Friern Barnet Library - Meeting Two

Today was the second meeting at Friern Barnet Library between, the squatters, community representatives and council officers. Sadly neither Cllr Rams or Thomas were in attendance. Craig Cooper, the council's commercial director  was replaced this week by Bill Murphy who is in charge of libraries.

The meeting kicked off with a statement from Phoenix that he and the other squatters want a properly run and resourced library, a statement which I personally was very pleased to here. He then said that the New Carnegie Foundation may be willing to help provide funds towards keeping the library open. Keith Martin, who has been a long time community campaigner for the library, also read out a statement he had received from Carnegie UK saying they hoped the library could be kept open.

During the discussions Bill Murphy made the point that the Artsdepot Landmark Library may or may not go ahead something which came as a shock to most of those present. He also noted that although they had saved £300,000 so far there was still another £1.1 million to be saved.

The one thing he did do was clarify that actually it doesn't matter how little the Friern Barnet library could be run for, it still doesn't matter because the council must sell the library to fund investment in other libraries. So there you have it. Friern Barnet Library is being sacrificed to fund improvements in other libraries. That seems awfully tough on Friern Barnet residents.

Roger T of the Barnet Eye then discussed the elephant in the room. "Are the council still pursuing the eviction proceedings?" Julie Taylor seemed to hedge around the subject but didn't deny proceedings were still going ahead. After some discussion from Phoenix, a promise was made by Julie Taylor that the officers would at least report back the request to suspend eviction proceedings. We will have to see what happens in court tomorrow.

Dr Julia Hines suggested that in order to save money now, the council should shut the temporary library at the Artsdepot. Although it is costing around £34,000 in rent, it is getting only between 4 and 5 visitors a day whilst the squatter library is getting 50 -70 people a day and costing the council virtually nothing.

Eventually the meeting finished but I remain left with the clear view that Barnet will off sell Friern Barnet Library no matter what alternatives are proposed or residents want and that is nothing short of a disgrace.

Proof that Barnet Council is completely out of touch

Many Barnet residents have little or no knowledge of the workings of Barnet Council. Next week we have a council meeting during which Councillors can ask questions. The list of questions has been published here.

Having read through the questions and the answers it simply illustrates the juvenile tit-for-tat antics of councillors. I would genuinely ask residents to read these questions and answers and then consider if they think our councillors are actually giving us value for money or are suitable to run the largest London Borough.

Quite frankly I think my teenage children act more rationally and sensibly that Councillors seem to portray in these questions and answers. Councillors are well rewarded for their time. A basic allowance of £10,597 can be topped up with special responsibility allowances. The total allowance for the Leader is £45,506. However chairing a committee can also be lucrative topping up their allowance to £25,930. Cabinet members pull in just over £28,000. Do residents believe that is value for money - I certainly don't.

Councillors must start to realise that if they are being paid the equivalent of what many people receive for a full time job they should start taking it seriously and stop this childish point scoring which benefits no one.

Audit committee - oops we lost £2m!

Tonight's Audit Committee was both disappointing and disturbing. Mr Reasonable had tabled two questions, one about Future Shape and one about very expensive computers for councillors, neither of which got a written answer nor a reasonable verbal response. The proceedings were dull, Barnet Times reporter looked very bored and then got up an left the meeting before we had got to any of the juicy business. Future Shape was glossed over, "yes in an ideal world we should have done a business cased but we are going to do one now" Mr Travers reiterated that they had only spent £810,000 on consultants last year and it would be £1.5 million this year. What irritates me is that he failed to mention all the senior staff they have appointed in the name of future shape including setting up a new commercial directorate that will cost an additional £500,000 a year. What about the budget of "up to £500,000" for legal advice on how to set up Local Asset Back Vehicles (the structure for flogging off local assets). What about the Implementation Partner Contract that we aren't allowed to know the cost of other than it is "in excess of £500,000). None of that got mentioned. Several Councillors expressed concern that they still didn't really understand what was being proposed and that there was a lack of detail. They were promised that by the next meeting in December there will be more details.

Then a rather interesting point, a number of people have been allowed to join the Barnet Pension scheme who were previously council employees but have been transferred to other employers. The example given was some of the non teaching staff at Middlesex University. Now what is supposed to happen is that the council then claim these pension payments back from an organisation called the Higher Education Funding Council from England. The problem is that Barnet forgot to make the claims and as a result we didn't recover the £2 million we were entitled to. You can't backdate these claims so that money we didn't claim is lost forever. Chairman says well its lost and we can't reclaim it but it is a systemic failure. Why didn't the auditors pick it up? Up pipes one of the Grant Thornton chaps. "Yes but we did identify it in the 2006/07 audit but nobody picked it up. Sharp intake of breath! Serious matter!

Finally onto the matter on computers. The Council have splashed out £106,000 on buying new tablet computers for Councillors. That's £1682 per councillor. I had asked if anybody bothered to check what councillors actually use their computers for to see if they need one of these very high spec tablets. Cllr Palmer decided that actually it was all about the inconvenience of log in and how he wanted an apology from the IT department. Yes but what about these expensive tablet computers. Well they were expensive and probably over specified but it was easier for everyone to have the same machine even if it cost more. I reckon they have wasted £50,000 and more fundamentally did they need to buy these 1700 of expensive machines for all of the council staff. We then have to leave the room so they can talk about the procurement process which we the residents have to pay for. Overall, a hugely disappointing waste of time and a clear indication that the council will do whatever it wants and there is no one there to stop them.