Inspection of the accounts - What we pay to Capita.

I don't know about you but I was keen to see the details of the £83.2 million Barnet Council have paid to Capita in the last year, especially as the contract value for 2019/20 was just £39.7 million.  

I have found issues in the past and feel it is my civic duty to at least provide a modicum of scrutiny to the huge amount we pay Capita.  I used to be able to attend committee meetings and ask detailed questions about the contract, but Barnet hated that, so  they introduced the gagging rules stopping that level of public scrutiny. Luckily, every Barnet resident has the right in law to inspect the accounts and that is what I have just completed, checking 421 Capita invoices. It presents some interesting data.

Contract Fee:

We paid £24.2 million on the Capita CSG contract and £20.3 million on the Capita Re contract for the basic fee.  What isn't made clear, when some councillors talk about savings with the Capita  contract, is that this figure excludes an inflation element which is billed separately under the heading of indexation. Last year this amounted to an additional £3.44 million. I would love to have a contract that gave me an automatic uplift for inflation each year and I can't think of a single council department where that inflation proof guarantee since 2013 is in place.

Gainshare:

We are still paying out on the gainshare clause whereby Capita get a share of any savings. They don't get gainshare on any procurement now, thanks to my persistent campaign showing that we were being ripped off by a poorly worded contract. However, last year Capita received £109,198 on printing gainshare and just over £100,000 gainshare on property income where Capita  keep 30% of the additional income from rent reviews, lease renewals and letting on the property portfolio above an agreed baseline. They received £180,421.92 gainshare for exceeding the council tax collection target on the basis that if they collect more than 98.5% of council tax  revenues Capita receive 50% in gainshare.  They also received £125,057.81 for gainshare on recovered housing benefit over-payments and £230,702.89 for reducing the number of people claiming single person discounts.  

In total, gainshare amounted to £837,218.66 last year, which I would suggest is money that Barnet desperately needs and should have been retained by the council. Capita supporters say it is essential to incentivise a company to gather this extra revenue, but I doubt the front line staff who do the actual chasing get a share of that gainshare. Barnet used to publish a schedule of how much gainshare had been paid to Capita (Benefits Realisation Schedule) but as with so much else in Barnet, they no longer publish it, possibly because it paints a very different picture of the contract performance.

Out of Hours Service:

Last year we paid Capita  £86,031 to answer the phone out of hours. We pay £1,200 per month as a fixed fee,  which guarantees 80% of call will be answered within 40 seconds, and then between £5.86 and £7.58 per call answered. We also pay and additonal charge if they have to escalate matters with an outbound call. According to Capita's website "'Response out of hours’ is a nationally shared out of hours customer service partnership, delivered by Ealing Borough Council and Capita. Public sector bodies such as local authorities, housing associations and health service providers can join the partnership, wherever they are in the UK, to access a large pool of highly skilled and experienced customer service agents, to deliver their out of hours customer service requirements". It does make me wonder if it might be a bit cheaper if we got together with some of our neighbouring London Boroughs and did this ourselves.

DBS Checks:

Last year we paid Capita £152,972.60 for DBS checks. Nobody is doubting the need for DBS checks, but this seems like a large number of checks and makes me wonder if this is driven by the large number  and churn of agency staff.

Other Items:

The are lots of other costs such as the £1 million paid to Capita for Office 365 licences, £463,628 for mailroom & photocopying, £1.96 million for pension deficit payments and £683,500  for TUPE payments. This again highlights that the savings talked about in headlines are quickly eroded by so many top up charges that are never discussed. We also had to pay back to Capita £801,775 which was money recovered through the proceeds of crime act. When the massive fraud happened within Capita Re with one member of staff stealing over £2 million, Capita had to refund all the money stolen. As money has been recovered and returned to Barnet, we have to refund it to Capita, so in this case not an actual cost to Barnet.  However, the other big cost area is Special Projects which I have detailed below:

Special Projects:

Capita have carried out a variety of special projects with a value of around £8.39 million including:

• £503,441 for the Corporate Transformation Programme (yes I wondered what that was as well);
• £286,458 for Customer Transformation Programme to deliver "improved and additional digital online transaction function to deliver a better service"
• £256,985 to "provide an impact assessment of all relevant and appropriate IT infrastructure for the introduction of the new office and subsequent closing of NLBP B4"
• £270,457 to provide support to the LBB;
• £357,787 to prepare a business case for development opportunities under the One Public Estate  (OPE) programme.

The Capita Re contract it is structured differently so they simply bill for work requested.  So in addition to the £8.39 million they have  also billed £659,523 on the new Council Offices in Colindale, £1.065 million on the Local Implementation Plan (LIP), £132,000 for Enhanced Advice and Adaption Services £436,930 for work on the Upper & Lower Fosters regeneration project, to name but a few. 

However, the biggest source of billing for Capita is for work on the different elements of Brent Cross project including the new waste transfer station, the new Thameslink station and the Brent Cross South regeneration. In total these Brent Cross projects clocked up £14.1 million of charges from Capita.

Brent Cross is a massive regeneration project and it has become a major source of income for Capita. I will be writing a follow up blog on Brent Cross in the next few days which I would urge you to read as the consequences of this project could be exceptionally serious.

In summary, when councillors tell you about all the money that the Capita contract is saving ask them about all the extra charges, and whether they have factored these into their claims. It is a bit like the £350 million pounds a week sign on the big red bus. It makes great headlines but dig a bit deeper and you know it simply isn't true.

A Capita Stitch Up - Expect Capita to be in place till 2028

The latest supplier payments are out for December, a month when the council paid out a very substantial £86.67 million in just one month. There were some unusual large payments including £6.46 million to the GLA identified as "Levies", £8 million to Network Rail Infrastructure towards the Brent Cross Thameslink station and £5.83 million to John Graham Construction who are the Council's construction partner building the two new leisure centres.

However, there were two other payment which stood out, both of which were to Capita.  £7.75 million was paid on the CSG contract and Capita employee benefits and £3.97 million to Capita Re. This brings the running total paid to Capita since the start of the contract to £457 million, £175 million more than the contracted value.

.
The reason why this is particularly significant today is that tonight, Barnet councillors will be discussing the basis of the review process for both of these contracts. The CSG contract was supposed to have a review in Year 6, something which has been delayed to merge it with the Year 7 review of the Re Contract. However, the two contracts are quite different, and the contract review processes, as set out in both contracts (see at the bottom of the page), are quite different.

In the CSG contract, Barnet are supposed to identify improvements or savings they want Capita to make and then there is a defined process for Capita to come back with their proposals and once agreed and implemented a mechanism for measuring how well those changes have been delivered.

For the Re contract, the basis of the Year 7 review is focused entirely on whether or not Barnet wish to extend the contract for a further five years. If both parties agree to extend the contract till 2028, Barnet can then instigate a review which will form the basis of the partnership going forward.

Now as is often the way, Barnet don't follow the contract and the review being discussed tonight appears to have gone straight to the discussion about the contract extension and which services will continue to be provided by Barnet. The report says that: "In conducting the Review, the council will work collaboratively with Capita, with a view to presenting jointly agreed recommendations to this Committee, insofar as that is possible". The problem is that Barnet have shown over the last six and a half years that when they say 'collaboratively' it means they end up doing exactly what Capita want them to do. Capita has a catalogue of performance failures as detailed by Barnet's own internal audit team (Capita delivered services marked in RED) yet Capita still continue to provide most of these services.

Barnet are planning to spend the next 12 months jointly reviewing the services provided by Capita,  with Capita. Officers were supposed to carried out a review of the service when instructed to do so 18 months ago in July 2018. However, after 5 months of silence they came back saying that the review had been cancelled and that a secret deal had been struck with Capita following the visit of Capita's Chief Executive to Barnet. Barnet got a cheque for £4.12 million which included compensation for the colossal cock up on the implementation of the Mosaic casework system, the settlement of disputed gainshare claims and KPI failures on the Re contract and in return the whole issue of contract realignment disappeared.

My key worry about this 'collaborative' approach is that Barnet will be showing all their cards to Capita as part of this new review and that will give a massive advantage to Capita in negotiating the five year contract extension. Indeed, I wrote to every Financial Performance and Contract Committee member last week setting out my concerns, the only way a resident can raise such complex matters now that residents have been gagged. I sent the email last Thursday 23rd January and as at 3pm today 29th January not a single councillor had replied or even had the courtesy to acknowledge my email.
This is what I wrote to them:

I write to you as members of the Financial Performance and Contracts Committee as I am not allowed to address the committee in person and a single question of no more than 100 words cannot address the issues which cause me concern. You have published the proposed terms of reference for the year 6 CSG and year 7 Re contracts reviews. This differs significantly from the original definition of the Year 6 CSG review, and seems more in line with the contract definition of the Re Year 7 Contract review which is to “meet to discuss whether each party may wish to proceed with a 5 year extension to the service period”. I have attached copies of both the contract clauses. The clauses are quite different for a good reason. The CSG contract is exactly that, a contract between the two parties. As such both parties, Barnet and Capita, will be seeking to ensure that their best interests are secured in any negotiation. By contrast the Re contract is a Joint Venture and is already by its very nature, collaborative where both parties share the benefits of any financial outcome.

I am pleased that at last the service is being reviewed although this should have happened last year. The extended nature of this process means that any final decision on the CSG contract will not be completed until the contract is well into year 7, a year later than required with the consequent risk that a year’s worth of potential savings will have been lost. It also risks missing the interdependencies between service lines and the synergies that could be achieved if some were considered together.

More fundamentally this process exposes the Council’s negotiating strategy and will make it exceptionally difficult if the council wishes to retender the contract in 2023 by placing Capita at a major advantage to any other potential bidders.

This review process appears to ‘bake in’ Capita’s on-going relationship with Barnet and will automatically prejudice any other bidders or an in-house team from providing a comparator to Capita. As such I would ask you to think again and create a clear separation between the service review and the negotiation of the contract extension to protect Barnet’s negotiating position going forward and to look at consolidating the review into a more compact timeframe.

In addition, unlike previous contract reviews at year 3 on the CSG contract and year 4 on the Re contract, the general public appear to have been excluded from the process even though there was a great deal of participation in previous reviews, especially the Re contract review when many people expressed their dissatisfaction with Capita's performance.

When the two Capita contracts were let in 2013  we were promised better services for less money. All the evidence so far suggests we haven't made any savings and the service is significantly worse.

I have reached the point where I have no confidence whatsoever in Barnet Council to deliver a satisfactory service for residents and with no suitable scrutiny process to hold senior councillors to account, the ruling conservative group can do whatever they want with impunity. Today it was announce that "dissatisfaction with democracy is at an all time high" having risen from 33% in 2005 to 61% in 2019 something I suspect is closely reflected in Barnet. Barnet used to be a borough where people loved to live. Increasingly, that opinion is changing.



For your reference the contract review clauses

By contrast the Re contract review is somewhat different:

Barnet still not managing its money

Barnet were due to hold a Financial Performance and Contracts Committee meeting last week but postponed it until the end of January due to election "purdah". I did write to Cllr Zinkin asking him to reconsider this decision given that there was nothing that would appear to breach purdah rules in the planned agenda and it is essential that Cllrs should keep a tight control over finances. He said that they wouldn't reconsider the meeting but that they would try to publish key financial information. This week he kept to his word and published what appear to be some of the reports that would have been considered.

However, what the key report shows is that at Month 7 (October) the Council was still forecasting an overspend this financial year by £6 million before drawdown from reserves. There are a number of reasons for this overspend. One of them is caused by the closure of the Finchley Lido while repairs to its unsafe roof are on-going, losing £736,000 of revenue. Here are a couple of pictures of the repair work courtesy of the GLL website.

The big worry is how much more is this going to cost to repair, while all the time it is losing revenue by being shut. It also makes you wonder how the roof was allowed to reach such a serious condition that such major works were required and why this problem wasn't picked up sooner.

Streetscene, which includes the bin collection service, is still £1.4 million overspent which is apparently due to additional agency staff costs and the service being split between two depots. As I have said many times, the bin reorganisation has been a disaster in that it has failed to save any of  budgeted savings, and hence the overspend. They also note that there is a £400,000 overspend on maintenance of the refuse vehicles. I know they have been having problems but they bought four new refuse vehicles last year when they reorganised the rounds and in the last 4 months have bought another 16 new  refuse vehicles at a cost of £3.4 million so that does seem to undermine their argument.

There is an overspend of £4 million on unfunded care packages for the elderly, albeit this is partially offset by an underspend in Learning Disabilities. It runs to the heart of the problem with Central Government who continue to push all the costs for elderly care onto individuals who, when they run out of money or if they lack the funds, become the responsibility of the local authority. Barnet has an ageing population and according to Barnet's own figures, the number of residents aged over 65 will grow by 37% over the next ten years. As such the financial pressure on Barnet to meet unfunded  adult care is likely to grow dramatically.

Children's and Family Services are overspent by £1.2 million of which £744,000 is down to staff overspend. After the Inadequate Rating of the service in 2017 money was thrown  at the problems including bringing in some very expensive staff on agency contracts. Perhaps if the council had been less ready to cut the budget in previous years the service might not have declined to the point where it need such a large injection of funds.

What is clear is that every year Barnet set savings targets and they consistently fail to achieve them. There is always a reason but it remains a worrying trend.

Over the next five years Barnet have a forecast budget shortfall of £118.7 million according to their own figures.

The new Conservative government appear to have made very little provision to address the massive cuts local authorities are going to be forced to make in the next 5 years. There is no policy to address the problem of social care funding which will put yet more pressure on local authorities.

These are all matters that councillors should have been discussing last week, looking at how Barnet can live with these huge financial problems yet this is now postponed till the end of January and because the public are effectively gagged there will be very limited public scrutiny.

Many people seems positive about this new government - Based on the finances, I have nothing but dread for the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

Seasons Greetings from Mr Reasonable.

Another bumper month for Capita in Barnet

Barnet's monthly supplier payments are out and yet again Capita have done well. On the CSG contract they were paid £2.04 million, including employee benefits, and on the Re contract they were paid £5.07 million. Now remember this is just the payment for October. In the chart below you can see the running total for the contract period is now at £445 million, £169 million above the contracted value.

The review of these two contracts was due to be discussed on 16th December  but because the papers would have to be published before the election Barnet are claiming that under purdah rules they cannot hold the meeting and as such the contract review process will not be discussed until the end of January. That means we are unlikely to get the contract review results before September next year by which time many millions more will have been paid to Capita.

The agency staff cost which have been on a downward trend saw a large jump in October to £1.76 million. I have continually raised my concerns that we aren't seeing a clear picture of the agency staff costs and this seems to be the adjustment I was anticipating.

There was also a large jump in the spending on security provided by Blue 9 Security who were paid £161,768 in October. I wonder how much of that is being spent on security at libraries to replace the librarians who were made redundant?

I will keep watching Barnet's spending.

Supplier Payments - Gagging means these concerns can't be raised at Committees

Barnet's supplier payments were published yesterday and yet again Capita are raking in the money. On the CSG contract Capita were paid £8.55 million and on the Re Contract they were paid  £8.35 million, a total of £16.9 million in just one month.

Set out below is the Capita spend to date which shows just how much we are paying for extras.

Another large beneficiary in June was PA Consulting who were paid £1,288,268.09. By the looks of the detail (Adults IT) I suspect this is for the implementation of the Mosaic casework system, the project that Capita completely messed up. I just hope the compensation we received from Capita for their failure was sufficient to cover all these bills from PA Consulting.

Agency staff costs appear to be falling with Matrix, the agency staff contractor, billed £1.09 million so the trend remains downward. It really makes you question why we stayed with the previous contractor, Comensura, for so long and why these changes were made sooner.

The agency contract seems on target to hit just over £12 million for the year, down from its peak of £20 million in 2016/17. However we are still paying £29,000 a month to separate agencies, Gatenby Sanderson and Hampton's Resourcing for a couple of very senior members of staff.

Another payment that caught my eye was to Saracens who received a payment of £25,271.30 for "rent". I am not sure what we hired the stadium for but that seems like a lot for rent.

The Capita payments often used to figure in my questions to the Financial Performance and Contracts Committee. Now that I have officially been gagged I get just one question and no opportunity to speak. It is clear to me that I have asked too many difficult and awkward questions about Capita and their contract with Barnet and that is why the new rules have been imposed. This isn't small change we are talking about but £160 million more than the contracted value but if you believe everything Barnet Conservatives say it is fantastic value for money. Having no one there at meetings to challenge them is exactly what they want.

It's Official - I've Been Gagged. Why Capita's dismal performance must not be discussed

Last night Barnet Conservatives voted in favour of restricting public participation at council committee meetings. Cllr Melvin Cohen proposed the motion stating that the £42,000 a year they spend dealing with residents questions is money wasted. The report was factually incorrect stating the period in question was 5 months when it was in fact 6 months and over stating the number of questions asked by 100. But in Barnet facts don't matter, just say something often enough and people will believe it.

Cllr Cohen said that in Barnet they were far too generous in the time they gave to residents to ask questions and make comments so they had benchmarked themselves against the worst councils and were happy that the very restrained new rules were acceptable. Cllr Cohen said this would be a chance for more residents to ask questions. How he arrived at this twisted take on reality is beyond the logic of any sane person. The old rules allowed as many questions as could be dealt with in 30 minutes each person submitting a question got their chance for a supplementary question and only when everyone had asked one question would a second question from an individual be allowed. The new rule is one resident one question per agenda item. More than two residents asking about the same agenda item and their questions will be rejected - first come first served.  So when we get an agenda item about libraries across the borough which may be affected in different ways only two questions will be allowed. Same for the any budget cuts. There might be 20 different areas in the budget that residents want to ask about but 2 questions will be the limit. In terms of making a public comment, previously residents were allowed to speak for 3 minutes and had to give notice on which agenda item they wished to talk about. That has now been banned. You can submit a comment in writing of 100 words but you can't speak at the committee and most importantly councillors cannot question he speaker. It is also important to note that the comment counts toward one of the two questions per agenda item so if two residents submit their 100 word comments ahead of you then no questions will be allowed.

So why have Barnet Tories taken such desperate measures to gag Barnet's engaged and questioning residents. The truth is simple. Barnet residents scrutinise what the council does; they ask probing and difficult questions, they can see through spin and flim flam and they aren't willing to settle for a badly run council.

It is true that I ask a lot of questions. Like my fellow bloggers Broken Barnet,  Mr Mustard, Barnet Eye,  and Brent Cross Coalition, and engaged resident, Barbara Jacobson,  we all challenge Barnet and for very good reasons.

Yes there was one meeting where 158 questions were submitted but it was an exception. Eleven different residents submitted questions which included items such as:

• The review of the Capita contracts - a unanimous committee decision had asked officers to prepare a business case for a range of options to bring services back in house. The reason for so many questions is that  residents were rightly concerned that officers had ignored the request and pressed ahead with their own plan and no business case.
• The Brent Cross Cricklewood funding and delivery strategy - Brent Cross is a vast project which will disrupt many locals. The transport strategy has not been well thought through and Barnet have had to go to government with a begging bowl for a bail as we were on the hook for the construction cost of the Thameslink station after Hammersons scaled back their expansion plans. Residents were rightly concerned about the risks of the scheme.
• The annual procurement plan which set out spending commitments that had not been discussed or approved by committees.
• The medium term financial strategy - which set out the need for £68 million of budget cuts over the next 5 years.
• The strategic performance report - which showed the 5 consecutive year of overspend on the outsourced legal contract.

None of the items were insignificant but the Capita contract review did attract the majority of the questions. If I look at another meeting cited in the report, the Audit Committee where 68 questions were submitted, again there was a very good reason for that situation. This was the first Audit Committee where the findings of the investigation carried out by Grant Thornton into the £2 million fraud were heard in a report published by the Chief Executive. The Grant Thornton report was a damning indictment of Capita's failures to enforce even the most basic of financial controls that allowed the fraud to take place. It was also critical of Barnet Council's poor scrutiny process so it is hardly surprising that residents had lots of questions. Another item on that same agenda related to the internal audit rating of "No Assurance", the worst possible rating, on the interim and agency contract administered by Capita. You can read the report here but it makes shocking reading.

Set out below is a chart showing all the questions asked during the period mentioned in the report and the issues that were raised at each of those meetings.

Now you may start to see a common theme developing and that is about the dismal performance of Capita and how they have failed to deliver in Barnet. That is not just me saying they have failed but the Council's own senior officers who commission services from Capita.

I spend a lot of time reviewing Capita's performance and how much they charge and that by its very nature generates a lot of questions. Take for example the performance of Capita on Pensions Administration. This has been a disaster with fines from The Pension Regulator and just last month the serving of a Draft Improvement Notice, which if Capita fail to deliver, could result in a £50,000 fine. Just 2 weeks ago Internal Audit gave Pensions Administration a "Limited Assurance" rating.

Yesterday, after some chasing, Capita published their Customer Service performance figures for the last nine months. What this showed is the abysmal performance of call answering in Barnet. Some calls receive an automated response which can prove exceptionally difficult to get through. However there are two areas where performance has been consistently bad throughout the term of the contract, call to Council Tax and calls to Housing Benefits. Set out below is a chart showing how many calls are answered within the 60 seconds service level agreement target (the red line). The target is 80%. The other element shows how many calls were abandoned - people who hung up after a prolonged wait to get through. The maximum queue time for calls to be answered in May was 50 minutes and 48 minutes in June - those are for the people who didn't hang up.

What the chart above illustrates is that in the last 15 months Capita have only met the target of 80% of calls answered within 60 seconds twice and in 6 of the months the figure was below 50%. What is also shocking is the number of abandoned calls which in March 2019 hit 2191. Now to be clear that isn't all calls to the Council just those calling about Council Tax.

Calls to Housing Benefit are equally poor again only just meeting the service level agreement target in 2 out of the last 15 months (they failed in every single quarter) and with large volumes of abandoned calls.

Indeed in the most recent quarter April - June 2019 there were 12,288 abandoned calls and the 80% target level was not met for any single service area. It is clear to me that Capita's performance is not getting better and to many it seems to be getting worse, even after 6  years of running the contract.

We can't escape the other massive issue and that is the cost of the Capita contract. In the first 6 years of the contract we have paid almost £146 million more than the original contract sum.

Capita's failure to perform and Barnet Conservatives ideological support of outsourcing mean that they hate people questioning both Capita's performance and their own failure to manage the contract adequately. In any other business Capita would have been sacked long ago but not in Barnet.

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of other things the council does that are just as bad and not directly linked to Capita. The downsizing of the libraries, the failings of children's services which have taken 2 years to recover, the on-going budget cuts, but one way or other they all link back to Capita and the culture it has imposed on the operation of the Council. Complacency and arrogance, a focus on money not service, a silo based culture where secrecy is the default and a disregard for residents seem to have become norm in Barnet.

Several, Conservative Cllrs have asked me why I bother asking so many questions and my response is because they don't ask enough or even any questions. If scrutiny was in good shape I wouldn't spend hours reading reports, preparing questions and travelling all the way over to Hendon to speak for three minutes when I could be at home with my family. I am sure the same is true for all the other people who regularly question the Council. Unlike Cllrs, we don't get paid for all the time we devote to making the council better.

Last night's decision to gag residents was simply a further reflection of this poisonous culture that have invaded what was a well run and respected Council. It has lost loyalty and trust and that will not change until there is a change of regime and a realisation that the culture of the council is inappropriate for a public service organisation.

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.

Barnet Council Plan to Gag Residents

Last week the Constitution and General Purposes Committee proposed significant changes to the public participation rules. Currently, up to 30 minutes is set aside at the start of each committee meeting for public comments and questions. You have to submit the questions by 10am 3 working days in advance of the committee meeting and you also have to specify which agenda item on which you wish to make a public comment.  At the meeting the resident gets 3 minutes to make their public comment and they can then be questioned by committee members. Questions are taken in strict rotation so everyone who has asked a question gets a chance to ask a supplementary question. Even if the questioners do not get the chance to ask a supplementary question there is a written response to their original question. This provides a useful audit trail when matters arise in the future.

Last week all those rules were changed.  Following ratification at the forthcoming full council meeting on 30 July public participation will be dramatically reduced. The Council's proposals are as follows:

Questions and comments should be amalgamated. The number of words for each question/comment should be limited at 100 and must be submitted in writing by 10am 3 working days in advance of the committee meeting.

Residents may raise one question/comment on an agenda item. The question/comment must relate to the substantive matter to be determined by the committee. No more than two questions from residents will be allowed per agenda item taken in the order of receipt by the Governance Service.

These changes means the public will no longer be able to address the committee in person and councillors will not be able to ask the member of public about their comment. When reports run to many pages, summarising a single question or comment in 100 words will severely restrict what people can say. Residents will only be able to make one comment or one question on an agenda item but if more than two residents ask a question or make a comment on an agenda item, no other questions or comments will be accepted. 

Barnet say this is about saving money and giving more opportunities to residents. It will do neither especially, if residents are forced to submit multiple FOI requests to get important answers. It seems clear that Barnet do not like residents scrutinising decisions such as the Council's £22.9 million loan to Saracens Rugby to build a new stand at their stadium or asking questions about the £2 million fraud carried out by a Capita employee which went undiscovered for more than a year. Capita's performance in areas such as Highways and Pensions Administration have been dismal but public scrutiny of their performance and why they are being allowed to continue to provide such a poor service will now be all but eliminated.

The Council are also making major cuts to services such as libraries and are changing the rules to force disabled people who receive in-home care packages to move into residential care simply because it is cheaper. The ability to question these changes will be dramatically reduced, allowing the council to rubber stamp decisions without any meaningful engagement with the public.

Barnet residents have a right and a need to scrutinise the Council and these changes will eliminate that scrutiny. I admit I do ask quite a few questions but that is simply because I believe committees are failing to provide adequate scrutiny. Conservative councillors keep saying the questions are political. The questions I ask are almost always about money and performance. With £20 million of budget cuts this year and a further £47 million of cuts over the next four years it is important that Councillors at least listen to the concerns of residents.

If you think the Council's proposals are wrong, please sign the petition here or go an visit your local Conservative Councillor before the Council meeting on 30 July. Details of all their councillors' surgeries are on the Barnet Council website but I have summarised them here for your convenience.

Capita Contracts Review - My open letter to the Policy & Resources Committee

Response to Review of Capita Contracts

Introduction:

The review set out at Agenda Item 7 falls short of the standards that should be expected when considering such an important decision. As such, any decision taken at this meeting will have no credibility and may expose the Council to the risk of a legal challenge. Worse still, it may fail to address the unsatisfactory performance of Capita and provide poor value for money at a time when budgets are under extreme pressure.

The Council has chosen to withhold Appendix C which contains the business case that support the decisions. Without that Appendix there is no way to validate or support any of the assertions made in the report. I have asked both the Leader and the Chief Executive to release Appendix C but have so far not even had the courtesy of a reply.

There were numerous misstatements and inaccuracies at the time these contracts were originally let. Many of the concerns raised then have come true. Contracts reviews were carried out in years 3 and 4 which found that everything was fine, yet we have been hit with a series of recurring problems which suggest the reviews failed to discover or address the underlying problems.

Starting Point:

In July 2018 this committee resolved the following:

1.   Agrees to review the council’s partnership with Capita, and authorises the Chief Executive to develop a Full Business Case.

 2.  Agrees that the proposed strategic aims underpinning the Full Business Case should be to:

a)    Deliver high quality services; b)   Secure best value for money for Barnet’s residents; and

c)    Strengthen the council’s strategic control of services.

 3.  Notes the three options identified and considered in more detail in paragraphs 2.4 to 2.7 and Tables 1 to 4.

 4. Agrees that option 2 – realigning the CSG and DRS contracts to bring back in house those services listed in Table 5 – is the proposed preferred option to be tested in the Full Business Case.

 5.  Agrees that option 3 is fully tested and considered in the Full Business Case.

 6.  Agrees that the Full Business Case should review the joint venture arrangement for the delivery of Development and Regulatory Services.

 7.  Agrees that the Full Business Case should be considered by Policy & Resources Committee, for referral to Council for final decision.

Eleven months later and this has not been delivered, even though there was both a clear rationale for doing so and unanimous approval by this committee. In the interim, a meeting was held between the Council and Mr John Lewis, the Chief Executive of Capita, but there are no minutes or details of what was discussed or agreed at that meeting nor the extent to which that meeting has influenced the remit and structure of this review. As such, it raises serious concerns about governance and authority of this committee.

 Failing Performance:

Capita’s performance has been lamentable. The fraud and subsequent Grant Thornton review exposed the fundamental failings of Capita’s systems, the inadequacy of management and failure of the Council to adequately monitor Capita’s performance. It was also noticeable that Grant Thornton identified that “the Business Director for Regeneration, with overall responsibility for regeneration projects, had only nine months experience of regeneration and was not directly involved in reviewing the financial management activity of his managers. The role was geared more towards commercial account management, focusing on the contractual relationship with the Council and not with detailed functional and technical oversight of the projects themselves”. The high turnover of senior management is a recurring theme across a number of the failing services provided by Capita.

The Pensions Regulator has fined Barnet and issued improvement notices because of Capita’s failure to provide a basic service. Again, the churn of senior management has exacerbated the resolution of the failings. Schools Payroll has been given a no assurance rating by Internal Audit and 170 members of staff had pension payments incorrectly deducted from their pay packets.

Highways performance is poor in spite of spending £50 million on the Network Recovery Plan. The complex contractual framework, the inability to agree and enforce common KPIs between Barnet and Capita and between Capita and the Highways contractor has made contract monitoring and enforcement much more difficult. Yet again, there have been difficulties in recruiting and retaining a Senior Highways Manager. It is also important to note that Capita were paid an additional £1 million in gainshare on the Highways Contract even though London Councils initiated the contract.

Customer service has failed to meet targets with calls to Housing Benefit and Council Tax, having failed to meet the agreed KPI in any single quarter since the contract started, even though the 20 seconds service level target for answering calls was raised to 60 seconds.

What makes this situation even worse is that Capita claimed an additional charge on top of their core fee because the number of calls answered exceeded the contracted volume.

IT has been a consistent failing service. The implementation of the Mosaic casework system was commissioned from Capita as a special project for which they were paid extra, on top of the contract fee. However, they still failed to deliver the system and new external consultants were commissioned to implement the system incurring additional costs. It has also caused significant operational difficulties and is sufficiently serious to be identified as a red risk on the Corporate Risk Register (AC028).

Procurement has been poor, with Capita being paid £5.9 million in gainshare on procurement contracts even though it appears to be generally realised that the savings were nothing more than smoke and mirrors. This became even more apparent at the Urgency Committee on 30 November 2018 when a settlement was agreed with Capita to cease claiming any further procurement gainshare payments.

Capita’s performance has, by any measure, been poor. A constant churn of managers with posts vacant for prolonged periods, has prevented problem resolution and contributed to the continuing poor performance. The failing performance is not just my opinion, it is also the opinion of Council Users and Commissioning Officers who gave 9 out of 10 indicators a Red rating with 7 of the 10 ratings worse than last year.

Methodology:

There is no transparency about the methodology used to carry out the review, who carried it out and who peer reviewed or sense checked the findings. In particular, I would note the following issues:

·         It appears that the review has looked at individual, silo based services and carried out a like for like comparison of costs. That is an artificial basis and ignores the synergy and savings that could be generated if the service was restructured. I have repeatedly asked that the review should take the opportunity to consider a restructuring of service which could generate significant savings that would not be realised on a simple like for like in-sourcing exercise.

·         There is no transparency on the cost base used for comparison. For example, the cost of the service as set out in the contract is not the price paid by the council. Each year the council is invoiced separately for Indexation to reflect the cost of inflation. In 2017-18 Barnet were charged an extra £1,668,464.23 for indexation, split £937,502.23 on the CSG contract and £730,962 on the Re contract. It is not clear if a proportion of the indexation charge was allocated to each service when the comparison against in-sourcing was made. If it was not included, then it will artificially inflate the savings of the Capita service.

·         Any comparison between the cost of the Capita service and an in house service must take account of the inferior and unsatisfactory service provided by Capita. Failure to consider this will mean that the comparison will be between a non compliant/unsatisfactory service with a fully compliant in house service. This will always place the fully compliant service at a financial disadvantage.

·         Mention is made of the cost of pension liabilities of bringing staff back in house. However, it is important to note that in 2017/18 Barnet paid Capita an additional charge, on top of the contract fee, of £3.849 million in Pension Strain, Recharges and Costs.  In 2016/17 the figure was £5.211 million. It is not clear if these additional charges were included in the cost calculations but if they were not, it may artificially inflate the savings of the Capita service.

·         Revenues and Benefits have defined workloads that Capita will provide within the contract fee. In 2016/17 Capita were paid an additional £428,267 for workload that exceeded the contractual limit. In 2017/18 Capita were paid an extra £190,953 for additional workload. It is essential to understand how these excess workload payments were factored into the calculations. If they were not included, then it will artificially inflate the savings of the Capita service.

·         Customer Service has defined volumes included with the contract. In 2017/18 Capita charged an extra £415,876 because the contracted volumes were exceeded. It is not clear if these additional charges were include in the cost comparisons but if they were not, it may artificially inflate the savings of the Capita service.

·         A huge amount of Council senior management time has been taken up dealing with the problems generated by Capita. It is not clear whether the cost of resolving Capita failings has been included in the calculation but if not it will artificially inflate the savings of the Capita service.

It may be that all of these additional costs were factored into the business case calculations but as the public do not have sight of Appendix C it is not possible to make that assessment.

The Cost So Far:

To date, the cost of the two contracts has amounted to £398.5 million, £145.9 million above the contracted value. While some of  the additional cost is for projects that Barnet may have had to procure separately, it is clear that overall, the costs have been much higher than expected.

There is very little transparency of costs on the Re contract. However, based on the most recent benefits realisation table published last year, an analysis of the CSG contract suggests that in the first 5 years of the contract, no actual savings have been realised as demonstrated in the chart below. 

Conclusions:

In July last year there was a clear view that a range of services would benefit from being brought back in house. So far just two services have been in-sourced: Finance and Strategic HR. The Council has an opportunity to rethink how it is structured and how it can create a sustainable financial model in an environment of continuing central government funding cuts. This report ignores those opportunities and opts for the status quo of a commissioning council, with Capita providing services in silos from geographically dispersed offices around the UK. This model has been shown as failing in the direct services provided by Capita. However, the silo structure that forms the basis of the Capita contract has also had a negative impact on other services provided by the Council. This was highlighted by the Children’s Commissioner in her report into Children’s Social Care Services in the London Borough of Barnet of January 2018, where she said, “Silo working was pervasive throughout the Council. While lack of ‘join up’ is often seen in large organisations, the silos found in Barnet at the corporate level mitigated against the potential of SCB to make a strong contribution to support the improvement for children”. Capita’s contract structure reinforces the silo structure of the Council while delivering unsatisfactory services. Maintaining the status quo with Capita will maintain silo working limiting the Council’s ability to deliver real change.

When there is a problem, decisive action is necessary. The fraud and the subsequent report from Grant Thornton was a wake-up call that Capita were failing in so many aspects of the service. This was the opportunity and impetus for change. The report to the committee appears superficial and without rigour. It shows a reluctance and timidity to change and resolve the problems that are clear for all to see. It suggests your acceptance of failure by Capita and that there are no better solutions. Please do not accept the officer recommendations and ask for a more thorough and rigorous examination of the options.