks Hotels at Poole in Dorset. Barnet Council says that it doesn't cost the council anything because they sell places to schools. They did get quotes from other hotels but their quotes for a 24 hour delegate rate were considerably higher than Sandbanks.  I wonder which hotel wanted to charge £251.50 per day - it must have been rather nice.  However, given the period of austerity we are in, it does seem rather profligate to be spending £17,000 on a nice conference at the seaside when there are excellent non residential conference facilities right here in Barnet on North London Business Park. No expensive hotel charges and no travel costs. The details are set out in the delegated powers report here.

It’s Sandbanks time again!

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.

April Spending at Barnet Council

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.