Reading through the un-audited accounts I have come across some pretty shocking news. In 2010/11 Barnet council paid out over £1 million in "compensation for loss of office". In other words, people paid to leave. The largest payment was to Mr Brian Reynolds, former Executive Director for Environment and Development. He was paid the handsome sum of £280,485 to leave. Others payments for compensation for loss of office include the former:
- Director of Environment and Transport £143,832
- Acting head of Health Integration (Irene Findlay) £106,685
- Assistant Director Inclusion £103,955
- Assistant Director Building Control & Structures £96,692
- Principle Inspector Challenge Intervention £95,661
- Director of Strategy £67,793
- Director of Corporate Services £58,923
- Assistant Director Shared Services £42,675
- Assistant Director Regeneration £20,511
These are huge sums of money being paid out yet the council has advertised for a new Head of Planning Environment & Regeneration on £140,000 a year. What on earth is going on!
Standing up for common sense in New Barnet
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Metpro Invoices
Straight after the Council meeting on 1 March I submitted a Freedom of Information Request regarding MetPro. One of the questions I asked related to the number of staff and cost. The response I received was that there were 7 Metpro staff on duty and the cost was £411 plus VAT.
In the last 24 hours the Metpro invoices have been disclosed and they show some very worrying signs of poor procedure like a hand written timesheet different charging rates etc. Of particular interest to me are the invoices which relate to the council meeting on 1 March. On closer examination the invoices for council meeting show only five staff on duty at a cost of £411 plus VAT, not seven staff as detailed in the FOI response. I duly emailed the FOI department to query this and almost by return was told that yes there were seven staff on duty but MetPro had only billed for five staff! I wonder how many times the reverse was true.
In the last 24 hours the Metpro invoices have been disclosed and they show some very worrying signs of poor procedure like a hand written timesheet different charging rates etc. Of particular interest to me are the invoices which relate to the council meeting on 1 March. On closer examination the invoices for council meeting show only five staff on duty at a cost of £411 plus VAT, not seven staff as detailed in the FOI response. I duly emailed the FOI department to query this and almost by return was told that yes there were seven staff on duty but MetPro had only billed for five staff! I wonder how many times the reverse was true.
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Barnet Internal Audit Report - It just gets worse!
Having ploughed my way through the 268 pages of the Audit Committee papers I have to say that I am utterly shocked by what I have read. On top of what I have already reported on MetPro, the Internal Audit Annual Opinion Report goes much further on the various shortcomings.
The overall internal audit opinion is only “limited assurance”, that is one step above no assurance. Hardly a vote of confidence. Set out below are just a selection of the findings and there are many many more. I will be very interested to see how Audit Committee members address such a catalogue of failures. At some stage the committee have to stop looking at the symptoms and start addressing the underlying causes.
•With the exception of Adults, the role and responsibilities of devolved procurement teams/officers are unclear.
•There is no process in place to ascertain the performance of devolved procurement teams and if/where these teams add value to the Council’s procurement objectives.
•There are not effective oversight arrangements in place to ensure that monitoring complies with Contract Procedure Rules.
•The Procurement Code of Practice (PCOP) has not been reviewed since June 2009 and there is evidence of out of date information within the document.
•A complete and accurate contracts register is not in place corporately.
•There were no formal contracts in place for all contractors of SEN meaning monitoring against identifiable and specified contractual obligations was not possible. This practice was outside of the Contract Procedure Rules.
•Key projects were put on hold to ensure that the Pothole Elimination Project went forward, the risks of these scheme’s not going forward within Footway Maintenance and Traffic Management were not assessed or measured for impact.
•The Waste Prevention Strategy has been ineffective in delivery of outcomes.
•There were no support Business Continuity Plans for IT provision and Accommodation (facilities) as required by the Strategy.
•Environmental Health Management have not carried out a full risk assessment as required under Section 18 Standard of the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974). Management do not consider that they have capacity to achieve full compliance will by the March 2011 deadline.
•The service did not have a signed contract in place with the provider of cashless parking.
•The Parking Service has had limited success at implementing its overall Strategy.
•Significant issues within financial planning arrangements due to the lack of forward planning, and robust recovery plans to resolve the current shortfalls in income levels.
•There were incorrect accounting for and depositing of VAT monies and there is not sufficient checks in place to identify shortcomings in the VAT collection and reconciliation process.
•The parking service did not properly understand or document how the contractor was following up on fraudulent credit cards used in cashless parking transactions.
•Adequate processes do not exist to ensure routine reconciliations of amounts collected with amounts banked.
•Management did not have a process for checking the accuracy of charges applied by the contractor on individual transactions.
•There were delays (in excess of target times) between when street light service requests were received by the Council (including through Fix-My-Street route) and when they were submitted to the contractor.
•The contractor failed to undertake a significant number of customer satisfaction surveys resulted in under performance, and the analysis of responses by residents to these surveys ceased in April 2010. Officers did not seek adjustment relief from the contractor in light of this.
•There is currently no overarching Information Services (IS) level plan in place. Furthermore, in most cases, the service level business continuity /disaster recovery plans are incomplete or out-of-date.
•There are at least three single points of failure located within the IT network that, if realised, may have a severe impact on the continued availability of the network.
•The grants database/register was found not to be complete, accurate and up-to-date.
•The grant conditions have not always been recorded and updated in the grants register.
•There is no common process at a corporate level to confirm compliance to the CRB requirements across all service areas.
•Some CRB procedural processes have not been fully complied with.
•Only limited site inspections are being carried out to confirm CRB arrangements within supply management in Adults Social Care and Children’s Services, no policy exists setting out the approach to those contractors not visited.
The overall internal audit opinion is only “limited assurance”, that is one step above no assurance. Hardly a vote of confidence. Set out below are just a selection of the findings and there are many many more. I will be very interested to see how Audit Committee members address such a catalogue of failures. At some stage the committee have to stop looking at the symptoms and start addressing the underlying causes.
•With the exception of Adults, the role and responsibilities of devolved procurement teams/officers are unclear.
•There is no process in place to ascertain the performance of devolved procurement teams and if/where these teams add value to the Council’s procurement objectives.
•There are not effective oversight arrangements in place to ensure that monitoring complies with Contract Procedure Rules.
•The Procurement Code of Practice (PCOP) has not been reviewed since June 2009 and there is evidence of out of date information within the document.
•A complete and accurate contracts register is not in place corporately.
•There were no formal contracts in place for all contractors of SEN meaning monitoring against identifiable and specified contractual obligations was not possible. This practice was outside of the Contract Procedure Rules.
•Key projects were put on hold to ensure that the Pothole Elimination Project went forward, the risks of these scheme’s not going forward within Footway Maintenance and Traffic Management were not assessed or measured for impact.
•The Waste Prevention Strategy has been ineffective in delivery of outcomes.
•There were no support Business Continuity Plans for IT provision and Accommodation (facilities) as required by the Strategy.
•Environmental Health Management have not carried out a full risk assessment as required under Section 18 Standard of the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974). Management do not consider that they have capacity to achieve full compliance will by the March 2011 deadline.
•The service did not have a signed contract in place with the provider of cashless parking.
•The Parking Service has had limited success at implementing its overall Strategy.
•Significant issues within financial planning arrangements due to the lack of forward planning, and robust recovery plans to resolve the current shortfalls in income levels.
•There were incorrect accounting for and depositing of VAT monies and there is not sufficient checks in place to identify shortcomings in the VAT collection and reconciliation process.
•The parking service did not properly understand or document how the contractor was following up on fraudulent credit cards used in cashless parking transactions.
•Adequate processes do not exist to ensure routine reconciliations of amounts collected with amounts banked.
•Management did not have a process for checking the accuracy of charges applied by the contractor on individual transactions.
•There were delays (in excess of target times) between when street light service requests were received by the Council (including through Fix-My-Street route) and when they were submitted to the contractor.
•The contractor failed to undertake a significant number of customer satisfaction surveys resulted in under performance, and the analysis of responses by residents to these surveys ceased in April 2010. Officers did not seek adjustment relief from the contractor in light of this.
•There is currently no overarching Information Services (IS) level plan in place. Furthermore, in most cases, the service level business continuity /disaster recovery plans are incomplete or out-of-date.
•There are at least three single points of failure located within the IT network that, if realised, may have a severe impact on the continued availability of the network.
•The grants database/register was found not to be complete, accurate and up-to-date.
•The grant conditions have not always been recorded and updated in the grants register.
•There is no common process at a corporate level to confirm compliance to the CRB requirements across all service areas.
•Some CRB procedural processes have not been fully complied with.
•Only limited site inspections are being carried out to confirm CRB arrangements within supply management in Adults Social Care and Children’s Services, no policy exists setting out the approach to those contractors not visited.
Monday, 6 June 2011
MetPro - a catalogue of disaster.
Well the Internal Audit report into the MetPro Scandal is out and it doesn't make pleasant reading. It is a catalougue of failures to stick to council procedures. It states:
"No procurement exercise had been undertaken to appoint MetPro, in accordance with the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules (CPR). No written contract between the Council and MetPro could be found. There is no record of an approval and authorisation for the use of MetPro for providing security services.
In the absence of a formal procurement exercise, we could not locate the following documents/confirmation for MetPro, which the CPR require:
- Financial viability of the company
- Equal Opportunities Assessment
- Criminal Records Bureau checks
- Confirmation of company’s Public Liability Insurance arrangements
- Confirmation of the company’s Health and Safety registration
- Confirmation on the SIA licence status of the Company Officers
- An agreed specification which outlined the service to be provided
- An agreed schedule of rates for payment of invoices
- A process for monitoring performance of service delivery to establish if the Council was receiving value for money.
There has been a failure to comply with the Council’s Policies and Procedures with regards to roles and responsibilities. Officers interviewed had assumed a corporate contract was in place and relevant checks on MetPro had therefore been undertaken. Recently, from September 2010, assurance was given to officers we interviewed that a corporate contract was being procured by the CPT as they were aware at that time that no contract was in place with MetPro. At the time of writing this report this procurement exercise had not started, however a detailed specification existed."
Not only that, but it appears that when MetPro changed from Rapid Response to Emergency Response, they gave an invalid VAT number. This may result in the Council facing penalties for the overrecovery of output VAT and as a result there has to be a review carried out to calculate the exact figure the Council has overpaid VAT on MetPro and to immediately contact HMRC.
What the report fails to mention is that this inquiry only happened because of the persistence of the bloggers of Barnet who forced the council to consider the evidence they had identified. If it hadn't been for the half a dozen concerned citizens, there is a good chance that MetPro would still be in place, without licenses and in breach of VAT regulations.
What this report also does not identify is who is to blame and how many other suppliers are operating in breach of council procurement policies. Reading this report I think any reasonable person would be calling for heads to roll and an immediate embargo on any further outsourcing until there is clear evidence that adequate systems are not only in place but are actually being used.
"No procurement exercise had been undertaken to appoint MetPro, in accordance with the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules (CPR). No written contract between the Council and MetPro could be found. There is no record of an approval and authorisation for the use of MetPro for providing security services.
In the absence of a formal procurement exercise, we could not locate the following documents/confirmation for MetPro, which the CPR require:
- Financial viability of the company
- Equal Opportunities Assessment
- Criminal Records Bureau checks
- Confirmation of company’s Public Liability Insurance arrangements
- Confirmation of the company’s Health and Safety registration
- Confirmation on the SIA licence status of the Company Officers
- An agreed specification which outlined the service to be provided
- An agreed schedule of rates for payment of invoices
- A process for monitoring performance of service delivery to establish if the Council was receiving value for money.
There has been a failure to comply with the Council’s Policies and Procedures with regards to roles and responsibilities. Officers interviewed had assumed a corporate contract was in place and relevant checks on MetPro had therefore been undertaken. Recently, from September 2010, assurance was given to officers we interviewed that a corporate contract was being procured by the CPT as they were aware at that time that no contract was in place with MetPro. At the time of writing this report this procurement exercise had not started, however a detailed specification existed."
Not only that, but it appears that when MetPro changed from Rapid Response to Emergency Response, they gave an invalid VAT number. This may result in the Council facing penalties for the overrecovery of output VAT and as a result there has to be a review carried out to calculate the exact figure the Council has overpaid VAT on MetPro and to immediately contact HMRC.
What the report fails to mention is that this inquiry only happened because of the persistence of the bloggers of Barnet who forced the council to consider the evidence they had identified. If it hadn't been for the half a dozen concerned citizens, there is a good chance that MetPro would still be in place, without licenses and in breach of VAT regulations.
What this report also does not identify is who is to blame and how many other suppliers are operating in breach of council procurement policies. Reading this report I think any reasonable person would be calling for heads to roll and an immediate embargo on any further outsourcing until there is clear evidence that adequate systems are not only in place but are actually being used.
Lost - one scrunity committee - reward for finder!
Looking through the council's list of committees I noticed that the One Barnet Overview & Scrutiny Panel wasn't listed. Maybe that is because it is a panel not a committee I wondered so I patiently scrolled through the council's on-line diary of meetings and guess what? The One Barnet Overview & Scrutiny Panel has disappeared. Does this mean they don't need any scrutiny of One Barnet decisions or did the questions just get too awkward. Either way it seems strange that some of the biggest decisions facing Barnet over the next 18 months will go unchecked.
Anyone who finds the lost panel will be rewarded with one of Mr Reasonable's tasty but thrifty Poverty Pies.
Anyone who finds the lost panel will be rewarded with one of Mr Reasonable's tasty but thrifty Poverty Pies.
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Priorities and what’s important in life!
Today I spent the day with my dear old mum who lives in Bristol. She is 91 and has had some health problems recently. It has meant her moving out of sheltered housing and into a nursing home. Having decided to go out for lunch and with the motorway to Weston-super-Mare at a standstill, we decided to go to Portishead instead. There is a little cafe down by the sea front where she enjoyed a lunch of fish, chips with a cup of tea followed by an ice cream. She doesn't eat much but she enjoyed every mouthful! When we get together we always have what we call a family chain. Me, my mum, my partner and my children all sat round the table, joined hands and “sent the love around”. A very simple expression of love but one that reinforces the importance of families. My children love their granny and I just wish we lived closer. After lunch, I sat on the sea front with my Mum holding her hand while she had a snooze and my partner took the children for an excursion on the boating lake. When we got back to my mum’s we wrote all about our day in her visitors’ book. It helps her to remember what has happened. The children drew some lovely cartoons of us all having lunch together and of me and my mum holding hands. A day where there was no mention of Barnet Council, One Barnet or outsourcing, just a whole lot of lovin’. It just shows that the best things in life don't have to cost a fortune.
Thursday, 2 June 2011
MetPro Scandal - Open letter from the Bloggers of Barnet
As you may know, Mr Reasonable is exceptionally unhappy at the current outsourcing programme of One Barnet. There are enormous risks associated with this process and unless the right systems are in place and the evidence is clear, we could end up facing huge financial losses. The MetPro Scandal has highlighted major shortcomings within Barnet council's procurement and contract management procedures. Many people were hoping for a full inquiry into what happened but there are now real concerns that the Audit Committee which simply brush MetPro under the carpet so they can press ahead with this ideologically driven madness. Today, five Bloggers of Barnet are publishing this open letter which has also been sent to every Councillor in Barnet.
Please read this letter and then ask your local councillor whether they think the One Barnet outsourcing should still be pressing ahead with such undue haste.
MetPro and Barnet Council: contract failures call One Barnet Programme into question
On 16th June the Audit Committee of Barnet Council will meet to discuss the findings of its audit of the circumstances surrounding the MetPro Rapid/Emergency Response scandal. The signatories of this statement believe that, while it is far from a suitable way to address the issues raised, the audit is likely to expose shortcomings in Barnet Council’s ways of working that will lend force to our call for a full, independent investigation into the Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies.
Those responsible for the failure to regulate the Council's relationship with MetPro are in many cases the same people assisting with the review. As such they have a vested interest in the outcome. We believe that this review is therefore not likely to be sufficiently objective, however useful its findings might be.
Despite assurances from Lord Palmer we are not satisfied that the audit will cover all the problems revealed by the MetPro case, particularly those pertaining to breaches of residents’ data protection rights and their potential exposure to harm through contact with inadequately regulated security staff.
Furthermore, we believe that the MetPro case proves conclusively that there is systemic failure in Barnet Council’s purchasing and vendor management systems and processes.
Given this, we believe that it would be grossly negligent to allow a major outsourcing programme such as the One Barnet Programme to proceed.
We suspect that, far from being an isolated case, the irregularities in the Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies are likely to be an indication of serious mismanagement on a much larger scale. We call for a full investigation not only into the general process of contract tendering and allocation but also into the role played by respective responsible Directors. Our own investigations so far suggest that this would result in major cost savings for Barnet Council and Barnet Council taxpayers.
With regard to the MetPro audit, we have identified the following significant areas of concern and we ask the audit committee to address these questions:
1. Does your audit review show failings that have been identified and reported to the Council officers previously by Internal Audit? For example, the Head of Internal Audit reported to the Audit Committee (29 September 2009, Item 8, pages 30-31) that the then Director of Major Projects (Mr Craig Cooper) had confirmed that effective spend analysis monitoring and monthly vendor monitoring processes were in place.
See link below to access the report:
http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/reports/reportdetail.asp?ReportID=8541
2. Did the Directors agree to take actions to address reported failings?
3. Did the Directors fail to take actions to address reported failings?
4. Why did the Directors not take actions when they were supposed to?
5. What will the Audit Committee do to stop recurrence where Directors fail to address reported failings on time?
On the wider subject of the systemic failings of Barnet Council, we ask that the CEO Nick Walkley immediately institute the following measures:
I. A moratorium on all One Barnet Programme work, until such time as system failings can be shown to have been addressed.
II. A full investigation into the tendering process and the role played by the relevant responsible directors.
III. A review of the payment process including any transaction where purchase order was raised after receipt of an invoice.
IV. A process where all retrospective purchase orders are sent to executive level for sign off and review.
V. A full review of the democratic oversight process, to ensure that similar serious irregularities cannot occur in future.
As concerned residents we believe that these measures will go some way toward restoring public confidence in Barnet Council and, moreover, will save the taxpayers of Barnet a significant amount of money.
We ask all Councillors, regardless of Party affiliation, to support all of the above measures.
Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne
Please read this letter and then ask your local councillor whether they think the One Barnet outsourcing should still be pressing ahead with such undue haste.
MetPro and Barnet Council: contract failures call One Barnet Programme into question
On 16th June the Audit Committee of Barnet Council will meet to discuss the findings of its audit of the circumstances surrounding the MetPro Rapid/Emergency Response scandal. The signatories of this statement believe that, while it is far from a suitable way to address the issues raised, the audit is likely to expose shortcomings in Barnet Council’s ways of working that will lend force to our call for a full, independent investigation into the Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies.
Those responsible for the failure to regulate the Council's relationship with MetPro are in many cases the same people assisting with the review. As such they have a vested interest in the outcome. We believe that this review is therefore not likely to be sufficiently objective, however useful its findings might be.
Despite assurances from Lord Palmer we are not satisfied that the audit will cover all the problems revealed by the MetPro case, particularly those pertaining to breaches of residents’ data protection rights and their potential exposure to harm through contact with inadequately regulated security staff.
Furthermore, we believe that the MetPro case proves conclusively that there is systemic failure in Barnet Council’s purchasing and vendor management systems and processes.
Given this, we believe that it would be grossly negligent to allow a major outsourcing programme such as the One Barnet Programme to proceed.
We suspect that, far from being an isolated case, the irregularities in the Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies are likely to be an indication of serious mismanagement on a much larger scale. We call for a full investigation not only into the general process of contract tendering and allocation but also into the role played by respective responsible Directors. Our own investigations so far suggest that this would result in major cost savings for Barnet Council and Barnet Council taxpayers.
With regard to the MetPro audit, we have identified the following significant areas of concern and we ask the audit committee to address these questions:
1. Does your audit review show failings that have been identified and reported to the Council officers previously by Internal Audit? For example, the Head of Internal Audit reported to the Audit Committee (29 September 2009, Item 8, pages 30-31) that the then Director of Major Projects (Mr Craig Cooper) had confirmed that effective spend analysis monitoring and monthly vendor monitoring processes were in place.
See link below to access the report:
http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/reports/reportdetail.asp?ReportID=8541
2. Did the Directors agree to take actions to address reported failings?
3. Did the Directors fail to take actions to address reported failings?
4. Why did the Directors not take actions when they were supposed to?
5. What will the Audit Committee do to stop recurrence where Directors fail to address reported failings on time?
On the wider subject of the systemic failings of Barnet Council, we ask that the CEO Nick Walkley immediately institute the following measures:
I. A moratorium on all One Barnet Programme work, until such time as system failings can be shown to have been addressed.
II. A full investigation into the tendering process and the role played by the relevant responsible directors.
III. A review of the payment process including any transaction where purchase order was raised after receipt of an invoice.
IV. A process where all retrospective purchase orders are sent to executive level for sign off and review.
V. A full review of the democratic oversight process, to ensure that similar serious irregularities cannot occur in future.
As concerned residents we believe that these measures will go some way toward restoring public confidence in Barnet Council and, moreover, will save the taxpayers of Barnet a significant amount of money.
We ask all Councillors, regardless of Party affiliation, to support all of the above measures.
Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne
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