An Alternative to One Barnet - Mr Reasonable's Eight Point Plan

One Barnet outsourcing is seen as the only answer to the financial woes of Barnet. Cllr Cornelius has repeatedly said there is no alternative. Well I simply don't believe it. I have reviewed Barnet's spending very closely over the last two years and I am convinced further savings can be made. I run my own business and I check every single invoice because I know that money is coming out of my own pocket. I have a very clear idea of what I want to invest in and whether it will give me a realistic return on investment. In large organisations people don't talk about money they talk about budgets, some amorphous concept which has no direct correlation with the person spending it. I believe that is happening in Barnet and that has to change.

Set out below is my eight point plan of how I would make savings in Barnet and it is something on which I would welcome an open debate - because it is only through dialogue that we can change things in Barnet.

1.       Management restructure  with the objective of creating a more responsive, flatter management structure. Objective to take out at least £1 million of management costs above and beyond the current proposed restructure. - Mr Mustard illustrated in a post recently how the number of senior managers have rocketed in the last two years from 57 to 95. The restructuring proposals brings that down to 49 but that is in a commissioning model where there are very few staff to manage. I reckon there are further senior posts to go and when you add the 23% pension contributions to the high salaries, the £1 million target looks deliverable.

2.       Immediately halt the use  all external consultants unless specifically authorised by the leader. Objective to cut at least £2 million a year from the budget. - This year to the end of September Barnet have spent £2.52 million on one firm of consultants alone and last month they billed £447,000. Barnet has become consultant dependent to make all their decision for them and that is an exceptionally dangerous and expensive approach to running an organisation. A £2million saving is definitely deliverable.

3.       Adult social care – set up a project team to look how efficiencies can be generated at council funded care homes  focusing on staff scheduling and energy management. Objective to share savings made with care home providers and reduce costs to the council by at least 3% (£2.4 million). - 55% of Barnet's entire budget is spent on adult social care and children's services. In 2011/12 Barnet paid invoices to the value of £78.8 million on adult social services. That isn't for social workers salaries, simple what was paid out to other organisations for providing adult social care. Your Choice Barnet are looking at a £700,000 deficit next year due to difficulties in scheduling staff  as efficiently as possible. Energy costs are a significant care home overhead. By getting all the other care providers in Barnet to work more closely together on areas such as staff scheduling, training, food and energy purchasing I believe the target saving of £2.4 million is deliverable without any impact on the quality of care provided.

4.       Set up a procurement panel  of officers, members and residents to review monthly spending with all invoices over £5,000 to be scrutinised by the panel. Objective to weed out non essential spending with a target of saving at least £1.5 million per annum. - This is something I suggested almost two years ago via the Pledgebank website, an offer that was never taken up. Once you have a panel who start to challenge spending much more vigorously I am convinced this level of saving is more than deliverable. There needs to be an open mind on strategies like shifting to open source software which would save Barnet a fortune on Microsoft licences for all their computers.

5.       Review the top ten contracts to see if they can be renegotiated downwards/ retendered at a lower price or brought back in house at a lower cost.  Objective to save 3% off top 10 contracts. - Many of the contracts have inflation clauses built in which automatically push up costs every year. This is something that should be aggressively challenged. For example where the supplier costs are mainly labour and pay has been frozen for their staff, the inflation factor simply upgrades their profit element,

6.       Set up a project team to the review the number of agency and interim staff with the objective of reducing agency/interim staff costs by at least 10%. - In 2011/12 Barnet spent £7.7 million on Agency Staff and Interims. A number of public sector bodies have made significant savings in exactly this way so £770,000 appears deliverable

7.       Review  office accommodation studies already carried out with the objective of further rationalising space and identifying the minimum space required then develop an exit strategy from  North London Business Park (NLBP) as quickly as possible. In the mean time initiate an energy reduction plan to cut energy consumption at NLBP and Barnet House.  - Based on last year's invoices I estimate we paid just over £5 million in rent and service charges for NLBP offices. This is something that needs to be addressed urgently with a target of reducing rental payments by at least £1 million per annum.

8.       Open discussions via London Councils and GLA representative to cap the ever increasing charges made by TFL (Transport Trading Limited). Barnet paid Transport Trading Limited £13.1 million last year. - This is in addition to the sum we pay TFL via the GLA precept. As I understand the situation most of this money pays for the Freedom Pass. With Boris having just announced fare rises of 4.2% today it looks like this will filter straight back to us for the Freedom Pass payments (I have the detailed mechanism by which Barnet is billed for Freedom Passes but it is too lengthy to go into here but happy to share it with anyone who is interested). If we could secure a freeze in payments next year that would generate savings of £550,000 per annum.

      In total I estimate my plan could save in the region of  £9.5 million per annum, more than the One Barnet DRS and NSCSO savings. These proposals could be implemented any time and from my perspective I don't know why they haven't been implemented already. There is much talk about the need to make savings but frankly I see plenty of savings to be made without a penny being spent on expensive consultants. You just need a lot more attention to detail and a desire to drive out efficiencies. The Councillors and officers need to spend  a lot less time on the mad cap high risk One Barnet Outsourcing and a lot more time running the council efficiently.