The Collapsing Depot Part 2 - Scrutiny Process Gagged

Three weeks ago I wrote about the saga of the chaotic bin collection changes and the problems with the Oakleigh Road Depot. I didn't think things could get worse but in Barnet that is always a foolish assumption to make. On Thursday we had a Policy and Resources Committee. One of the late additions to the agenda was a report about the problems at the Oakleigh Road Depot with a further exempt report kept secret from the public. The public report gave outline details of the problem, which in summary is that there is a massive crack in the main roadway caused by part of the site slipping down the slope on which the depot is built, and pinned the blame on Willmott Dixon. The solution is as follows and will take 6 months to undertake:

"The current remedial works proposal constitutes a contiguous piled wall, from the rear of the footpath and stretching from the gatehouse in the North and to the South of the fuel station. This piled wall will be reinforced with reinforced capping beams and ground beams. In addition, this wall will be secured by ground anchors driven to a depth of over 16 metres".

They have known about this problem from the week the depot opened and they have already had to introduce a one way traffic system at the depot to avoid driving over the massive crack. As part of the solution, vehicles will have to refuel off site at local garages to avoid unnecessary traffic around the depot fuel tank.  It will also cause some residual waste and recycling rounds to move to Saturdays, to spread traffic movements more evenly across the week. The Council will also have to suspend the winter green waste collections approximately four weeks earlier than usual and require the extension of the opening times of Summers Lane recycling and reuse centre.

What the public report didn't mention (but was in the exempt report) is that, there are plans to reduce the use of the other waste depot in Harrow with all refuse vehicle run out of Oakleigh Road. So not only do we have restrictions but they are also going to increase the number of vehicles using the depot. As part of this relocation Barnet are planning to buy the site immediately behind the depot to accommodate the additional vehicles

Under the new gagging rules residents are apparently not even allowed to submit a written comment of 100 words or less, only a question. Personally I think this is not what was agreed at the originating committee but has been "fine tuned" by officers in the updated constitution. My banned comment was as follows:

"In June 2015 Capita prepared the detailed plans for the site and commissioned site investigations as appended to the planning application.  In June 2016 Capita acted as consulting engineers on a major soil stabilisation project. Capita project managed the depot construction. The site was known to be dominated by made ground. This report seems to entire ignore Capita’s role in this project and the significant fees they have received. There are numerous questions that need to be asked as to how this problem arose. I request this committee to commission an independent investigation into why this situation has arisen".

I also asked four questions which are also banned so I have asked for the to be answered under the FOI act although any responses will of course come far to late to inform decisions made at the committee. These included:

1. Is there any risk that surface water containing fuel from vehicles can pass directly through the surface cracks and into the ground water without being capture by the oil & fuel interceptors and has the ground water been tested to see if this is happening?
2. Has the ground movement had any impact on the vehicle fuel storage tank and have any tests been undertaken to ensure there is no risk of fuel leaking from the fuel storage tank?
3. The site has one or more attenuation tanks. Has any investigation been undertaken to ensure that the integrity of these tanks has been unaffected by the ground movement?
4. There is a large culvert running under the site. Have any investigations been undertaken to ensure that the culvert has been unaffected by the ground movements?

Now some councillors may say these questions are a waste of money answering, some may say they are politically motivated but from my perspective they are really important, especially when there are residents who live literally metres away from the depot in Coppies Grove.

Given the plan is to extend into the site behind the depot adjacent to the railway line, the reason  for asking these questions is to ensure that we understand how these problems arose and make sure they don't reoccur when the site is expanded.

@BrokenBarnet had one question accepted about this at the committee meeting which was as follows:
Will Capita face any contractual penalties for failures in construction, or project management, in regard to the Depot?  and the response was "There is currently no evidence to suggest that Capita has any liability to the Council in respect of this matter".

Now this ties in with my banned comment where I set out evidence that Capita were significantly involved having carried out a detailed site investigation report back in 2015 and acting as consulting engineers to a soil stabilisation project on the site. In the committee report Capita's name isn't mentioned once yet they were heavily involved in the site investigation and knew of the problems that might cause the subsidence. In their 2015 report they noted that the site and surrounding area originally sloped to the north. However, when the site was originally developed, to create a suitable development platform, fill was imported to raise levels across the majority of the site. This "Made Ground" forms a “wedge” of fill which generally thickens to the north of the site, is up to 7 metres deep and is made up of  clay and sand plus a mixture of "oversize brick, concrete, metal, wood and plastic". They also found pieces of a sheet of asbestos, hydrocarbons and water ingress into the boreholes at quite shallow depths. Photos of the boreholes are in the report with a couple included below:

Now all of those things should have been ringing alarm bells if the site was to be used daily by a large numbers of heavy vehicles. As part of the depot development, soil stabilisation works were carried out with Capita acting as the consulting engineers.

In addition, it is important to understand that Capita were the project managers for the depot development so should have been aware of the issues of the site throughout the construction by Willmott Dixon. Barnet say there is currently no evidence that Capita have a liability to the council on this matter but I would suggest there is evidence that should at least be examined, especially if Capita are to project manage the extension of the depot.

What this also suggests is that less than 12 months after a massive and disruptive waste round reorganisation that was predicated on having two depots, one at Oakleigh Road and one in Harrow,  we now face having to review all of those rounds again, once we are back to a one depot solution, this time in the East of the Borough.

The shutting down of any debate on this is a very serious matter but Barnet seem happy that there is absolutely no public scrutiny of a critical and expensive public service. This seems to be the Barnet way and it is unacceptable.

Who cares?

UPDATED 30 October 2021: 

I originally wrote a blog about the Apthorp Care Centre back in July 2019 (see below) setting out the failure of the operator to deliver a safe service to residents. This is a centre that was contracted out yet when the service failed it was simply handed back. Since then Barnet Council's 100% owned Arms Length Management Organisation, Barnet Group have been running the centre. In recent months the centre has been found to have a number of building problems (even though the building is less than 20 years old) and so the Council has decided to close the building indefinitely while building works are undertaken and make all of the care staff redundant. I have just been to a demonstration outside the centre where some of the redundant care workers were present. 

This whole situation seems mad. NHS trusts up and down the country are saying that the cannot discharge elderly people out of hospital because of the lack of care workers either to provide in-home care or into care homes that are short staffed. From what I understand Barnet Group are saying they cannot upgrade Apthorp in phases, for example, doing one wing at a time so have to close the entire care home, all 120 beds. Something just doesn't seem right here. It smells very badly and makes we wonder what the long term use of this building is planned. It is also important to note that Barnet do not own this building that they are spending so much money repairing - it is owned by Catalyst the company to whom the care homes were outsourced. Back in 2019 I was asking why the operator was not being more closely monitored and it seems Barnet Council weren't monitoring the building either. When they took the contract back from Fremantle in 2019 they should have also reviewed the state of repair and held Fremantle responsible for any failings to maintain it properly but apparently did not happen. Questions need to be asked how such a disastrous position could have been reached in such a modern building.

 Staff today were calling for a Public Inquiry into what has happened at Apthorp Care Centre and they are absolutely right. Something here stinks. 93 care workers have been made redundant at a time of care worker shortages and very frail and elderly residents have been moved out of their home and the people they know and who care for them removed. At the same time Barnet residents are being landed with a massive repair bill for a building we don't own. We need answers.

Post from 2019:

Back in January the Care Quality Commission (CQC) published a damning report about a local care home, Apthorp Care Centre which is located near the bottom of Oakhill Park in East Barnet. The CQC gave the home an inadequate rating and a number of the specific details were quite shocking, including:

• No Registered Manager in post;
• Bathrooms were dirty and this exposed people to the risk of harm due to poor infection control practice;
• All the showers were out of use due to legionella in the water system and yet five of the seven baths were being used for equipment storage;
• Breaches of five regulations relating to person-centre care, safe care and treatment, premises and equipment, staffing and governance;
• Medicines were not administered in a systemic manner and not managed in a safe way;
• Risks to people were not appropriately mitigated and risk assessments were not always followed.

A quote from the Report:

"We  found bathrooms and toilets were dirty and being used inappropriately for storage. We saw two shared toilets had faeces visible on the outside of the toilet bowls. The flooring in some bathrooms was damaged meaning that they could not be effectively cleaned and posed an infection control risk. Where they were not damaged the floors were dirty and water stained. The showers in the home were currently out of use as they were being refitted following legionella being found in the water systems. The manager told us people were being supported to have washes and baths until the shower heads were replaced. Seven of the baths checked were dry and dusty. They were all dirty and one contained a dry, stained tissue underneath the bath chair. Five of the baths were being used to store equipment, some of which were Christmas decorations which staff told us had been brought down from the loft two days before our inspection. However, other items stored in bathrooms included clothing, bed linen, shopping trollies, people's clothing and wheelchairs. The cluttered nature of bathrooms meant they could not be effectively cleaned."

What is also important to understand is that this care home is run for Barnet Council by Fremantle and in 2018/19 Barnet paid Fremantle £3.99 million to provide care for Barnet residents. I was aware that Barnet has a system that is supposed to monitor these contracts so on 25 February I submitted the following questions in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request:

• In the years 2017 and 2018 how many time did Barnet Councils' Care Quality Advisors visit Apthorp Care Centre (Nurserymans Road, London N11 1EQ)?
• Please provide me with copies of the monitoring reports of all the visits to Apthorp Care Centre in 2017 and 2018.
• Please provide me with copies of all the monthly reports setting out provider risks and concerns which are circulated to the DASS and to the DU's Leadership team for 2017 and 2018.
• Please provide me with details of the support Care Quality Advisors provided to Apthorp Care Centre through best practice support and supporting staff development in 2017 and 2018.

After just over a month, the initial response to my FOI was for Barnet to refuse to answer any of the questions, something which I found astonishing and so I immediately requested an internal review. That was on the 28 March. The deadline came and went and no review was forthcoming. Trying to speak to anyone at Barnet Council proved incredibly difficult and after 11 calls I eventually got through to someone. I had also spoken to my local councillor, Felix Byers, who had emailed the FOI department, but when I spoke with them they said they had no record of his email. Barnet said they would fast track the internal review but again that was an empty promise. Eventually on 20 June, after threats to go to the Information Commissioner, I received  a response. Two questions were answered and two were again refused. What the answers did reveal was that:

There was no log of visits from Care Quality Advisors in 2017: "We do not maintain an accurate records of all visits by Care Quality Advisors to Apthorp Care Centre as far back as 2017 but we have a record of 21 care reviews of residents that were carried out in 2017". They speak as if 2017 was a long time ago which again I find staggering.

In 2018: "there were 2 Contract Monitoring visits, 16 visits from Care Quality Advisors, 12 resident care reviews and 21 visits from the Enhanced Care Homes Team. The Enhanced Care Homes Team is commissioned by Barnet CCG and works in partnership with the Care Quality Team in the Adults and Health Directorate to support care homes in the borough." 

Even though there were a large number of visits (51) to this care home the shortcomings they indicate were clearly still present when the CQC made their inspection, suggesting little or no remedial action had been taken. There is absolutely no point in having monitoring regime if no actions or changes in behaviour and performance are forthcoming. Given that Barnet were paying Fremantle a shade under £4 million per annum, why didn't Barnet bang the table and demand improvements with the threat of withdrawing the contract to ensure problems were remedied.

Another quote from the report:

"When people were permanent residents at the home their medicines were supplied by a local pharmacist with printed medicine administration records (MAR). The files where MAR were stored were chaotic and held information that was not relevant to the administration of medicines, for example, reminders to put menus out were also in this file. The files also contained old information and some MAR were loose and not kept with the other MAR for that person. Staff had not recorded incoming medicines on the MAR. Furthermore, some entries were handwritten by care workers into MAR charts and this was not always legible or easy to read. The detail of how to support people to take their medicines was not always completed, which meant people did not always get the support they needed. For example, we saw a care worker gave one person a tablet then walked away before checking the person had actually swallowed their medicine. There was no information to inform this care worker about how to support this person to take their medicines properly."

The other question they answered were the details of care support provided by Care Quality Advisors in 2018 (as they don't have records for 2017). This included:

• The Care Quality Advisors undertook regular visits to the home which included updating of risk assessment as well as supporting and monitoring the homes improvement plan. Once the provider concerns process has been invoked full risk assessments are completed and mitigating actions monitored through a regular action plan including staff support and development.
• The Care Quality Advisors reviewed and recommended improvements in regard to the homes policies, procedures, care plans and fluid charts.
• Workshops were provided by the Care Quality Advisors on effective care planning and evaluation.
• Care Quality advisors liaised with Environmental Health colleagues in regard to Legionella issues at the home.
• There were 12 care reviews of residents to ensure their care needs are being met by the home.
• Contract monitoring visits were undertaken to monitor performance.
• Joint work was carried out with NHS colleagues including pharmacists to improve medicines management. 
• The Enhanced Health in Care Homes team delivered seven "Significant 7" programme training sessions, with 24 follow up visits reviewing and case tracking residents to monitor the success of the intervention. Significant 7 is a programme which supports staff to identify signs of deterioration in a resident at an early stage, allowing preventive action to be taken and reduce hospital admissions. The team also supported Apthorp to adopt the use of a ‘red bag’ to support smoother hospital discharges.

This reinforces the impression that although the problems were identified and some support was provided, the situation had still not changed by the time the CQC carried out their unannounced visit on 11 December. This suggests that there were no sanctions or effective enforcement in place, especially from the Contract Monitoring staff. I specifically wanted to see copies of the Care Quality Advisor reports so that I could understand how these concerns were being portrayed and what follow up actions were required.

If this was a restaurant that received a zero hygiene rating there would be a report which sets out the issues for immediate remedy, a clearly defined timetable for remedial action to take place and a deadline for a follow up inspection. All logical steps to ensure a problem is resolved. If the matters are not resolved there is the ultimate sanction of a closure notice. This suggests that while our local takeaways are adequately regulated to ensure our health is safeguarded, the care our elderly friends and relatives receive is at the mercy of a more passive, lax monitoring regime. I am continuing to pursue Barnet for the disclosure of these reports as without them we have no clear idea how the monitoring regime is managed and that means residents in any of the other 100+ care homes in Barnet could also be at risk.

Since the appalling CQC report Fremantle have decided to hand back the management of the three homes they managed on behalf of Barnet. The Barnet Group (which is 100% owned by Barnet Council) will take over the management of the homes and I understand the staff are in the process of being TUPE'd back to Barnet. It is good that the management of these homes will now be much more closely regulated but yet again it is a case of the public sector picking up an outsourcer's failure.

On the final item in my FOI request, copies of  monthly reports setting out provider risks and concerns which is circulated to the DASS (Director of Adult Social Services) and to the DU's (Delivery Unit's) Leadership team, Barnet are still refusing. I have reluctantly agreed to drop this request as I suspect it is devastatingly bad, flagging up the potential risk of other care home providers going bust. In April this year Four Seasons, one of Britain's largest care home providers, went into administration affecting 17,000 residents and patients. Between January 2016 and April 2019 there was a net reduction of 901 care homes in the UK with consolidation of beds into larger homes. A recent report in The Gazette suggest 1 in 4 care homes are financially unstable. In Barnet we have over 100 care homes and as such it is vital that we understand the risks of collapse.

While accepting the refusal I have asked that Councillors on the Adults & Safeguarding Committee be given copies of the reports under "Blue Papers" (not available to the public) so that they can understand the risks if they have not already been made aware of them.

This is a shocking story which has taken months and a great deal of persistence to uncover. It also highlights the shortcomings of the FOI system where often the first response is to refuse and how, even when councillors are involved, it still does not guarantee the answers will be forthcoming in a timely manner. Barnet are planning to close down questioning in committees and stop residents from making public comments in person. Residents provide an invaluable level of scrutiny yet it is something Barnet believes can be resolved through FOI's and talking to councillors.My own experience suggests that is a false assumption.  I will be pushing for this tragic case to be discussed at the next Adults & Safeguarding Committee and I will be asking to speak.

Mr Reasonable will not be gagged. If you believe Barnet are stifling public scrutiny please sign this petition http://chng.it/xNfks2T9.

Catalyst - Will History Repeat Itself?

Barnet Council are about to enter into a new contract with a company called Catalyst. So what you may say? Well this contract has already cost the Council (and therefore Council taxpayers) over £10 million in compensation and legal fees so you would have thought that there would be a great deal of scrutiny over any new contract to be entered into with this company. Well not in Barnet.
In order to understand this a bit more I have set out briefly the background to this contract.

Background:
Back in 2001 Barnet Council outsourced its residential care provision for elderly people to Ealing Family Housing Association (now Catalyst) and their care partner The Fremantle Trust. The contract was worth £9 million per annum and covered eleven care homes, four day centres, and over 300 staff all of which were transferred over to Catalyst.

This complex contract involved the rebuilding of a number of the homes and guarantees of the number of places the council would purchase at these homes. For the specific details I suggest you read this document.

The contract experienced problems due to delays with the rebuilding and with a change in needs of the elderly. This meant that more people either stayed in their own home or moved in to extra care sheltered housing rather than moving into a Catalyst care home leaving empty beds at these care homes. In August 2006 Catalyst formally submitted a Deficit Claim to recover cumulative losses on the contract between 2001 and 2005/6. In July 2007 a further adjustment claim was received covering 2006/7. The Council sought financial and legal advice and rejected the first claim, but the second claim remained in dispute. In 2007 the Council unsuccessfully attempted to renegotiate aspects of the contract to mitigate further deficits at which time they decided to go to Arbitration to resolve the Deficit Claim.

Skip forward to March 2011 and the arbitrators decision was finalised with the bill for Barnet Council as follows:

Final Award to Catalyst (including interest and costs) £8,674,000
Council’s final estimated legal costs £2,000,000
Outstanding issues (land swaps) £110,000
Total Cost £10,784,000

Some of these costs were offset against net income from Catalyst giving a final cost to Barnet Council of £10,252,000.

Today:
Now I am sorry that I have had to bore you with all of this information but it is essential to understand the background so as to make sense or otherwise of what the council is now doing.

Just over 1 week ago the Council released a Delegated Powers Report which set out the basis for the new contract with Catalyst and agreed that this recommendation should be exempted from call in by the Scrutiny Committee that would normally deal with this decision.

I wrote to the Chairman of that Committee, Cllr Hugh Rayner asking that he reconsider his decision to allow this report to be exempted from call in (so that it can be scrutinised) but he has said he will not do so. The argument is that because an earlier version of the report was tabled last November, albeit that it wasn’t finalised, that was the opportunity to call in the report and we have now missed our chance. I would point out that this tabled at a Cabinet Resources Committee meeting which, although it had 10 items on the agenda, was over in just 20 minutes according to the minutes. So no debate at all then.

Set out below are my concerns about this proposed new contract which I forwarded to Cllr Rayner and perhaps would have been useful to discuss:

• Catalyst appear to have successfully de-risked their part of the contract by simply becoming the landlord. This will guarantee them with a rental stream for the duration of the lease in return for dropping the ‘deficit clause’.

• It is not clear who will be responsible for repairs and upgrading of the homes over the next 21 years and it does not appear to resolve the issue of overall capacity. As such, in 10 years time Barnet could be leasing homes it does not require or which are entirely unsuitable for its needs.

• It is not clear when the “appropriate stage” for the break clause will occur or the terms of such a break clause. For example, it is likely to prove difficult to invoke a break clause on lease which covers all of the homes whilst there are residents in some of the homes. However, if each home has been let under a separate lease, the council would be able to invoke the break clause one home at a time, minimising unnecessary costs whilst retaining sufficient homes capacity to meet on-going need.

• By novating the Fremantle contract to the Council this has shifted the operating risk back to Barnet. Cllr Thomas, who signed off this report, states that “This novation will enable the Council to either negotiate a contract more appropriate to its needs or, retender the care provision and thus provide more flexibility in terms of block beds, the price per bed and the form and location of day care services”. However, it also places the responsibility back with the Council to find a suitable operator at the right price which may, in reality, prove very difficult to deliver.

• It is essential to understand the details of the contract that is being novated to ensure that the terms enable the council to renegotiate the contract with Fremantle without incurring subsequent penalties.

More fundamentally, I would have expected to see a strategy explaining what Barnet anticipates in terms of the changing care home needs of residents over the next 21 years, how this revised deal with Catalyst fits that strategy, what other options were considered, what risk analysis was done to test the robustness of this proposal and, finally, whether this deal represents good value for the rate payers in the medium to long term. I can see that this may be an expedient short term solution but I worry that over the longer term it could prove just as damaging to the council as the contract it seeks to replace.

What the Delegated Powers Report is asking is that we should trust the officers who have renegotiated this contract without having sight of any of the relevant details. Given that the previous version of this contract has already cost the Council over £10 million in compensation and penalties, I am sure most reasonable people would understand why it is so important that, this time around, the Council need to demonstrate the highest standards of scrutiny and rigour so that all of the details can be thoroughly examined in public.

Maybe the other 350,000 residents of Barnet think I am just mad and should let the Council get on and run things the way they see fit. However, I am afraid I have a lack of confidence in the way the Council do things. Just look at the problems that have surfaced in the last twelve months over the Council’s procurement procedures. If this contract goes wrong again, the people who will pick up the bill will be the ratepayers - again.

My view is that this proposed contract should be scrutinised in public so that at least someone can ask these and other pertinent questions. Tell me what you think.

Mr Reasonable is GAGGED

There is something very wrong in Barnet Council. We have a scrutiny committee system which is there to provide checks and balances on the Cabinet. This coming Monday, the Budget and Performance Scrutiny Committee are considering two reports. The first is on the financial business planning which sets out where all the savings will be made over the next three years. The other is the Monitoring Report for 2010/11. Both of these reports are substantial and the committee papers run to 226 pages. As someone who has a great interest in how Barnet Council is run, I took the opportunity to submit three questions under the public questions slot in the agenda.

Sadly Barnet Council don’t like my questions so they have found a loophole in the constitution to stop me asking questions or speaking at the scrutiny committee meeting.

It all hinges on the rule that you cannot ask a question or speak on a topic that has already been decided at a committee meeting. Not a decision made by the committee at which you are asking the question, but any committee or sub-committee of the council. Because both of these reports have been approved by the Cabinet and Cabinet Resources committees there can be no public debate. Cabinet Resources Committee has only 6 members drawn from the Cabinet and a quorum of 3. The Cabinet has 10 members and a quorum of 5. No members of the opposition parties or conservative backbenchers sit on these committees and that is why we have a scrutiny system. Most of the time reports go to the scrutiny committee BEFORE a decision is made so that they can provide input. However, in this case, both of these contentious reports have been submitted to scrutiny AFTER a decision has been made. This means no public debate in the scrutiny process – full stop.
Although I would have liked to ask a dozen questions I had restricted myself to three - trying to be reasonable simply doesn’t seem to work. The questions are set out below. Judge for yourself if you think these questions should be answered.

1. Given that £21.3 million of the projected savings over the next three years are rated as at high risk of not being achieved, is this committee satisfied that sufficient consideration has been given to alternative scenarios if these savings are not realised.

2. Reviewing the top 100 contracts received a high number of votes on the Ideas website and had most comments. The Cabinet report stated that “A review of spend activity has taken place and a programme of work is underway with all service areas, to review the contracts that are in place, confirm that activities remain appropriate and that discussion with contractors has started to ensure we continue to deliver value for money”. However, according to a response on the Ideas website, at the Corporate Risk Committee on 2 September 2010, a report stated that "Low targets were set for % of contracts held by the Council which have been reviewed and renegotiated for Quarters 1 and 2 (0% for Q1 & 5% for quarter 2). Because this is complex work involving in excess of 240 contracts it will take a period of months before reviews and renegotiations are completed. Preliminary work to locate and begin reviewing has taken place through Q1 and will continue through Q2. We expect 30% of contracts to have been reviewed by end of Q3 and 50% by end of Q4. We expect to have renegotiated 5% of those contracts deemed necessary by the end of Q2, 15% by the end of quarter 3 and 30% by the end of quarter 4". Are Committee members satisfied that a review of the top 100 contracts is receiving the attention it deserves?

3. At 9.8.2 in the CRC Monitoring report, it states that £390,000 was drawn down from contingency to cover rental for buildings 2 and 4 at North London Business Park. Given that rent is a known consideration and that the rent free period must have been known at the time of signing the lease, why was it not adequately budgeted for resulting in the shortfall having to be taken from contingency. Does this suggest a lack of financial planning?